toddler language development

[walkitout]

First, I'd like to thank everyone who patiently listened to me worry about T.'s language development (or lack thereof). I'd like to thank the people who observed that I could get free language assessment and therapy through the schools, particularly since _not one single person_ pressured me into actually doing so. I'd like to thank the people who observed that their children (or some other child they knew) had [insert salient language delay here], and while they had (no) therapy, everything worked out just fine, particularly since _not one single person_ pressured me into either getting T. assessed or NOT getting T. assessed.

Finally, I'd like to thank J., who in addition to doing _all_ of the above, spent a few hours several days a week (while taking T. off my hands in general, and also providing the cheapest therapy in the world) patiently encouraging T. to use words.

Ooops, one more: I'd like to thank _Super Why_. Angela Santomero rocks. I mean, we knew this, because the Blue's shows are/were amazing, but come on. _Super Why_ is toddler crack.

Oh, wait, one more: I'll shout out Leap Frog, for their amazing Fridge Phonics letters.

For whatever reason (internal timeline, J.'s help, TV shows, whatever), T. has started using words. You can ask him if he wants juice and he'll say juice. You can ask him which kind and he'll say app, which means apple. And he means all of it. He'll even suggest TV. And today, he lined up a bunch of letters on the fridge, and proceeded to (mangle) A-B-C-D-E-F-G. But in a way that both J. and I understood. The letters he was pointing to were in a line, weren't oriented up uniformly and weren't the ones he was saying, but who the fuck cares.

Best of all, when he crawls up on the couch and looks at my shirt expectantly and I ask him what he wants, he says "B? B!"

Baby got word.

Awesome.

Also, today he said, jok, which I eventually realized meant chocolate, as in, get me down the chocolate chips woman, this blonde brownie isn't doing it for me.

Comments

[volkhvoi.livejournal.com]

Can you give me a url to the fridge phonics? I have been looking for fridge letters for some time, and can't find any that aren't dangerous for the little guy to stuff in his mouth, or I can't opent the packaging to find out.

fridge phonics

[walkitout]

Amazon has it at:

http://www.amazon.com/LeapFrog-Fridge-Phonics-Magnetic-Set/dp/B000096QNK/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1196912448&sr=1-1

Dunno if they are safe or not; we didn't put them up until T. was mostly past the put-everything-immediately-in-mouth phase. Which was fairly recently.

He's getting the Word Whammer and lower case set for Christmas.

[(Anonymous)]

Can't remember if I said this before, but I had my youngest assessed at three, and it was quite fun for him. I don't actually see a down side to assessment, apart from the hassle of making the appointment (lots of places are booked up for months). But that's not a problem for the child. He didn't need anything at that time (though his expressive speech *was* low), but did turn out to need therapy later for stuttering. If his receptive speech had been low, that would have been a big problem. Certainly if there'd been any question of a hearing problem (which I assume you've ruled out).

Helen

we're pretty sure his hearing is just fine

[walkitout]

Altho I will note that when he is deeply involved in something, it can be awful hard to get his attention. T.'s receptive speech is quite good; I've got no worries there.

I was wondering the last couple of days if maybe T. had completely lost his ability to control his volume, since everything was coming out at 11. But when I asked him today to say Bye to J. quietly, he dropped the volume by a lot, so I'm no longer worried about that.