Self indulgent parent thread

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Being 2 must be awesome

Who says you need to be 2 to enjoy a pillow fort? But yes, it is awesome.

Eleima wrote:

Yeah, I'm rather nervous about that too. My son turned two in November, we're behind on potty training and speech. I'm not particularly worried, but I fully expect him to go into full on regression when number two makes his appearance in April.
On the bright side, we transitioned him to his toddler bed in December. He'd been climbing out of his crib since October anyhow.
Hubby wants him to start school when the next school year starts in August. I have to admit I'm a bit nervous about commuting between school, the home sitter and work (as if my commute isn't long enough as it is), and I'm wondering if he'll be potty trained and talking more by then.

Have you gotten any criticism about your LO being behind on speech? Our little guy squeaks and shouts and speaks gibberish, so that means he doesn't do all the things that they say he should be doing according to his development chart. I mean, he communicates in his own way, gives us the signs that he knows, but because he's not saying "words" a few people have inquired about his development and possible link to autism.

Now as a teacher, I've worked with a good handful of autistic children; and I cannot see the connection. But, I guess that's the next jump if kids aren't spot on and the parents can't check off every bullet listed on the chart.

No, no criticism per se. And I know he's developing just fine because he does understand most of what we say, points and uses other methods to make us understand what he wants. There are a few words here and there but they come and go. I know he'll be a it behind compared compared to others, simply because he's a boy and bilingual. And that's okay.
As for potty training, it's an ongoing process. He'll sit on it sometimes but it's mostly to play, I think. We'll get there.
I just have a hard time imagining him starting pre-school in August like my hubby would like.

My kids are bilingual, and had completely different language development.

My daughter was way, way ahead of what the books said for speaking. (The book would say, "By this time your child may be speaking 6-8 words" and she would be saying around 80). Her Greek was always about 3-4 weeks ahead of her English. She she'd be saying 3 word sentences in Greek for 3 weeks, and then start doing that in English.

At ages 2.5 to 3.5, she would mix the languages based on which words she liked better, and which were easier to say. For example, I think she used "juice" until she was almost 4, until she finally switched to the hard-to-pronounce Greek word for juice. After this age, she just started speaking English to me and Greek to my wife. With other people, she would decide if they were English or Greek speakers, and then always speak to them that way. So sometimes native speakers of English, like our pediatrician, ended up having to speak Greek with her. Now she'll speak whatever you like.

When she entered Greek kindergarten, she was lacking some vocabulary and her grammar and syntax were not always great (easy to borrow wrongly from the other language). Her teacher was worried, but after 2 months, she caught up and pretty much passed her peers.

Now my son....

Nothing, nothing, nothing for a very long time. Grunts, half-syllables. Pointing. Making faces. And more nothing, nothing.
And then came the stage with single words in English or Greek, but just the stuff he wanted.

And then...really, really freaked me out one day, "Daddy, can I have some juice, please?" You have to keep in mind months and months of pointing, and maybe, maybe, a "juice" spoken.

The more he was in pre-school, and pre-kindergarten, the more his language has developed. He's almost five now, and still freaks my wife and I out with his language and vocabulary at times.

There was a period of a month, when he was 2.5 years old, and noticed that I was understanding all of his Greek he was saying to his mother. So he started speaking to me only in Greek, because why not, it was easier. And he was getting more Greek than English, considering where we live. I had to literally spend a month pretending not to understand Greek to get him to speak to me in English again. With my daughter, there was no issue, because I really didn't understand Greek back then, at least not to that extent. My daughter actually helped a lot, as she would complain to him, (in Greek), "No, no, no, talk to daddy in English, he's from America...not in Greek." with a very frustrated, worldly, older voice...heh.

Roo wrote:

Nothing, nothing, nothing for a very long time. Grunts, half-syllables. Pointing. Making faces. And more nothing, nothing.
And then came the stage with single words in English or Greek, but just the stuff he wanted.
And then...really, really freaked me out one day, "Daddy, can I have some juice, please?" You have to keep in mind months and months of pointing, and maybe, maybe, a "juice" spoken.

I wouldn't be surprised if my son turned out the same. You can tell just by looking at him that neurons are furiously firing off, he's got really advanced fine motor skills, he's very quick to understand what he's allowed and not allowed to (and leverage that). But speech... Bleh, it's like he won't even bother with it when a single word can suffice, or pointing.

As for bilingual babies... On *average*, speech comes a little later, but we know what statistics mean on the individual level. Diddly squat.

Eleima wrote:
Roo wrote:

Nothing, nothing, nothing for a very long time. Grunts, half-syllables. Pointing. Making faces. And more nothing, nothing.
And then came the stage with single words in English or Greek, but just the stuff he wanted.
And then...really, really freaked me out one day, "Daddy, can I have some juice, please?" You have to keep in mind months and months of pointing, and maybe, maybe, a "juice" spoken.

I wouldn't be surprised if my son turned out the same. You can tell just by looking at him that neurons are furiously firing off, he's got really advanced fine motor skills, he's very quick to understand what he's allowed and not allowed to (and leverage that). But speech... Bleh, it's like he won't even bother with it when a single word can suffice, or pointing.

As for bilingual babies... On *average*, speech comes a little later, but we know what statistics mean on the individual level. Diddly squat. ;)

A study I read late last year actually found the opposite to be true. They basically found no correlation between speech development and bilingual homes. Basically, it has little - if any - affect on a child's speech development.*

I only came across this as our pediatrician freaked out at a check up back in November making her think our son wasn't developing properly. Turned out she caught him at a bad time of day when he should have been having a snack and and a nap, so he wasn't having any of her examinations. We've gone through a gamut of early intervention evaluations, and the only thing they found is that his hips are super flexible (wife is double jointed), so it's harder for him to develop his core muscles since he can essentially fold his body in half in any direction.

*Did a quick search to see if I could find the one article I read. I couldn't but all the hits I did find debunk that myth.

Click here

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That's interesting, nel e nel. I read one article saying the speech of bilingual babies developed a bit slower (but not pathologically slow) and never really questioned it I further since it did apply to my son.
I'll have to remedy that and do some digging on PubMed. Come to think of it, this kind of study must be really hard to conduct, there's gotta be a bazillion confusion factors: socioeconomical levels, gender of the child, birth rank, languages spoken in the home, daycare versus stay at home versus home daycare versus nanny, etc.
Hum, now you've tickled my curiosity. Will look it up later, though, have to put my lab rat to bed first.

There's some serious bilingual faster speech development as well. From what I supposed you could call "phoneme borrowing".

For example, you English-speaking parents: at what age did your kid pronounce the unvoiced "th" in the word "three"?
I'm guessing that it wasn't at two years old, right?

Think of the phrases your kid says the most. For instance, "I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT".
In Greek, this is "THELO THELO THELO THELO" (like Othello, without the O). Greek kids learn unvoiced "th" faster than most other sounds...

Similarly there are English phonemes that are common, that are uncommon in Greek. So our kids could pronounce some Greek sounds/words that normally Greek kids can't say til years later.

Which is cool.

Sooooo, I did some digging in PubMed. There are a lot of studies on bilingual children with low birth weight, or cochlear implants, lots of stuff on kids with conditions or comorbidities. I did find one, though, which was relevant:
Oller DK, Eilers RE, Urbano R, Cobo-Lewis AB. Development of precursors to speech in infants exposed to two languages. J Child Lang. 1997 Jun;24(2):407–25.
And basically, it says they could find nor disadvantage, nor advantage. The study sample size isn't that large though.

What is too much game time for a three year old? We got a Wii U for Christmas and my three year old son is obsessed. He has played games before, but never like this. As soon as he wakes he wants to play, and he will play non stop if we let him. He has conquered 3D World, and Mario U. Some parts of me say, "Hey he's 3, what else matters"? Then I realize, maybe he shouldn't play so much because... Reasons?

It is my opinion that it is not a problem that he is playing video games for such a long time, but that he's doing something, anything to the exclusion of all else. Kids need to be exposed to many different activities, especially when so young.

Just to throw my experiences in: My daughter is about 19 months old and has maybe 6 words that come and go. The doctor is worried, and therefore my wife is freaked out.

That said, the other day we stated "OK, everyone, it's time to go!" and my daughter went into the kitchen, got my wife's keys, came into the living room, got hers and her mothers shoes and handed them to my wife. Then she walked into the garage and got in the car. SO. Comprehension is fine. I can tell her multiple step commands and she will do them in order.

She grunts, points, says "DAAADEEEEEEE!" for any parent figure, can identify body parts, but the language just hasn't broken through those 6-8 words just yet.

As the mother of a child who turned out to be on the autism spectrum, the Early Access program in Iowa was really helpful.

Every state has an early intervention program that is designed to screen for possible developmental delays and then provide services. It's free. Our son received therapy 4x weekly this way until he turned 3, and then helped us to transition him to a preschool that would have appropriate support.

Don't feel any shame in looking into this program. IT'S FREE and can only help.

Here's a link to find out what's available in your state.

Trained therapists will come out first and evaluate. It's really helpful to get expert advice. The range of normal development of speech is very broad. They know what might be problematic or not.

And yeah, boys tend to develop speech more slowly than girls.

My little girl (now 15 months) also got a referral because her gross motor development was behind and the pediatrician was concerned. Naturally she hit those milestones about a week after her initial evaluation.

My son started talking pretty late as well. I attribute some of this to chronic ear infections when he was a baby, and much of the rest to having two outspoken sisters that he let talk for him. At 2 he was still barely talking at all, and I can't remember exactly when he started communicating in complete sentences, but it might have been as late as age 3 (our kids were all in part-time preschool starting at 2, which I think helped all of them in terms of spurring development). We have a few friends whose kids were similarly slow as well. In short, while it might not be typical to begin communicating so late, it also isn't really a cause for concern in itself. I'd expect a pediatrician to take behavioral tendencies and other factors into consideration as well, in terms of suspecting any medical issue.

She is indeed super cute!!!
Poor thing, though, not three seconds out in the world and already getting suctioned. Hope everything went well!

Awesome Jonman!!

Congrats man! Had me some awesome flashbacks/memories, wiping tears now.

Hope all involved are doing super well!

She is pretty darn cute. I hope she and your wife are doing well, and everyone's adjusting OK to their new sleep schedules.

Yay Jonbaby is here! Flickr makes embedding not obvious, but here you go:

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Hooray for JonBaby! I love Olive the cuteness!

Congrats Jonman!

Congratulations, Jonman! She's adorable!

Belated congratulations Jonman!

Congrats, Jonman! What a beautiful little girl! Can't believe in that second picture how calm and alert she looks.

My son, in the midst of a pee-pee dance, was eager to show off his new Flash pajamas. He spent 15 minutes before bedtime running around the house at super speed.

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My daughter had a PD day, and her ski/snowboard club at school went to a local hill for the day, so I decided to take the day off and go with her.

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Good for you guys. That's some view.

I thought, "wow, I wonder where that is?" So I looked at your location: Regretsville, it seems, has a great view.

It's at Mont Cascades, a local ski hill. Small enough to not be intimidating, big enough to be fun.