Sunday, August 17, 2008

Bantam3 Loses a Lip-Lop


We've been paying careful attention to Bantam3's speech for the last year, because at a 2-year-old visit, the doctor encouraged us to think about early speech intervention. Having had two other boys who weren't early talkers, I wasn't as concerned--but we have been taking notes.

B3's speech has developed a little differently than my other children's--almost backward. He first began to speak without consonants--just vowels. (Like "ah-ee" for "sorry.") Then he began to develop some consonant sounds, but only at the ends of words; he had a lot of trouble with initial consonants. So we had words like " 'ar" for car, and " 'ide" for outside.

For the past 6 months or so, the consonants have been coming fast and furious, and he's become much more understandable to non-family members. His latest accomplishment is pronouncing L's--not an easy sound for many kids. He has to work hard to get it out sometimes, as in when he selects "the ba-LOO one" ("the blue one")--so cute it melts a mother's heart!

Having the L made possible this funny moment:

We were crossing a parking lot one evening at dusk when B3 lost one of his flip-flops. Loudly he shouted, "WAIT!!! MY LIP-LOPS!!!"

We saw several heads swivel--no doubt because it sounded to several of us like he had shouted, "MY LIP GLOSS!"

(Yes, we let our boys wear makeup...and we start 'em early!)

***

Just for the record, his favorite expression right now is: "I do it my OWN self."

And here's the funniest thing he says (all the boys now claim to have taught him this, though at first no one would admit it). When he's wound up and wanting to punch things, he says in his most aggressive voice, with his most belligerent face: "You wanna piece o' me?" Then he laughs and laughs. (After punching a few times.)

7 comments:

TwoSquareMeals said...

That makes me feel better. Hobbes' speech had developed the same way. He started with almost all vowels. Now he uses a few consonants, mostly ending one, and he uses "d" for any consonant he can't pronounce. This makes for some funny words. Since he isn't quite 2 1/2, I'll stop worrying. Maybe he'll be making the "l" sound by 3.

Amy said...

Same speech patterns here--started with vowels, then she began using the middles of words. I'd never heard of other kids learning to talk that way.

Anonymous said...

Too cute. I have a two year old here who doesn't talk much, but I think the issue is the three year old who is never quite!

Hen Jen said...

oh, that makes me miss that age! I love the photo. I think my son, age 8 finally started using L's last year...

Linds said...

So cute! I am really glad that my mother wrote down all the sweet things my kids said, because I forgot them all! I do remember that my youngest son called things by the sounds they made. I know that sounds weird, but to him a train was a "chookachookatoottootbeepbeepDOOR" That was the sound it made as it arrived at the station. Do not ask. He was, and still is, colourful!

And this is the son who is now going to uni to study forensic biology. Molecular biology. You would think he was going to be a writer.

Samantha said...

Awwww that is soOOoo cute! I love kids at that age - where they are just about learning to talk and enunciate properly. :) I still remember my cousins mispronouncing 's' words with a 't' instead. They are uber cute.

Margaret Cloud said...

your boy is sooo cute, my son had problems with pronouncing different letters, you can't tell it now so hang in there.