One of the main duties of a parent is to worry. Is my child happy? Is that a rash? Did she just stick something in her mouth? After Sylvia's last trip to the doctor, we at Sylvia and Company picked up a new concern. Is Sylvia's language development on track? Darcie was asked if Sylvia knew four or five words. Words? As in English words? Like 'surreptitious' or 'corporation'? No, she doesn't. She knows 'mama' and 'dada'. She uses 'ba' for bath and about a quarter of the rest of the objects in the world. She makes an 'ahhhh' sound for water, but words?
So we opened some books. We looked online for advice on how to encourage your one-year-old to talk. We dropped adult-speak altogether in exchange for toddler-talk. We needed four words. Five would be great, but we needed at least four. And somehow we knew that we had missed the opportunity to teach our child language, one of the most valuable skills a human can posses. We failed her. If only we had repeated 'ball' a few more times in the first sixth months. Our nasty little secret was that 'ball' didn't even come into the picture until month six!
Then this morning at breakfast, as we agonized over our language development backup plan, Sylvia interrupted the conversation with laughter. She was watching the bird who, hiding at the bottom of her cage, suddenly poked her head up then disappeared again. Sylvia laughed. She pointed at the bird, looked at us, and covered her own eye peek-a-boo-style. The bird is playing peek-a-boo. Sylvia communicated a sentence. It wasn't in English necessarily, and we're not sure about the grammar, but she communicated a complete thought.
They should really offer a caveat when asking if your one-year-old knows five words.
