Jeyanth & Maya

We’ve always known that Maya wasn’t as chatty around strangers and large groups in the way that Jeyanth has always been. But we didn’t realise how big a difference there was till we had the parent-teacher meeting at CSIROCARE a few weeks ago.

Maya’s main carer told us enthusiastically that Maya’s speech was coming along great, and she was now regularly using 3 word sentences. Chris and I were so stunned that we just looked at each other speechless. I think we were both mentally counting words in the sentences that Maya usually uses. We got to 8-10 on average.

When we then told the teacher that it appeared that Maya was much more vocal at home, we were reassured that it was not uncommon for children to be quieter in larger groups. Another cause may be that she’s still in the nursery, even though she has turned two (there is no vacancy in the pre-school room at the moment). So this means that she’s surrounded by children much younger and much less verbal than her. But it does look like Jeyanth may have hogged all the extrovert genes in the family.

On the way home, Chris and I were discussing this issue, when she called out from the back seat “I have a piece of string in my mouth, Maya doesn’t like it, Amma please take it out”. We exchanged glances. Three words indeed!

On a related note - a couple of weeks ago, a teacher mentioned that they had been doing ‘big’ and ’small’ with the nursery kids that day, and when Maya had been asked to describe a ’small’ version of an object, Maya had exclaimed ‘Oh, that’s tiny’. The teacher had previously no idea that Maya even had that word in her vocabulary.

And last Sunday at church, we were sitting in front of a lady who was a visitor to our congregation. The lady leant over to talk to Maya, and Maya instantly dived to hide behind me. This is not uncommon behaviour - Maya has been known to burst into tears when enthusiastically approached by unfamiliar people. However, what was remarkable was that when I gave her a cuddle and asked her what was wrong, she gazed up at me with big brown eyes and said “Maya shy”.

Self expression may be coming along fine.