I can't remember if I mentioned it already, but before Kingsley was born we were worried about your communication. Or, moreso, your lack of it. You didn't talk much and you were supposed to. At 18 months old the minimum 'pass' by the speech and language powers that be was 20 words. You had 19 and they were mostly approximations.
It's a tricky thing, being the second child. I see it all the time with my friends first children, now, but noticed it especially with you and Rachel. First borns seem to talk more. Behaviourally, I can understand it. They have one on one attention, they hang around an adult all day. Second borns hang around the first born all day and have to share any adult attention; language isn't reinforced as much. Rachel was a talker very early on. At 12 months she had 1 word. At 15 months she had a bunch. By 18 months she had well over 400 and I had stopped counting. We aren't supposed to compare kids, but that's a whole lot of talking compared to hardly anything. She was using phrases by 20 months and was having early conversations at two years old.
My point is, this is my norm. I know that 'typical' is somewhere between Rachel and the children with autism that I work with, but I have no idea what that actually looks/sounds like. The result: I was worried. And I knew that I had a baby coming soon that would be occupying a lot of my attention. I didn't want you to get missed if there really was a problem.
By some Christmas miracle, you had a language jump over the Holidays. Whether it was because I was off work then and was around you more to hear what you could say or all of the attention we were giving to you to encourage speech, I don't know. But you picked up a whole bunch of words and even strung a few of them together at a time. I had huge sighs of relief.
It's been eight months since our first worry. You talk a lot now, but Nana is worried again. She thinks you aren't talking enough. Now, I'm worried. I think you talk a lot, but what do I know? I'm trying to go by what I would test for at work, but it's not quite the same. I understand a lot of what you say, but not all of it. You have a lot of sound substitutions. You attempt to find words for everything, but often default to 'yeah', 'no', or 'dis!' You've started doing fill-ins with me with Twinkle Star, Baby Beluga and the Alphabet Song. You're working on colours, but so far everything is pink. You can follow one step instructions, understand some prepositions, and you sing. You now call Kingsley 'Kinky' instead of 'Kiki'. You know that you are 'Deya' and that you are 'DO!' years old. Your receptive language seems alright. You certainly understand when I tell you to do things you don't want to do, because it sends you running.
They also say that children develop in chunks. Some gross motor, then language, then more motor, but rarely at the same time. Rachel took forever to learn how to climb stairs or open doors or jump. She couldn't skip or run very well until she was well into her two's. You, on the other hand, are a mini-Olympian. You run, skip, jump with two feet, dance, climb, and can open just about anything. I think that you are developing physically and the language is just waiting. I think you're just fine. I hope I'm right and in the meantime, I'm doing language drills with you like I would with my clients. You poor thing ;)
I have my fingers crossed for you, baby. I'm on top of this. I won't let you get missed.
Love Mommy
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