MY BABY SAID MAMA. WHILE REACHING FOR ME. ELDEST CHILD WITNESSED.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH So excited.
Now I need to go check my records and see when EC said her first word… I think this is my earliest talker. I’ll confirm if I figure it out.
MY BABY SAID MAMA. WHILE REACHING FOR ME. ELDEST CHILD WITNESSED.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH So excited.
Now I need to go check my records and see when EC said her first word… I think this is my earliest talker. I’ll confirm if I figure it out.
Yay! Do you think she’s starting earlier because she has more talkers around her?
Research says that later children talk less because their bigs talk over them. So I doubt that it is that she just has people around talking. We do a lot of very focused repetitive speech in our house. (Isn’t it great how I can make “we obnoxiously repeat ourselves endlessly” sound useful?!) Like, every person in the house says to her as soon as I appear, “Hey! There’s your mama! Do you want your mama?” We do it for everyone. We do it for all the names/titles we want her to learn.
I’m not entirely sure it is healthy that I teach my children to feel so much ownership over their family but it’s what I’m doing. “This is *your* brother. He likes to be called Bubby.” (He decided Sibby was too close to Sissy and he didn’t like it. Ok. I’m not worried about it either way. Just tell me what to call you and I’ll do it.)
So I get the impression from reading research and talking to our pediatrician that most people talk near or over their baby a lot and not many people narrate their existence constantly to a baby. But it’s an impression and possibly I’m deluding myself to try to feel better about myself than I deserve. That happens.
Like, our last pediatrician appointment involved “I know you don’t need to be told to talk to your baby. You always do. You tell your baby everything and that’s why they talk so early.” So I feel a little vindicated by the medical authority who knows my children best. 🙂 She’s seen all of them talk early. The doctor was thrilled that Her Sweetness could even make an “mm” sound the last time we were in. That’s absurdly early. And she was already signing a little.
This is fucking early. Average first age of a clear word is around 12 months.
Ok, I was curious if I was remembering correctly so I looked it up again and found this:
5. Second- and third-born children are late to talk because their older siblings do the talking for them.
â–ºFalse
Several studies have shown that the language development and skills of first-born and later-born children are similar. In fact, some studies have shown superior skills in later-born children in the areas of pronoun use and conversation skills[14]. One study showed that first-born children reach the 50-word milestone earlier, but that once children had reached the 50-word milestone, there were no differences between first- and later-born children[15]. So while older siblings often interrupt and talk for their younger siblings, this does not seem to have a negative impact on the younger sibling’s development.
So I was incorrect in my earlier comment. Sometimes I misremember things and sometimes there is new data/research after my first check. 🙂