Mom Realized Daughter Only Spoke in 'Dora' Scripts. Now She Wants to Share Her 'Extraordinary Gifts' (Exclusive)
Jill Kakoske opens up to PEOPLE about life with daughter Evie, a sensory seeking 7-year-old with autism who primarily speaks in scripts and is an "extraordinary" climber
Courtesy of Jill Kakoske
When Jill Kakoske noticed that her daughter Evie was speaking Spanish and could count to 11 by the time she was 1 — without any Spanish speakers in the family — she knew something was different about her little girl.
"I started suspecting quite early. I felt like something was different about her," Kakoske, 35, tells PEOPLE. "I always say within the first week that she came home, but I got a referral for diagnosis shortly before she turned 2 and she had an official diagnosis by the time she was 2 years and 4 months old."
Evie received a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, which Kakoske says brought her "relief" and "validation" after more than a year of seeing her daughter's differences in learning and watching her "extraordinary gifts" at such a young age.
"One of her earliest signs was that she counted to 11 before she was 11 months old. She hadn't really said any words yet and she just counted out of nowhere," the Canadian mom says.
"And then from there, we started to hear what we had thought was gibberish and we were able to place it as her actually saying Spanish words, counting in Spanish, saying colors in Spanish," she continues sharing of Evie. "She was speaking Spanish, and we didn't speak Spanish."
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"She knew her numbers, she knew her colors, both in English and Spanish. But primarily the words that we would hear, the phrases we would hear would be 'abrir,' which is open in Spanish. And so that's when we're like, okay, everything she's saying is coming directly from Dora the Explorer. And we figured that out pretty much right after she turned 1."
Kakoske tells PEOPLE that Evie had a "weird fixation" with Dora from the time she was really young. Once Kakoske realized her daughter was only speaking in phrases from the show, she discovered that Evie was doing what is called "scripting," a form of echolalia (the repeating of words or sounds someone has heard).
"Basically it means that she learns the meaning of whole chunks of things and the meaning for her might not be literal. So what she hears on Dora, she connects it to some meaning and that meaning connects to an entire sentence," Kakoske explains.
Courtesy of Jill Kakoske
"Dora became her lens of the world," she adds. "So everything she scripted had meaning, but you just had to do the detective work to figure out what it was."
"An example is that one of the lines in Dora that they say all the time is 'Seat belts so we can be safe.' Evie would say that often, but it wouldn't be when we're in the car putting our seat belts on," says Kakoske. "One time I noticed she always said it when she was playing with her Barbies and she kept repeating the line. One day just clicked all of the Barbies she was playing with, it was superhero Barbie dolls, when I stood back and looked at them, all of them had some sort of belt, a superhero belt. So she's looking at these Barbies and she's saying, 'Seat belts so we can be safe,' because she's noticing all these Barbies have a seat belt on."
Along with scripting, Kakoske also marveled at Evie's climbing talents and strength from a young age.
Courtesy of Jill Kakoske
"She was not even 3 months old and she was doing an army crawl basically," Kakoske tells PEOPLE of Evie. "She was lying on our king-size bed and she would start at one corner and [my husband] Adam and I would sit with our mouths open and watch her somehow move on her belly all the way across the bed. And we're like, 'This isn't normal, right?' "
"Shortly after she could crawl, she pulled herself up onto furniture within weeks of that. And by 6 months old, she was walking with walking toys, walking along furniture. By 10 months she was full-on running. She could pull her body weight up, she could climb already at that point."
Kakoske explains she started to understand what sensory seeking was once Evie got her autism diagnosis. "When we got a diagnosis, it was more like, 'Hey, instead of stopping her climbing, we need to find ways to encourage her to do that because she needs to do it.' That's when we went out and bought her very first sensory swing, which she still has."
Courtesy of Jill Kakoske
Evie's sensory swing makes lots of appearances on Kakoske's Instagram page, Evie the Explorer, as well as the impressive jungle gyms and other sensory objects Kakoske and her husband have implemented throughout their home.
"She's slowly grown in skill and strength and we've gotten more equipment in our house to support that," says Kakoske. " She has a trust in her own body and her own abilities that I've never seen before. I do my best to support her and keep her safe, but also to not get in the way of that."
In August 2020, Kakoske created the Evie the Explorer page as a way to seek connection and understanding and continue her love of writing as therapy. Never did Kakoske, a teacher, think her page would take off how it did.
"A lot of people come for the climbing and end up staying because Evie's just a really interesting person," says Kakoske, who has now grown her page to over 100,000 followers. "It was also a way to connect with other parents."
"There's something about Evie that's different that I think people gravitate towards and they want to learn from her. And I don't want to change her," adds Kakoske. "I want people to be able to see how beautiful different can be."
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