Those three words

The RDI we are doing is really encouraging K's eye contact. Whenever someone said eye contact, I would immediately imagine staring in to the eyes, which is a bit unnatural and unnerving. (I have trouble maintaining eye contact during conversations. I need to look away). It is not eye contact but FACE GAZING that is the key. When someone looks at your face in anticipation, to get information, to gauge, to inform and so on. This was totally missing in K. He would look at us but it served no function to him.

Well things are very slowly changing.

We are still no where near functional language. He has not made the connection between his growing number of words and people. You use words to communicate with persons. He uses words in the right scenarios as just a script. When opening a lid you say Open, before drinking juice you say Juice and so on. It has no function.
So I am not so excited about his spontaneous verbalisation and constant echos (and sometimes really funny delayed echolalia - when he is echoing things he heard days ago).

What I am excited about is his increased face gazing.

I got a real taste of it yesterday. I went in to get him out of his bath with a towel. He always looks so cute and delicious when he is all wet and fresh after his bath. I guess I must have always looked at him lovingly and said some term of endearment. Because yesterday, he looked at my face, read the look on it, and said "I love you".

I was floored of course for a few minutes. I know he does not know what it means or why we say it. He has however learned to read the look on my face and guess how I feel or what I may say. THAT really is the most awesome thing.

Babies do it all the time. Little ones, even a 6 month old. They read your face and draw a conclusion. My son is only just starting to learn this mysterious and exciting new skill.