some might recall that odin scored on the low side of “normal” for communication skills during his recent developmental assessment when compared to age adjusted peers. and while nobody is saying that he’s delayed in his speech skills, we were encouraged to keep a closer account of how he’s progressing and most importantly to actively attempt to increase the number and complexity of our “communication opportunities” during the day.

one simple suggestion was that we more frequently play the “so big” game where we emphatically ask “how big is odin?! and pause before answering with our hands raised above our hands, “Sooooooooo big!”

he’s a quick study and it only took a repition or two before he was exitedly raising his hands in response to our question. he’s not interested in verbally responding yet, but the hope is that will change with time.

another interesting suggestion was to more frequently offer odin two choices to get him to think beyond “yes” and “no”. so at meals, instead of asking “do you want water?” as we hand him the cup of water, we should offer up two glasses and ask him “do you want the water or the milk?”

a visitor on the website left a comment recommending the hanen center as a useful resource for books that seek to “coach parents on how to create the maximum number of communicative opportunities for their babies” which looks quite helpful.

of course, we’re always interested in other suggestions!

because we’ve already heard from parents who think we’re making much ado about nothing ( in the best possible way, really ), i should reiterate that we’re not overly concerned about odin’s communication skills at this point, but since over fifty percent of infants born at 23-28 weeks need some sort of help with speech by the time they reach school age, we think it’s not a bad idea to err on the side of caution earlier rather than later.