Words Edward Learned This Week

On Monday, Edward’s speech pathologist came over and explained to me the ways in which I should be communicating with Edward in order to help him get on pace with his speech development.  Due to Edward’s crazy number of ear infections, we believe that he had trouble hearing for his first year+ of life and so now has a language delay.  Luckily he is learning new words every day!

One of the main strategies is just to repeat words three times whenever you say them.  I was able to get him to say HELP when I asked him over and over if he wanted help putting his shoes on.  He did, in fact, want help putting his shoes on, and so he said help to me, and I was very excited.

Then Ruby got in on the fun, and as we were driving home the other day she decided to play a rhyming game with him.  She started rhyming things with sock, and she repeated each one three times, not because the speech therapist had said so, but because that’s what kids do.  Edward listened to many of the rhyming words, like clock, block, and wock, but the one he decided to learn was COCK.  “Cock!  Cock!  Cock!” he shouted out the window as loudly as possible as we drove by our neighbors with the windows rolled down.

Another thing the guy told me was that kids learn words if you use a sing-songy voice.  This is why nursery rhymes and other little songs have lasted through the ages.  They are super easy to remember.  Music can make anything easier to remember, which is why in college I used to make up songs to help me on astronomy and economics exams.  Edward already sings along to a lot of songs, for instance he always sings the word “baby” during Ruby’s favorite song.  This week he added a new word during the song “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye, which I though contained only kid-friendly words, but at the end of the line “Like when you said you felt so happy you could die,” Edward decided to start shouting DIE, over and over again.

So when we see the speech fellow again on Monday, I will happily report that Edward can now say help, cock, and die, and maybe he can give me some tips on how to get children to not say so many words in the future.