Words, words, and more words
Not from me nor Nathan, but from Justin! Today, while in a parent discussion at Nathan’s School Readiness Program, Justin was going on and on in his own language while the speaker was explaining to us parents about nutrition and health. I was quite embarrassed.
“Mommy, no!” (for random effect)
“Mommy, milk!” (because he wanted the milk that I didn’t bring in)
“Owwie!” (because I made him sit when he wanted to be on the ground)
“Book!” (wanted to read a book that was not ours)
“Nose. Owwie nose!” (sneezed and had boogies)
“Shoe!” (wanted to touch the innocent man’s shoe)
“Uh-oh!” (dropped his pen for the millionth time)
He’d also randomly tell me, “I uv ooo (I love you).”
The more I told him to “shh” the louder he got.
When I tried to distract him with something, he’d only talk louder about whatever it was I was trying to show him.
I was not used to this active, loud, and verbose Justin. He’s usually content in my arms or drawing on a piece of paper. Not today! I suppose I should have tried to walk out, but whenever I prepared to, he became calm, so I never did. It only started up again when I settled in. At the end of the session, I had to apologize to the ten parents who were there. They kindly told me to not worry about it because they know how it’s like with younger children. However, to make matters worse, there was another 2.5 year old girl there who sat like a perfect princess in her mother’s lap. Where did that version of Justin go when I needed him?
The speaker, also the school nurse, kindly took Justin from my arms at the end of the parent discussion so that I could finish filling out the paper work in peace. Of course, only then, did Justin become silent. The nurse asked him, “What happened? I know you have a voice. I heard you yammering away for an hour.” Yeah, exactly.
Aside from this embarrassing episode, we are proud of Justin’s new expressive language skills. He’s able to communicate better with words, although his annunciation still needs work. He is getting better at imitating, also, which is real fun; especially when he’s mimicking his older brother. Keep up the good work, bud!
February 24th, 2010 at 7:11 am
It’s fabulous that he has discovered such a range of expression.
I understand a little bit of the embarrassment of your usually well-behaved child turning loud - about 2 weeks ago I took Ian with me grocery shopping. At some point he started “talking” loudly, really loudly, so loudly, in fact, that everyone I saw either glared or laughed, and someone (who was not in line or even getting into line) even approached me while I was preparing to check out to ask if this was the baby that had been so talkative. It was. I decided to be grateful that he had done it in the grocery store rather than in church earlier that day. A week or two before that, he had laughed loudly when our priest was talking about death.
God bless kids!
March 1st, 2010 at 9:08 am
Talking and walking, woohooo!!