Baby Talk

One of the fascinating and exciting things about nannying for a toddler is listening to his language skills develop. When I first started taking care of Reid 7 months ago, he knew three words: "Mama," "Dada," and "truck!" During the first few months, I would keep a little list of all the words he said/learned that day, so his parents could see how his vocabulary was expanding. It was an exciting day when I realized that I had to stop listing them, because there wasn't room on the page!

Now, at 21 months old, Reid is talking up a storm. Sure, he still has trouble making certain consonant sounds (s, f, and r are some of the trickiest ones. Think about it, how would you explain to someone how to say the letter "r?" It's a hard sound to make!), and he mispronounces words all the time (my favorite example is how he switches the consonant sounds for "couch" so it comes out sounding like "choke"), and any word over 2 syllables starts well, but dissolves into gibberish by the third syllable (it's kind of cute, actually), but he is so expressive in his communication!

It's interesting to notice how much he understands of what I say, even if he isn't able to say the same things himself. His grammar is pretty basic, usually just a few nouns and verbs, no conjunctions or prepositions, maybe a proper name (or even a pronoun, if we're lucky!), but I have been fascinated to see how he is managing to string words together to get his point across. Yesterday, he wanted applesauce, and he said "appleliddy, spoon, scoop, eat, please!"

But more than just hearing his vocabulary expand, it has been exciting because he's no longer just expressing needs or wants, like "food" "drink" "blanket," he's communicating thoughts and feelings. Last week, when his dad was on a business trip, he turned to me and said "dada come home, happy!" And he has been using his newly acquired skills to re-tell stories of what he saw earlier in the day, or even last week, which is a huge cognitive leap! It used to be that his brain couldn't comprehend much more than here and now, everything was "in the moment." Now, he is remembering his favorite things (like how the garbage trucks come on mondays to dump out the trash cans: "Monday, truck, stop, garbage, dump, dump, drive!"), and he is looking forward to things that haven't happened yet (describing the sequence of events for a walk to the library, which is across the train tracks: "shoes, coat, stroller, walk, library, train, bump bump, book!")

Now, these are some of the shining moments of Reid's linguistic skills. The communication barrier is still there, and I am constantly encouraging him to "use words." There is still a great deal of patience and understanding needed as I try to figure out what he needs and how he's feeling, but every time I get so frustrated and worry that he'll never communicate, he learns something new, and that is such a thrill. It is a very cool thing to watch his brain develop, and to be able to feel like I am talking to him, rather than at him. There's a smart, sweet, sharp, funny, clever little person in there just waiting to get out, and I get to be there to watch and help him break out of his shell! :)