Our friend, Hilary Franklin, came to visit us for a few days and spent some time observing our daughter. She has a Masters in American Sign Language as a Foreign Language and is the first native cuer to become a certified Cued Speech instructor. Along with a video of Arabella’s attention, here are her comments on Arabella’s receptive and expressive cueing.
Hello, Rose family and friends!
When Arabella was born, I knew I couldn’t wait to see her; I wanted to meet my pseudo-niece! I made it out to Denver over the weekend, after Arabella passed her six-month-old mark. We weren’t sure if Arabella would recognize me, as she had only seen me a few times in the two-dimensional iPad world. But once I saw her in person, it took her only a few seconds to greet me with a huge smile. (D’awwwww.) This indicates a level of recognition that we weren’t sure would happen, since she’s still so young.
Arabella is an extremely engaging and curious baby! At six months old, she is already doing the following:
• Attending to the current speaker with intent and extreme interest. (She has the ping-pong head movement down pat.)
• Moving her right hand (and sometimes her left hand) in response to someone talking directly to her. She forms handshapes that resemble cues. I saw handshapes 3 (/s, h, r/) and 5 (/m, f, t), and 6 (/l, sh, w/).
• Expecting another speaker to talk and cue. The most incredible thing was watching Arabella watch and listen to an iPad app (“Baby Flash Cards”), turn to her mother for the cued version, and then immediately look back at the iPad for the next flash card.
I believe she is able to do the above because Aaron and Mary-Beth are always cueing. As native cuers, they cue to each other, but they also cue to Arabella. I also cued constantly to her; in fact, she preferred to turn her head and watch me than simply listen to my voice.
I hope Mary-Beth doesn’t mind this little anecdote: Mary-Beth and I would often chat while she was nursing Arabella. When I used my voice, Arabella would stop nursing and twist her head around to look at me. We quickly realized that the only way to get Arabella to focus on nursing was for me to cue without my voice!
In short, consistency and repetition are key. Only time will tell when Arabella starts to actually form cued and spoken words herself, but she seems to be well on her way!
Cueingly Yours,
Aaron & M-B
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