My daughter, Katie was born with Cerebral Palsy. She didn’t say her first word until she was nearly five years old.
BUT she had been SIGNING from the age of 6 months.
By the time she was a year old, she could sign ‘cuddle’, ‘drink’, ‘doll’, ‘teddy’, ‘biscuit’, ‘milk’, ‘dinner’, ‘please’, ‘thank you’, ‘cat’, ‘pig’, ‘duck’ and many more words!
This taught me that although she virtually never made any noise at all (yes, I know, very unusual for a baby!), she knew what she wanted and that, at heart, she was a communicator.
I’m telling you this true story because you can’t ever look at someone and make assumptions about what they understand or how they can communicate with you.