Mother’s inkling about Lara

Perth mother of two Patricia Macchiaverni first had an inkling that her daughter, Lara, was developing differently in her first few months of life.

‘If you ask any mum what you want for your kid, the universal answer would be happiness,” Ms Macchiaverni said.

“For me, I couldn’t tell if Lara was happy or not, she wasn’t smiling. I felt like I was failing as a mum because I couldn’t give her the basic things that she needed.”

Ms Macchiaverni sought advice as Lara approached seven months of age, but was told to ‘wait and see’ - a common response to concerns around social and communication skills.

“I could see I was literally losing Lara, I couldn’t interact with her anymore, and there was nothing I could do.”

Determined to find an answer, she began to look for other possibilities to improve Lara’s social and communication skills, which was how she learned about Inklings.

“I love the program. I honestly wasn’t expecting this program would change things so much. It fully transformed the way we interact with Lara, even now that she’s two-years-old."

“The fact that we have the video, and we can see ourselves in this third person perspective made a huge impact, it showed me that there were so many opportunities for her to communicate that I was missing.”

When Ms Macchiaverni started to incorporate the practices she learnt at Inklings, she felt it became a chain of positive improvement — Lara’s interest to communicate increased because her caregivers were responding in a way she understood. As a result, her communication improved significantly.

“She was communicating in her own unique way. Not in the way I was expecting, but Inklings helped me understand exactly what her own little interactions were.”

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