Autism and How Baby Sign Language Helped Our Child - Julia's Mom

by Joanna Agli
(Williamstown, NJ)

Julia received the diagnosis of autism at 19 months. She lost the ability to repeat sounds after the MMR vaccine at 16 months.

Early intervention services started at about 17 months due to her delays. After two months of working with her on sign language the therapist said she would never learn sign language if she couldn't learn one sign in two months.

We started Julia on a very strict gluten-free,casein-free, soy-free, yeast and mold-free diet 3 days after the diagnosis.

The change was dramatic in some areas of her behavior 3 days after the start of diet. However, something dramaticaly changed 5 months later when Julia started learning sign language from DVDs by herself.

Within 2 months she learned about 60 signs and was able to use them correctly in communication with us. She'll be turning 3 next month. She is still considered nonverbal even though she has about 20 approximations of words, but continues to use the sign language when she can't express herself verbally.

Sign language helped tremendously in her communication and so, her outbreaks of anger from not being understood are almost completely gone.