{"id":34372,"date":"2023-08-28T08:42:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T07:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/?p=34372"},"modified":"2023-09-01T17:24:10","modified_gmt":"2023-09-01T16:24:10","slug":"sense-gave-our-family-a-lifeline-makaton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/blog\/sense-gave-our-family-a-lifeline-makaton\/","title":{"rendered":"Sense gave our family a lifeline: Makaton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For Chloe\u2019s mum, Laura<\/strong>, the prospect of never being able to communicate with her daughter was scary. But with encouragement from Sense, Chloe<\/strong>, who has autism, gradually started to venture outside her own world and interact with her family. Makaton still plays a key role in connecting Chloe with the people around her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember when Chloe was around two years old, our concerns about her development got more serious. She was behind in her speech \u2013 not even babbling \u2013 and she didn’t smile or make eye contact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chloe is five now, and has recently been diagnosed with autism, global developmental delay and sensory processing disorder. We were told that she might never talk. That was really daunting for us; it sounded like we weren\u2019t ever going to be able to connect with our daughter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Chloe, sitting in the playroom at Sense TouchBase Pears.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our breakthrough came with Sense, who took what they called \u201ca total communication approach\u201d<\/a>. This meant giving Chloe all sorts of options and ways to interact until she found the mix that worked for her. They introduced us to Makaton<\/a> as a way to communicate and things started to fall into place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A beautiful way to connect with our daughter<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Makaton is a beautiful way of communicating using signs and symbols. It suited Chloe because her key reasons for wanting to engage with us were, like any other child, to let us know what she wanted. With Makaton, she could make her needs known with a few key signs, before picking up signs for \u2018thank you\u2019 and \u2018goodbye\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chloe took to it, but in her style. She created her own signs and developed a form of communication that mixed those with formal Makaton. It\u2019s been a lifeline, one that we were really struggling to build before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sense has definitely helped Chloe\u2019s communication skills \u2013 and her desire to communicate \u2013 come along. She comes out of herself in the play sessions more and will join in group activities, something we started to think would never happen. She’s hit quite a few milestones over the last 12 months, but in the last 6 months her communication has developed more rapidly. We see the progress every day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both the Sense “Connect and Play” and music sessions helped massively. When she got into music, it kind of opened up a gateway. She\u2019s even sung happy birthday to her dad and, once, she did \u2018heads, shoulders, knees and toes\u2019 in full! It\u2019s just a little glimpse into her potential, she\u2019s letting us know she can do it \u2013 her way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Chloe and her dad, Wayne.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We have a lot more happy times as a family <\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Without Sense I’m not absolutely sure where Chloe would be. When she was diagnosed with autism at the beginning of this year, it was completely new to us. We didn\u2019t have any experience of autism and hadn\u2019t ever heard of global developmental delay. Wanting to understand what it all meant, we went to the internet in search of answers.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of what we found was quite scary. It was hard to feel positive about Chloe\u2019s future at that point. Chloe wasn\u2019t engaging with other people or activities \u2013 she\u2019d never even acknowledged the existence of her youngest brother \u2013 and she had some quite challenging behaviours as a result of her frustration at not being understood by us.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wasn\u2019t happy, never smiling or laughing, and we didn\u2019t know how to reach her. Now though, with her new social confidence, I’ve seen my daughter grow, communicate, and flourish.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sense has been a beacon for Chloe and us. It’s a community. We don’t feel as negative; we have a lot more happy times as a family.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chloe smiles and laughs now. She\u2019s learned to be relaxed and is better able to connect with her brothers and with other people. We\u2019re so proud of all the expectations she\u2019s defied, and all that she\u2019s yet to show us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Makaton International Awareness Day takes place on 28 August. This is the birthday of Makaton founder Margaret Walker.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Makaton or \u201ckey word signing\u201d,  was developed for use by very young children and people with learning disabilities or other communication needs. Today, more than 100,000 children and adults in the UK use Makaton, either as their main way of communicating or along with speech<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Find out more about the history and uses of Makaton. <\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With encouragement from Sense, Chloe, who has autism, gradually started to venture outside her own world and connect with her family. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":34375,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"display_author":[1246],"class_list":["post-34372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","display_author-laura-and-wayne"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34372"},{"taxonomy":"display_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/display_author?post=34372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}