We all know that babies are not born speaking, and learning to talk is part of their development process during the first few years of life. We also know that all kids learn at their own speed and while some may be saying their first words at around 8 months, some may not say their first word until 12 months. It’s the same in kids with Down Syndrome, but the age range is generally much larger.

When it comes to children with Down Syndrome, speech often does not come quite so quickly or easily. It can often depend on the muscle tone in their mouth and jaw. Babies with Down Syndrome have lower muscle tone however, for some it is better than others. So some kids with Down syndrome are saying their first words without much of a delay. Others, may take much longer. The age range for speaking a first word ranges between about 1 and 4 years of age, and connecting 2 words to make a phrase could occur anywhere between 2 and 7 1/2 years.

Now… let’s talk about Hope’s speech. As parents, we had a few options. Firstly, we could have accepted that Hope’s speech development would be slower and just hope that she would start talking when she’s ready. Secondly, we could have waited to see what happened within her first 2-3 years and then placed her into speech therapy when she looked like she was starting to speak. Finally, we could place her into speech therapy, as soon as possible, and start working on it right away. We chose the final option.

With Hope, we have always said we want to give her the best opportunity to grow and learn as much as possible. We didn’t want to see her left behind. We’ve always known she wouldn’t pick up things as quickly as Alexander but, we want to give her every opportunity to thrive. I’m not saying waiting is wrong, but we believe as parents, early intervention is integral to Hope’s learning and development. So, we went searching for a local speech therapist.

Finding a speech therapist wasn’t as easy as I had imagined. We had contacted a few local speech therapists and most of them had rather long waiting lists. When the NDIS was introduced, it meant more people were able to afford the therapies. The demand for therapists grew, causing wait lists to grow. To further complicate things, Hope was less than 9 months old and we found many speech therapists did not take children at such a young age. We didn’t give up and we found a great team of speech therapists, at The Speech Co, who we have continued to see for the past 18 months.

I feel like I can hear the questions coming… “What do you do in speech therapy at 9 months old?”, “How do you do speech if a child is not talking yet?”. Don’t worry, I asked the same questions. While I knew I wanted Hope to have speech therapy, I really had no idea what to expect. The thing is speech therapy is about more than just “speech”. Speech therapy teaches social interaction, literacy, receptive language, expressive language, articulation and also feeding. Some of these things Hope wasn’t ready for, but others she was.

So what does Hope do in speech therapy? I will admit, it wasn’t what I expected speech therapy to look like. In my head speech therapy was sitting in a chair making sounds and words over and over again. It was boring and very repetitive. That’s everything speech therapy is NOT. Hope spends an hour crawling around the floor smiling and having fun. Playing with many toys and sometimes the furniture around her. She loves it. All the while, the speech therapist, gets down on the floor with her (even when she’s 8 months pregnant) and encourages sounds and uses words to explain what is happening. She’ll also help to move Hopes lips to make different sounds to show her how the sound is made. In the past 12 or so months, Hope has learned to understand simple words like go, stop, open, close, up, down and come using toys to demonstrate. She’s also learnt to make different sounds, like da and mmm and la. They’re not words, but they’re the beginnings of words and a sign that there is more to come. She’s learnt some simple signs for directions and also knows how to sign some animals like cow, sheep, pig and horse. She continues to learn more and more signs each week and when she learns them, so does the entire family so we can all communicate better with her.

Around the end of last year, we had to have a very honest and slightly difficult conversation with our speech therapist. We had to discuss the different tools we could use to help Hope communicate. We were told, there is still a chance Hope may never be fully verbal. She may never speak. This was not something I was prepared for. It was a shock and I really didn’t know how to respond to it. I’m pretty sure my reaction was probably just to smile and nod at everything said after that. We were also told, there is a very small chance of this happening and Hope was showing good signs that this would not be the case. Even so, we had to be prepared. If she did talk, it could still be a few years before she would be able to use her words to communicate what she wanted. We had to have something to help her. We are in the process of learning to use a communication board so she can point to what she wants if she is unable to sign or verbally ask for it.

I think that covers most of the speech and communication part. One last thing that speech therapy has helped with is Hope’s feeding. With the low muscle tone in children with Down syndrome, feeding issues can be quite common. For Hope, this meant that she had issues when it came to drinking. If she had a bottle and the milk went down too fast, she would often have a wet sounding cough for an hour or so afterward. On multiple occasions we were worried her milk was making its way down the wrong path and into her lungs.Having a speech therapist with feeding training, meant we had someone who could watch, listen and help ensure this was not the case. She was able to give advice on what bottles to use, what teats to use, even what spoons would make it easier for Hope to eat from. Another part of feeding that she has helped with is knowing when to adjust the texture and food preparation. The low muscle tone meant that chewing solid foods did not come as easily. With our feeding sessions, we had extra advice to ensure we were giving the right types of food for where Hope was with her development and muscle tone.

Speech therapy… it’s more than just speech. While it may seem irrelevant at such a young age, it has been so important for us and we will always encourage starting sooner rather than later. Hope may not be talking yet, she’s not using her words. She doesn’t look at me and say “mum”, and sometimes that’s hard, but she’s also still very young. She surprises us every day with how much she’s doing and learning. She may not be able to speak just yet, but she is communicating in her own way and we will continue to encourage and work with her to develop her skills. She loves singing and joins in with all the actions. She shows her love with kisses and smiles. One day, we know she’ll do more but right now, this is enough.