My daughter Frankie doesn’t say my name.

She knows it. I’ve heard her whisper it at night, curled up in her toddler bed, when the house is quiet and the shadows stretch across the floor.

“Mommy,” she breathes, and for a second I believe I’ve dreamed it.

At night, behind her door, she practices. Soft words slip out like secrets, as if she’s testing them before anyone can hear. Pressure shuts her down. But in the dark, when no one is watching, her voice feels safe.

In the daylight, I try. I kneel. I call to her. She turns to me, eyes bright, smile full, but I can tell she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. She opens her mouth like she’s going to answer, but instead I hear bits of “Old McDonald” or sounds that don’t quite form words.

We started noticing something was off when she was almost 2. Frankie barely made any effort to talk. No words. No babble. Nothing you expect to hear at that age. She could make sounds, but it was like she didn’t see the point. It was as if speech belonged to a world she wasn’t interested in joining.

At her yearly checkup, her paediatrician confirmed what I had already started to fear: Frankie was speech delayed.

We’re not exactly sure what being speech delayed means, at least not in the way the specialists use it. Officially, it refers to a delay in a child’s ability to use or understand spoken language compared to what’s typical for their age.

But in real life, it’s less about definitions and more about all the things that don’t happen. The words that don’t come. The instructions that don’t land. The way she doesn’t turn when someone says her name.

Frankie at age 2.

We’ve had to figure it out piece by piece, watching, guessing, and trying again. No one hands you a manual. You just start where you are.

Since then, we’ve seen several speech therapists. They all say the same thing. Frankie is delayed in both expressive and receptive language. She struggles to understand what’s said to her and can’t find the words to respond. It’s like a wire in her brain isn’t connecting, or the signal cuts out before it reaches her mouth.

She’s 4 now, but her speech still trails behind. The words come out slowly, like they’re caught in traffic – delayed but determined to arrive.

She knows around 100 words like “ball,” “up,” and “car.” “No,” always with a grin and a wag of her finger. Every so often she’ll say two words in a row, like “more juice” or “go outside,” usually while tugging at my sleeve or pointing. But the words come out in fragments, half-formed, and they fade before I can respond. Like trying to catch soap bubbles.

Her thoughts move faster than her mouth can follow. I see it in her eyes, in the way she watches her sister, solves puzzles quickly, and remembers songs after hearing them once. Her thoughts are whole. Her mouth just can’t keep up.

So, she sings.

Wordless melodies rise from her room like steam. She sings what she cannot say. She sings in the car, while twisting Play-oh into snakes, and in the bath as she lines up toy ducks in a parade. Her songs shift with her mood. Bright and quick when she’s happy, slow and low when she’s unsure. They come from deep in her chest, like she’s trying to soothe the world into understanding.

She speaks in glances, in gestures, in the rhythm of her days. In the way she rests her cheek on my leg when she wants closeness. In the long, rising song she lets out before bedtime, signalling she’s ready for........

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