ABSTRACT
These first four months – a fresh start – after returning from St. Petersburg where she was evaluated by Dr. Traugott have proved to be transformational. A sharp change from not responding to responding to another human being – me, her mother. From being alone and planning her own activities – lining up toys in various ways or building Legos – to asking ME to provide her “more” of the world she had been not part of previously – literacy. From acting alone to acting together. From experiencing just her own undertakings to discovering that together – me and her – she can discover new things in the world. That together – me and her – we can share not just toys and vocabulary cards, but also joy and satisfaction. That we can share disappointment and sadness, and that together we can find ways to always get back to happiness. During this time period from January to the beginning of May 1992 – approximately 120 days or 1440 active hours or 86,400 minutes – I had been the only person for her, being with her as a mother, friend, therapist, special educator, teacher, speech therapist, music therapist for every single moment of her entire awake time. Every moment together felt like trying to make music in a group of both advanced and beginner musicians. When advanced players are looking for the synchronization and phrasing of a joint action during a fraction of seconds, then beginners just have to be encouraged to take those first steps, so they can become interested in the activity and develop both their individual musician skills and playing music together skills. This is what the beginning of her language acquisition at this step of her development 71feels like. Me as an advanced player and she as a novice trying to create “music” together in a way that allows her to build her natural interest in not just what we do, but in doing it together in a manner where split seconds matter. However, this arrangement – no outside help beside the experience, understanding, and guidance of Dr. Traugott and Mrs. Golovina – has been very hard for me both physically and emotionally. Nonetheless, it has been also a strength in terms of an opportunity for us to learn to relate to each other while transitioning from “managing” our lives by trying to control the symptoms as we did in the early years into creating a life – present and future together with each other. If she had had all those specialists – speech therapist, special educator, music therapist separately trying to work with her using even the same approach and amount of time and intensity, I question whether it would have had the similar transformative impact on her unless there had been a well thought collaboration and coordination in place to address the wholeness of her development. Everyone involved would have had to be open and willing to change their interaction on the go to ensure both reciprocity and speed while working towards the same goals – relationship building leading to emotion sharing while simultaneously building meaningful connections between visual, auditory, somatosensory, and motor systems – building a foundation where language acquisition and use can start making sense.
