The morning Ellie said her first word
Ellie joined our playgroup at 18 months. With play-based coaching for her parents, she found her signs, her sounds, then her words.
- Ellie
Ellie was 18 months old when she joined a Transitions early-childhood playgroup. Bright and curious, she hadn’t yet found her words, and her parents worried about what that would mean for her.
Rather than drilling flashcards, Ellie’s home visitor coached her parents on something gentler: play. How to follow Ellie’s lead, narrate what she was doing, and build language into the games she already loved. Week by week, on the playroom floor and at home, the pieces started to connect — a gesture, then a sign, then a sound.
Then came the morning it all clicked into a word. “We both froze,” her dad laughs. “Then we cried, then we called the grandparents.”
By her third birthday, Ellie was chatting her way into preschool — and her parents had the tools and the confidence to keep her growing.
This story is a representative example based on the kinds of outcomes Transitions supports; names and details are illustrative.
We’d waited two years to hear it — and it happened on the playroom floor.