Mental Meanderings

Random Topic: Baby Boy's Learning to Talk

Ok, so I'm tired and couldn't think of anything to write about tonight. Thankfully I have this fantastic list of Random Topic's to resort to. I keep a few notes in a folder on my HD that are lists designed to spark 'something' to write about. Today this one jumped out at me, it's as good as any other.

Anyone who has followed my blog or me around for any duration would know that I'm the very lucky mother of two beautiful, wonderful, fantastic, smart, talented kids. My daughter is six and my son is two. They're both brilliant but tonight is all about baby boy. *ponders* I'll have to think of a new name for him soon. I can't exactly keep calling him Baby Boy when he's an adult. I mean I can get away calling my six-year-old dog Puppy but when it's a child...

Baby Boy's always been very clever. He's a regular enough kind of kid but of course being my son he's the apple of my eye. I think he's pretty special, mostly in the sense of milestones however he's pretty average. Of course, even at 2 he'd kick your but in a matching or bowling game on the PC. *hangs head* Sorry, the shame of gamers raised by gamers. My kids learn keyboard commands long before they learn to write. (which btw helps them learn to write later)

Anyway, the only milestone Baby Boy's never quite met the challenge of is talking. Baby's usually go though the first few months of their lives saying little but by the first year they should have a fairly clear pronounciation of a few specific words. Mine, said nothing. He wouldn't even TRY to verbalize in his first year. But at a year old it's not really a big deal, it was an obvious delay but everyone kept saying, "Just give him time, when he decides to talk you'll never shut him up."

All thought his second year the same advice comes down from the mothers and I'm reassured that there are other boys who are slow to start talking. Thankfully I do appreciate that men in general tend to have a whole lot less to say then women.

It's been frustrating over the years to understand him. But in the last six months he's made some small puddle jumps toward communicating. I'm always so excited when day by day he's taking more chances. He went from stubbornly refusing to say anything at all to being able to be coaxed into making animal noises and saying a few words. His first word? Ok, you'd want me to say, "Mum." But alas, 'tis not so. His first word was officially (ie. translated by Mummy) "ball".

These days he's still unclear on pretty much all of his words. We had his hearing tested about 8 months ago and everything came back normal. I'm very certain he hears well because he's bright, he'll follow complex commands, he does as he is told, he listens to music and stories, he's always very aware of sounds. He'll pick out the exact location of any airoplane in the sky in seconds, sometimes long before I hear it. These days that's accompanied with, "ane ane ane" Which is Baby Boy for "plane" or "airoplane".

Every day I try to encourage him to use language. He's very strong willed and when pushed he can shut down and become completely unreceptive so it's always a very fine line. There is the stage when it's a game and the stage when he's had enough and closes up. Today the word was, "Biscuit" Actually the actual word doesn't matter, what I aim for when getting him to talk (ask for something) is sound and syllable count. B-Q or is-ut or Bee-cut etc. would work. I think the best I got was bee-ut but for a Baby Boy who usually doesn't even TRY to talk it was brilliant.

I of course being the doting mother I am smother him with hugs and kisses and praise plus the real reward, a handful of biscuits. lol I've found bribing him with food always works best. Normally his method of communication is to come, grab my arm and drag me to whatever he wants the point at it. No matter how much prompting I do he tries to resort to that method. And being two if I stand firm on insisting he use his words to get what he wants he'll cry his little heart out. I'm so evil sometimes.

But he's learning, he really is. He'll be three next month and I'm hoping his language will come a long way in the year ahead. He'll start school next year and if he's still not doing much talking they'll have trouble. In six months if he's not doing much better I'll take him in for another hearing test and push him up on the speech therapy list.

I try not to worry, but what mother doesn't worry about her kids. In every other way he's doing beautifully. He's kind, considerate, starting to associate with other kids again (after a couple of months where they were all very scary), he builds fantastic airoplanes out of lego, flies with arms wide like a plane when he runs on the grass, is totally plane mad. *chuckles* I'm sure he's looking forward to actually being IN a plane later this year.

Ok, overly sufficient ramble. See, a topic that at least gets a blog entry done. Lame as it is. It does make me wonder when I last talked about Baby Boy in relation to his not talking. I'm sure I have done it before. Oh well, I never tire of talking to my kids and if you do feel free to smack the X button on the top corner of your screen. *grins*

Meanwhile, time to dump 500 on The Flight of Torque so that I can finally get some ZZZ's.