Words, and how to get them.

In August of last year, as I may have mentioned before, the Small Boy was using two "words". They were "no" and "oh no." That was not much of an achievement for a kid of nearly three (and was considerably down from the count we'd had some six - nine months earlier)


These days, he communicates verbally about all sorts of things. Not very easily - I can see his little brain going chug chug chug at very simple questions. He doesn't like questions much - they come on someone else's schedule. But an exchange like "How old are you?" (*think* *think* *think*) "Are you three?" (....) "Are you four?" "Yes! I four!" still makes me smile, considering that even a few weeks ago the answer to that would have been to hide his head in my armpit.


How did we get from there to here? One of the things that brought us was the "It takes two to talk" program from The Hanen Centre. I fell in love with this book the first time we used it - full of devastatingly simple, obvous-after-the-fact insights that just worked. We used this in conjunction with Speech Therapy, getting a photocopied chapter to take home with us after each session. That's probably somewhat illegal, considering I think we ended up with about a third of the book, so I won't mention the name of our Speechies, even though they're great too.


At the beginnng, it didn't even look like "speech" therapy. We just played with toys in the therapist's office on the floor. But with one important twist.


"You're showing him how to play with the toy", said the therapist." That's great. You're showing him really nicely. But Stop It! Stop showing him. Look and see what HE does."

It was a box of magnetic people, in halves. Clearly the aim was to mix and match the halves to put different leg halves together with the top halves. He was ignoring both bits. He was sticking the box on his head and using it as a hat.

"Ok. Now you do the same."

Small Boy with box on head. Mumma with box lid on head. Box falls off. Lid falls off. Small Boy laughs. And then...

"Did you see that?" He looked you straight in the eye. AND he looked ME straight in the eye too. He's looking for our reactions. He's engaged. Now do it again."

And we did it again. And again. (that's a bit of a theme with the Small Boy). After a while, we added some language ("Up!"). And we did it again. And again...

(To Be Continued...)

Mumma is Bored and Cranky...

...is my latest must-use phrase-of-the-month. I don't use it nearly often enough. Why's that? Let me give an example.


Vic Market, thursday last week. Car park is packed, so I slip into a street spot outside. Feed the meter with my single one dollar coin, which gives me...hmmm...


Twenty minutes. For all veggie and meat shopping for the five of us all week. Including the Smaller Girl's birthday party. This is very much not going to happen. Nevertheless, off we set in our trolley to zoom round as fast as possible, and trust to the ticket inspectors schedule to keep them far away from us for the next hour or so.


So we make a good start, grapes, tomatos, 'taters in the bag, and then comes the fateful phrase.


"Mumma! Big Wee!"


This is not going to do our schedule good, but the Big Wee is not to be denied. So off we go to the toilet block.


The toilet block at the market, as it happens, is huge. We're into "pack a bag of sandwiches to make the trek to the far end" territory. It's an embarrassment of riches to someone keen on taking control of the [i]choices[/i] in his life. And making sure that the choice he makes is exactly correct.


You can see where we're going here.

"Daniel! This toilet?"

"Nope. Diffent one"

"Ok, what about this toilet?"

"Nope. Diffent toelet"

"This one?"

"Dis one!"

"That one's got someone in it. Ok, we'll wait."

Half a minute later, person inside comes out. Small Boy promptly transfers his attentions to [i]another[/i] toilet (a previously rejected one) which now has someone in it, who we wait for, and comes out, prompting his transferral of attention to another toilet, and meanwhile the clock on the parking meter is going tick tick tick and I can see the pattern, he's going to work his OCD way all the way back to the first stall, waiting for people to exit toilets all the way, my Bored And Cranky levels are rising to the ceiling, and I crack it and produce the ultimatum "this toilet or NO toilet" which leads to tears, collapse on the floor, and exiting the toilet block with no Big Wee having been performed. (We circled back again 5 minutes later. It was much more successful then)


All of which is the sort of stuff which will have the stricter half of the parenting demographic collapsing with laughter at my wussiness ("just stick him in the first one available FFS!") but in fact mostly when I allow him to make his own choices he does so within a moderately reasonable timeframe, and I've already got "I'm going to fold the clothes - tell me when you've made your mind up." as a well-used response to endless dithering. We don't have a very high-pressure lifestyle, and mostly he does have space to take however long he needs over a decision. Just not on [i]this[/i] particular occasion.


I'm realising that what all this probably looked like from his point of view was: "I'm choosing a toilet...I'm choosing a toilet...la la la...I'm choosing a toilet...I'm choosing a...Hey! Don't pick me up and PUT ME IN THE WRONG ONE!
What are you DOING all of a sudden!" All the sighs and foot-tappings, short phrases, rising tone of voice...they all mean absolutely nothing to him. What he really needs is for the mumma to get down to his level, look him straight in the eye and say "Daniel. Mumma is now Bored And Cranky!"

(and she's not going to take it any more)