By the time my daughter turned two, in November of 2005, I was concerned about her lack of verbal communication.  She had a couple of spontaneous words but most of what she said was echolalia.  Echolalia is when a person echoes what she hears - my daughter used mostly immediate echolalia.  If we said something to her, or asked her a question, she'd simply repeat the last word she heard back to us.  In addition to not talking much, she didn't appear to understand much of what we said to her.

She was a sweet 2 year-old, in between monster tantrums.  She was also very sturdy and people would comment on her ability to get up and dust herself off after what looked like a painful fall.  She even stepped on a scorpion, which promptly stung her, at two and barely let out a little cry.  She limped for a few days afterwards but that was it. 

In addition to not talking, we noticed that she really did not notice people coming and going.  You could walk in the room and talk to her and she may or may not acknowledge your presence.  She loved to spin and spin, I thought it was just normal kid fun...boy was I wrong. 

Another odd thing was her absolutely amazing ability to hear the smallest sound.  Unfortunately this caused a lot of fear and anxiety on her part.  It would not be unusual to find her with her hands over her ears absolutely freaking out if the smoke alarm beeped (not the long noise, just the little beep to let us know it is working).  Any unknown noise and the hands would instantly be on the ears - sometimes she'd come running, and other times she'd stand in place.

I waited until my daughter was 27 months old before I took her for her 2 year well-baby appointment as I wanted to see if she'd suddenly have a language explosion.  In those three months she didn't.  When I took her to our family practice doctor he suggested that perhaps it was "second child syndrome" - my son is 27 months older than her and quite verbose, perhaps he was doing the talking in the household.  When I brought up my concerns about her lack of understanding language he again said it would come.

For the next six months I waited...it never came.

In Chapter Two I'll discuss our road to diagnosis and intervention.