Language Sample 13.5 months

Selah hanging out in Kachina Wilderness near Flagstaff.

Learning to walk in her new shoes.

We took our first long bike ride with Selah, fifty miles and about 2500 feet elevation change down and back up. The loop went from Sunset Crater National Monument down towards the Painted Desert, through Wupatki National Monument Ruins, and back up highway 89 towards Flagstaff. This picture was taken just before the last 15 miles, which were uphill into the wind the entire way. It was so stinking hard. The parents nearly passed out, the baby loved it, switching between chair and trailer eating cookies and drinking Gatorade the whole way. (Please humor me for a paragraph, it's my first week back to work as an SLP and I'm loving it) Selah's language development is occuring at a normal rate. I would describe Selah as being much more focused on developing receptive language rather than expressive. That is, she understands significantly more than she can produce, which is typical. At nearly 14 months, Selah is not really saying any words other than her favorite word "dada" which is used consistently for dada, mama, baby, bottle, and bye-bye. "Da" is her word for "dog." She says "uh-ah" when anything is brought low by gravity, and has made up her own signs for more and all-done, which is not much more than a double-clap accompanied by a smile (for more) or a frown and headshake (for all-done). Even though she only uses the sound "da," I would still say that cognitively she has those nine words that she produces as well as she can so far. She babbles the syllables "ga gla da ba sa la wa ya das:" usually connecting 2-3 syllables into jargony words and phrases, and with very little variation on the vowel. She imitates adult prosody, sliding between high and low pitch. She does this the most obviously when she pretends to talk on her cell phone. She communicates a little through nodding when asked if she is sleepy, needs a snack, wants lunch or dinner, and a few other daily routine things. Because we only ask her when we know that that is what she wants, her answer is always yes. She only comprehends that we are asking her a question, and she answers yes, I think because most of the time we give her something that she would want around that time of the day. She demonstrates consistent comprehension of the words fan, bottle, chair, baby-chair (highchair), lamp, car, dog, bicycle, door, spoon, bowl, apple, stacker, shoes, socks, foot, ears, head, hair, mama's nose, cookie, cup, bear, books, piano, couch, trees, banana, teeth, pillow, camera, mama, dada, baby, diaper, bath (about 36 nouns). I just tested her today, and she doesn't understand bed, blanket, fridge, oven, ceiling, carpet, ugly-mobile, shelf, wall, curtains, mirror, the rest of the items in the house, etc. When asked "where is the ..." she points, walks to an item, or picks the item up. That's how we have figured out what she does understand. She also seems to know who Robin and Rachel are when asked. She responds correctly when asked to "jump (she tries to jump, looks like trying to pick yourself up by your own collar), kick, clap." She plays pattycake. She waves to "hi, bye" She also makes the correct gesture when given certain prompts, even though we are sure that she has no concept of what we are talking about, as in the previous video.