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

[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.