Chatterbox

Before I had a child of my own, I always wondered how on earth you taught a kid to speak?

When I was in college, I took classes in linguistics, which included some fascinating lectures on child language acquisition or, basically, how children learn a language. A lot of really smart people have studied this, by the way, and it really is interesting to read about some of the empirical research. Questions such as how much language is innate, or pre-wired, into your brain are quite the brain puzzle because children tend to pick up language so quickly and follow the same general stages when learning a language, despite differences in the language they are learning and the amount of linguistic input they receive. (If you're interested in learning more, Google Noam Chomsky.)

Aaaanywhosit, the point of flouting my knowledge in 20th century linguistics is to underscore that it all made this child language thing seem very... overwhelming. From an intellectual perspective, I could understand what these folks were saying about the process but, from a practical "here I am with a kid who needs to learn to speak" perspective, my head would just spin with the very thought. Where to begin? What to teach first? How to communicate abstract concepts?

What I have discovered as a mother, however, is that Noam Chomsky had it right, although he made it sound much more complex in theory than it is in practice: kids learn to speak pretty much on their own.

Since March, when Daisy uttered her first non-Mommy/Daddy word - "Bubbye!" - it has been a non-stop onslaught of new words around here.

At first, it started to become obvious to us that Daisy understood an awful lot more words than her mouth could wrap itself around. You would ask her to go do something that you'd never really mentioned before, like "Lift your leg" or "Go find your shoes" and she would do it.  Sure, I knew she understood "leg" and "shoes" but her ability to connect the dots within a sentence was quite astounding and it seemed it almost happened overnight.

Then, the words themselves started to accumulate. Car, shoes, no, cheese, toast, puppies, bubba, hi... once they started coming each successive one seemed to come along quicker than the next. And now, Missy is becoming quite the mimic, as Hubby are finding out to our chargrin.

Daisy uttered her first bad word in the car about a week ago, listening to Daddy on the phone. He said bullshit and, although he was too busy talking to notice it, I heard a little voice in the back repeat the last syllable ever-so-quietly. I gave him the wide-eyed "Don't cuss around the baby!" stare but he didn't quite catch-on. And, yes, my automatic response to this, by the way was almost "Shit!"

Then, this morning, Daddy was talking to Daisy, telling her something or other, when he stopped and surmised that she was probably thinking to herself "Blah, blah, blah, Daddy!" and that it wouldn't be long before that's exactly what she would be saying back to him. Well, he was right there. As she came running through the kitchen at full-pelt, Ms. Daisy yelled "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!" at the top of her voice.

Daisy's ever-growing vocabulary now includes: car, ta, hi, bubbye, bubba, binkie, Nanny, Gangan (for Grandad), Daddy, Mummy, Mimi (for Grammie), man, lady, Mickey (for Mickey Mouse), puppies, doggies, toast, please, cheese, pizza, keys, shoes, cat, no, nap, knee, nose, eyes, toes, berries, truck, digger, cat, dance, dindins, more, bowl, baby, down, back, door, juice, help, ball, and probably a bunch more I'm forgetting. Her latest little party trick is singing the first 3 words to the song "Row, row, row your boat..." Of course, they're the same 3 words repeated but she loves it when you catch-on and sing the rest of the song. When you stop, she leads you in again with "Rowwwwwww, rowwwwwwwww, rowwwwwwwww."

And yes, I'm boasting a little bit. I think she's the bees knees. Although that's not the point. My point is that this has all happened sort of on it's own. Sure, we talk to Daisy a lot but it's not like we're sitting down giving her reading or speaking lessons. It's all sort of pretty amazing really.