Abi, who was born blind, and has intellectual disabilities, didn’t walk or talk until she was five years old. Her first word was “fruit”, and from there we proceeded to teach her how to talk by repeating words and phrases, “echolalia” From there, we taught her one word binary answers, like “yes” and “no”, and then choices between two items, such as “milk” or “juice”.
In this episode, mom and dad venture into the unknown parts of Abi’s brain in their pursuit of the answers to “Open-Ended Questions”! Although punishing for both the answerer and the questioner, this is a helpful exercise in having Abi learn how to effectively communicate.
We adopted Abi at age 3 after she was found by a policeman in a trash bin in a park in India. She is the “class clown” of our family!