Words!

Everyone's keeping their fingers crossed!

It’s been a few weeks since our last speech therapy session and something amazing has begun to happen. I’m almost scared to write this in case it proves to be a false start, but it does feel different somehow this time.

 Little man Taters is beginning to speak. It’s early days, just a few words, and not especially well pronounced, but definitely words and not just babbles that resemble words; they are spoken with meaning, with emphasis and in the right context to convey something specific. You know, like proper words!

To recap, Taters will be three in October and despite seeming on the verge of talking for the last 18 months, he couldn’t actually speak (at a push he could mimic the words Mummy and Daddy, but extremely rarely).

So first up there was “Poo” (yeah, yeah, you read that right, Poo, shall we just skip over that bit…) If you ask him if he has smelly feet, he now holds his nose and laughingly says “Poo!” Now there is also “There”, “Go!” and more occasionally “More” and “Daddy”. As of yesterday we can add “Hurray” and “Three” to his vocabulary.

I’m more than a little excited about this! I’m trying to remember the advice from the speech therapist; to build his confidence and praise him for any attempt at a word, don’t worry about correcting him, just model the correct pronunciation. And most importantly, do not pressure him to try and say even more, we don’t want him to back off thinking, “Crikey, I’m not speaking again if I get all this hassle!” That last bit is the hardest because obviously I’m desperate for him to talk, plus I’m still awaiting that all important “Mummy!”

It’s just wonderful to see some progress at last. And as well as the words, there’s an array of new sounds, attempts at others words, sounds I’m sure are words but aren’t quite clear enough to understand yet. Things are finally moving forward and I couldn’t be happier.