You talkin' to me?

I was thinking this morning about Jake's delay in speech, and I realized I would take a developmental delay ANY DAY rather than a behavior or attitude problem.  Developmentally they almost always catch up with no negative effects -- it just takes them longer to arrive.  Attitude is hard to fix, and it gets worse the more it develops.  And I don't know that I want to necessarily LABEL Jake as developmentally delayed as far as speech goes, because I know that he's developing just fine and he happens to not talk much (or very clearly yet).  And the reason I was thinking about it this morning, is I think we're on the front end of him finally catching up and being able to talk more. Last night he was totally cracking me up.

We were laying in bed trying to fall asleep, and he was saying totally random stuff.  And you know, a lot of times when he says something, it's not totally clear.  HE knows what he's saying, and he'll repeat it several times for me, but it takes me a while to figure it out.  Sometimes I feel like I'm playing Wheel of Fortune, and I'm looking at the phrase, repeating possibilities to myself over and over, thinking surely it's something obvious but I just can't quite get it . . . then someone solves the puzzle and the letters all appear and you think "well DUH, that's what the phrase is!  Why did that take so long to figure out?"

So Jake randomly says "Frog. Hop."  But it's a little jumbled, so it takes me a minute.  Finally I say, "Oh, a frog hops."  "Yeah."  Then he says "Kick.  Ball."  (although it sounds like "Tick.  Bah.")  And since my job in all of this is to re-articulate what he just said so he knows I know what he's talking about, I say "Do you kick a ball?"  "Yeah."  And the odd thing about Jake, is he knows a lot of words, but they're all nouns, verbs, and a few adjectives.  It's like he doesn't understand or just has no use for connectors like the, and, a, to, etc.  So then he says, "Lion.  Roaaaar."

At this point I start laughing and I'm thinking, what, are you randomly matching nouns and verbs for me?

The Jake decides he needs to get up again to go potty, so we get up.  It's hard to know when kids REALLY need to go potty and when they just want to get out of bed, but he usually gets once that I let him get back up and he usually does have to go.  But I kept all the lights off except the night light, so he didn't get any ideas about staying up.  He points to the night light and says "Light?"  I said "that's a night light."  He repeats "night light," clear as day.  For him this is MAJOR, because it's two words together that have a lot of consonants and he totally said it right.  So of course, being the dork that I am, I got all excited about it and (very emphatically) told him good job . . . so he starts laughing and saying "night light" over and over, and every time I tell him good job.  You should have seen the smile on his face, it was so sweet.  He was so proud of himself.

But the best thing he said last night?  I was being silly while we were playing in the living room, and I kept saying, "Hey Jake.  I love you," in a sing-song kinda way.  He would laugh and repeat "Uh-voo" with a big smile.  Hell, I don't know if he was just repeating it because it made me laugh or if he knows yet what it means, but hearing that from her favorite guy makes any woman happy.

Comments

[Kelly]

What a sweet entry Jen! I love that little boy!
Cute pic as always! You are so right about everything you said about his language skills btw!

[Holly]

Jen,

Too cute. Just thought I'd let you know that the little words like "the" etc. aren't really a "regular" part of the vocab until nearly three anyway. And I think that typically, boys just talk later. I say take what you can get - Ana is almost 3 and not interested in the potty, but talks my ear off. :)

Have a great weekend. God Bless.

[Sandi P.]

Sweet pic, Jen. And Holly is right; boys do normally talk a little later than girls! But let me warn you..when both of mine began doing it...we now can't get them to stop :)!

Sandi

[Sue]

Hey Jen, I'm with Sandi. Once Ryan started (at not until 2.5 yrs)he DID NOT stop! Jake is doing well to say 'night light'- Ryan still can't say the 'l' sound. How wonderful that he said 'uh-voo' :) He is such a sweetie and I LOVE the photo - he could not possibly GET any cuter.