Holy cow!

[rivka]

I held Alex up to the mirror this morning. She grinned and crowed, as usual. As usual, I asked her, "Who is that girl?"

And she said, clearly, "A-leh." Accent on the first syllable. Unmistakably her name.

I've thought for more than a month now that she sometimes trys to imitate her name when she hears it a lot of times in succession, which usually happens in front of the mirror. This week, my niece independently reported that Alex mimicked "A-leh" in front of the mirror. But this time I hadn't even said it. She just answered my question.

I swear I don't wanto be one of those crazy "my baby is a genius" mothers who imagines that random baby actions are signs of purposeful intelligence. ("He played peek-a-boo before we'd even left the hospital!") It took me a long time, and other people's agreement, to conclude that she really is purposefully saying "hi." I have no illusions that "Mmamamamamum" means "Mama." But I am dead certain that Alex just used her name in conversation. It didn't sound like any of the rest of the morning's babble, which has been running to things like "THAAAAH-thah-thah-thwah."

In the past couple of days, she's been saying "Mama" more often. It's still not at all clear that she means me, but she's saying it as a two-syllable word, not as part of a long string of syllables. And she's imitating speech sounds these days, too, albeit without any real signs of comprehension. For example, my mother was showing her a plastic turtle. "Can you say 'turtle?'" Alex said, "Tur-dur." Today I asked her, "Are you ready for breakfast?" She said, "Be-fuh." Obviously those don't count as talking, but talking really seems to be coming right up.

Holy cow. She's only eight months old.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

She's a bright little girl.

[eeyorerin]

She's moving quickly towards talking and walking. What an amazing time for you all as a family.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Oh, how very cool. From here it only gets better and the best part is, you'll never got "oh, look what Alex can do!" fatigue because it's all new

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

As I'm sure you know, girls tend to be much more advanced than boys when it comes to verbal development. Sounds like Alex is embracing that full on!

There's a little girl at Liam's daycare who is just a few months or a year older than he is. She speaks in complete, gramatically correct, complex sentences. It's utterly astounding to hear her talk!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Z was saying words at eight months, and talking in complete sentences by thirteen months, and he was and continues to be a boy.

The thing that seems to make a difference with early talking is whether the kid hears lots of talking at home.

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

As with any sex based difference, the variance is wider within a sex than between them. But as a group, girls do tend to have earlier verbal development than boys as a group do.

[thette.livejournal.com]

When day care personel was filmed and reviewed their actions towards the girls and the boys, they thought they treated the children equally. It turned out they talked a lot more to the girls and were more physical towards the boys. I'm sure the same thing happens with parents.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

imagines that random baby actions are signs of purposeful intelligence

Just to check: assuming a baby (five months old in this case; Dale's youngest nephew) did make a sound that vaguely resembled a word, was there any harm in responding to it? That is, when the infant made the noise "booh", and I said, "Yes, your quilt is blue", did I do anything wrong?

(And an anecdote about small children learning to talk: When my friend Jan's older boy was still mostly at the babbling stage, one of our friends would periodically catch his attention and ask, "Can you say 'nuclear magnetic resonance'?" in the same way that grandparents invariably ask, "Can you say 'Nana'?" but without the cloying dulcet tones. After some months, the cub looked him square in the eye and said, clearly, "NO!".)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

assuming a baby (five months old in this case; Dale's youngest nephew) did make a sound that vaguely resembled a word, was there any harm in responding to it? That is, when the infant made the noise "booh", and I said, "Yes, your quilt is blue", did I do anything wrong?

No, not at all. That's a perfect way to talk to a baby - it supports language development by demonstrating things like, "making speech sounds is good, because people pay attention and respond," and "conversation involves taking turns - I say something, and then the other person says something." Babies learn a lot about the forms of language (pitch, intonation, rhythms, sounds, etc) before they master the content.

What would've been wrong is if you'd followed up that exchange by insisting to everyone that "he knows his colors." ;-)

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

What would've been wrong is if you'd followed up that exchange by insisting to everyone that "he knows his colors." ;-)

Oh, good heavens no! The "conversation" was along the lines of

"Booh."

"Yes, your quilt is blue. So's your onesie, it's just a different shade of blue."

"Ah."

"No, really, both these colors are called blue. The quilt is bright blue, and the onesie is light blue."

"..."

"And the heart on your quilt is red, and it has your name on it, here: Jack."

"..."

"Um, Tammy, he's spitting up again." [gag, run away]

[selki.livejournal.com]

Neat-o!!

[xopher-vh.livejournal.com]

Sounds like she's coming along very nicely...

I remember reading somewhere-or-other that there's a stage called "talk or climb," where babies start to do one or the other of those but not both. I think I remember a bias toward climbing in boys and talking in girls, but I'm not sure.

At any rate, it evens out later. The only problem is that parents who have a talker seldom worry that he isn't climbing yet, whereas that other kid...but parents with a climber get all worried, for no reason. (Well, if they're worried about Junior falling from the omigod-how-on-Earth-did-he-get-up-there and breaking his head, that could be justified, but they shouldn't worry that he isn't talking.)

Hey, Revolution Begins in the Signifier, right? Same with child language acquisition. They start with the sounds (and //m// and //a// are easy sounds to make, which is why the vast majority of languages have a nursery word for 'mother' that contains those two sounds), then have a series of "wa-wa" moments where they realize that the sounds make words, and that the words are associated with particular things. Then they're holophrastic for a while; they say words and mean them, but don't string them together -- in fact at that stage if you hear them say two words together you can pretty much count on the fact that it's one word to them.

The 'Mama' and the 'A-leh' sound to me like they have real content. (Though it may be broader than you think; she may say 'A-leh' to any little girl, or any image in a mirror, or...but then again maybe not. I'd be very interested in your observations in that regard.) The 'tur-dur' and 'be-fuh' sound more like she's just imitating the last word she heard - but that in itself is an important stage. Especially since she at least appeared to recognize that a question was being asked.

[ailbhe]

It's much much sadder to see parents who don't believe that their babies are capable of skills they have demonstrably, um, demonstrated. Rah rah rah to Alex, and to you for recognising what you'd heard.

A.
(L said "cat" at about the same age)