Danielle Christopher

I am criss- crossed applesauce on our floor with about a hundred toys scattered all throughout five feet from me.
My two-year-old is running around our living room/playroom giggling away. I am speaking with her Infant Development Group consultant ( a part of the Child Development Centers) discussing ways to help my youngest daughter speak.

While she looks like a four-year-old she is globally delayed, including speech. With my oldest I did not have to consciously work at getting her to speak. At the tender age of one, she recited her ABCs. Not an hour goes by I feel mama guilt that my youngest didn’t get the intense one-on-one with me as her sister did. My oldest controls every conversation in her radius. Having said that, she is a very helpful older sister which could be hampering my youngest to speak. She doesn’t have to ask for anything. It is given to her.

So now after many months of speech consulting and developmental consulting her words are still far and few between. She communicates in her ways. It is a possibility that she may be on the autistic spectrum. We are waiting on our turn at the clinic in Vancouver. In the meantime, I want to do anything I can while she is so young. Anything to help her skills to be in this world.

She runs around the room in circles laughing away at her own joke. I ask her to come sit with us to play a toy. I
raise her favorite toy as she sees it across the room. In a warp speed she races towards me.  Before I know it her arms are wrapped around me in a death grip hug. She lowers her mouth to smooch a kiss on my cheek. And, she is off exploring and running around the room again.

The consultant and I look at each other. No words can be used to describe the power of her hug and kiss knowing I
am her mother and she loves me. No words.