After 3 Years of Silence, Autistic Girl Finally Makes One Simple Request
After three years of complete silence, autistic 5-year-old Coco Bradford shocked her mother by declaring, “I want more toast please,” out of the blue in a moment that her mother Rachel Bradford calls “magical.”
“It was the first thing she has said in three years,” the Cornwall, England, mom told the Daily Mail on Thursday. “Her exact words were, ‘I want more toast please.’ She just kept saying it, and we were just like, ‘Oh my god.’ She looked so pleased with herself and was jumping up and down and just kept saying, ‘I want more toast.’” And despite the fact that, “you are not supposed to show how excited you get as kids link power with that word,” Rachel said, “We just couldn’t control it. We were clapping and cheering.”
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Photo: APEX
Coco hadn’t always been nonverbal. She’d begun speaking as a toddler, only to stop after she turned 2, according to Rachel, who with her husband, Luke, has four other kids (Bianca, 28, Chelsea, 25, Elle, 22, and Oakley, 8). “Coco was talking at 26 months but did not get to more than two word sentences,” she explained. “But her talking just faded away and she stopped responding to her name or making any eye contact. You could tell she was just so frustrated. We tried a speech therapist but the last two years have been horrendous. You could tell [how] angry she was becoming with herself.”
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Photo: APEX
According to the organization Autism Speaks, an estimated 25 percent of individuals living with autism spectrum disorders are nonverbal. And living with a child who can’t communicate like the rest of her family has been difficult, Coco’s older sister Chelsea Elcocks explained on a fundraising page that her family began to help pay for speech therapy for the preschooler. “She is not capable of telling us when she is in pain, when she is hungry, if she had a good day at nursery,” according to Elcocks. “She doesn’t say I love you mummy.”
But the specialized applied behavioral analysis therapy that they were able to begin with Coco last September — thanks to donors’ contributions of more than $21,000 — gave them hope. And now, with Coco’s incredible “toast” request, it seems the sky’s the limit.
Photo: APEX
“We waited so long for her to talk, and for her to just do it unprompted was quite magical, really,” marveled mom Rachel. “It is just so lovely, and I cannot explain how happy we all are. The day after, my husband came home from work, and Coco poked her head around the corner and said hello. [So] the speed of how quickly she has learnt has shocked everyone. She is now shocking us every day with something new.”
As for why warmed bread sparked Coco’s breakthrough, Rachel has an easy explanation. “Like most kids with autism [she] has a very limited diet,” the mom explained. “I am not surprised her first words were about toast. She loves it and has always eaten it.”
Top photo: APEX
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