Bree’s Words

At 19 (nearly 20) months of age, Bree’s speech development is coming along quite well. She labels things all day. As she is still in the early stage of learning to use the toilet, she is still wearing nappies. When she needed a nappy change, she would say, “appy.” She used to say ‘mook’ for milk but lately she added the letter l, turning it into ‘moolk’. Her first word was ‘dog’. She applied that same word to all animals. A bird was a ‘dog’ and so was a cat. It was hilarious. She is now able to say ‘buh’ for bird and ‘cat’ for cat.

Bree also says some phrases that she often hears. I think she is treating each of them as a big long word. When her mum comes home from work, Bree will parrot, “Cup-a-tea” and proceed to the kitchen corner where the kettle and toaster are. Lately, she has begun to say the same thing in a questioning kind of way to sound more like an invitation to her mum.

Bree is also beginning to experiment with joining a couple of words together to make phrases. Whenever I take Bree out for a walk and play outdoors in the afternoon we sometimes see children walking home from school. She is always fascinated by the other children and would like to join them. She is particularly interested in this scooter ridden by a young boy on his way home from school. She learned to say ‘cooter’ for scooter and will call out as soon as she spotted it. One day, the boy (accompanied by his mum) came up to Bree and said, “My name is not Cooper. That is my cousin.” Bree pointed excitedly at the scooter and said, “cooter”. The boy’s mum explained to him that the baby (Bree) was trying to name his scooter. She continued to call out every time we see the boy on his scooter. One time, the boy called out, “Why can’t she get it? It is a scooter, not a cooter!” Last week, Bree who had been practising waving and saying bye-bye for a while now, managed to put a couple of words together when she saw the boy (with a raincoat) riding the scooter. She said, “Bye-bye ooter.” The boy didn’t hear her because she didn’t say it loud enough. I think she realised that she didn’t say it quite right. On our way home, she repeatedly said “Bye-bye ooter” until she managed to finally say “Bye-bye cooter” a few times.

I know she is still wrong but give the child a chance. I am pretty sure she will be speaking fluently soon. On average, most children experience an explosion in verbal language development around their second birthday. Some children may experience this a little earlier while others may do the same a little later.