More gestures?? I think not.

Yesterday Frances (Speech) recommended that we might want to add more guestures to help Coco express herself.

My opinion is that if she learns more gestures and gets what she wants, she might never try to make a sound. I think it best if we could focus on the prerequisites for speech rather than more gestures. In my opinion, human nature works better by force. If one is cornered, one is more likely to do something out of the ordinary. Coco has to understand she has to talk to get what she wants. She's far from a dummy in a lot of respects and I see that she can learn pretty quickly. In fact, a multitude of activities she learned a whole lot faster than her brother. She learned how to use the straw and the spoon almost instantly; only taught her once on how to put the socks back in her shoes and she did it the next day; she knows to change hands while putting on a shirt, no one taught her that. She probably has more common sense. The tough part is getting her to understand she needs to talk to ask for what she wants.

An Update

Brushing Teeth:

• Coco doesn't like me to brush her teeth with a brush, even the plastic kind for babies. However, she watches with excitement everytime her brother brushes his teeth.
• She would hold the tooth brush and brush my teeth instead.

Eating:

• She only eats egg and rice for dinner these few days. No longer likes to eat meat. She will go sit herself if it's egg. Otherwise she runs away.
• She ate all cookies yesterday, probably because Angel wasn't there so no one gave her cereal in school.
• Ms. Chen noted she's reluctant to use the straw cup these days.
• I used the straw cup (without the straw) for juice and she had no problem finishing.

Learning:

• She learned how to open the fridge. Took me a few tries to get her to hold the handle tight and pull. Each time I said 'Hold TIGHT and PULL'. She holds on to the handle with both hands tight and expects me to put my hands on her shoulder to pull. I just rest my hands there and she pulls. It's psycological. If I don't put my hands there she waits.
• I also tried to help her on the speech part. I've been watching some YouTube videos. I sit face to face with her and keep repeating certain words with stress to her like 'MA Ma, NOse, APple, BAnana' etc. Sometimes I tried to help by manually close her lips. As Angel had mentioned, I see Coco trying to imitate mouth movement at times. She would close her mouth and seemingly trying to make a sound, though no sound.

Last week or earlier, while Coco was watching Dora, I noticed she suddenly got down to the floor and crawl around in circles. I thought that was very funny. She normally flaps her hands. Then my husband noted there was a fish swimming in circles on TV.

An interesting note: Coco is pretty tidy. Even when she was crying, she would put the bottles upright if they fall down. A few days ago, while I was in a hurry I knocked a bottle of honey down on the floor, she was crying but she got down and put it up right by herself.

She makes the 'Mmma' sound more when she's crying. Ms. Chen noted she's been saying that these days.