Babbling the Day Away

August 9, 2011

J~’s communication is coming along pretty well, and he has his first three-word phrase - “There it is!” - when he finds something that he’s looking for or when playing peek-a-boo with a toy. Of course, it’s more jumbled and strung together as if it was really just one word… but it’s definitely a three-syllable word. He’ll also say “Teere” for “Come here”. We’ve been working on having him add “please” to single-word requests, but that might be a while yet. He understands a TON more than he can say, of course. He tries to say the first letter or syllable of every word that interests him or is important to him, but the only clear words (recognizable to any random person) he has are “mama”, “dada”, “bye bye”, “hi”, “no”, “yes/yeah”, and “papa”. I guess his versions of “down” and “up” are pretty understandable since he points in the direction or lifts his arms when he says them. And “shoe”. I think “shoe” would be pretty clear, too. He doesn’t say “nana” for banana anymore. He knows that it starts with a “b” sound, so he says “Buh” and tries to do the sign along with that. He says “Taaaa” (with the short “a” sound) for cat (again, while trying to do the sign), but hasn’t made the connection of the beginning “c” for that word yet.

Here’s a list of other words I can think of that J~ tries to say - beginning sound or first syllable with the correct short/long vowel sound - that we generally understand (since he points, tries to sign, or since the word is something related to what he’s looking at or talks about a lot… or is a repetition of something we say fairly frequently) -

Abacus * Airplane * Art * Avocado * Baby * Back * Ball * Banana * Bath * Bear * Beard * Bell * Belly * Bike * Binky * Bird * Bite * Block * Blue * Book * Box * Boy * Bracelet * Branch * Bread * Brush * Broom * Break/Broken * Bubble * Bug * Bus * Butterfly * Camera * Candle * Car * Cat (but said as described above) * Chair * Chin * Clap * Close (“coe”, when closing a door or box) * Cold * Couch * Crayon * Crib * Cry * Cut (“tuuh” or “tut”) * Dinosaur * Doctor * Dog * Door * Drink * Duck * Ear * Eat * Egg (his plastic Easter eggs) * Dump (dumping toys out of buckets, etc.) * Eye * Fan * Fish (“ish” or “iss”) * Flag * Flip-flops * Flower * Friend * Fun * Ghost * Girl * Go * Grapes * Green (“deen” or “geen”) * Hat * Hear * Help * Hot * Ice * Jam * Juice (“deuce”) * Knock * Lady * Leaf * Light * Lunch * Mad * Mail/Mailman * Man * Medicine * Melon * Milk * Mix * Moon * More * Moss * Mouth * Mushroom * Music * Neck * Nice * Nose * Noodles * Not * Nut * Open * Ostrich * Outside (“siiigh”) * Pants * Paper * Pat * Play * Play-doh * Pom-pom * Potty (“pahpah” or “paaah”) * Pop (pop-beads, ball popper toy) * Pour * Pull * Puppy * Puzzle * Sad * Sauce * Silly * Sit * Sleep * Stay * Slide * Snack * Smack (“Mack!” as he’s trying to smack us or one of the cats) * Snack * Sock * Swing * Table * Take * Tap * Tear * Tired * Toast * Toe * Toy * Truck * Tummy * Umbrella * Van * Vacuum * Watermelon * Water * Wet

He’s making more connections with his signs, too. Just over the past few days, he’s suddenly started signing some words that I’ve been doing for months - like “flower” and “silly”. However, with “silly”… it was pretty weird. I had been doing the same sign for months (learned from one of my co-workers at school) and happened to look it up in two of my sign language books that I have here. Apparently, my co-worker hadn’t remembered it correctly (or else *I* didn’t remember it correctly from when they showed me!), and I had been signing it wrong this whole time. The next time I told J~ he was “silly” and signed it correctly, he immediately did it the way I had been doing it all of that time! So he signs “silly” now. Maybe not the correct way… but *I* know what he means. ;P I never found a sign for “flag”, but Jacob loooves pointing them out everywhere we go. So, I just started extending a straight hand and waving it back and forth a little (like a flag waving in the breeze)… so now that’s how he signs flag.

Here’s a list of some of his newer signs - some just in the past two or three weeks and some over the last few months (since the last time I blogged about his signs). He isn’t doing them every time he says the word (because I’m not always consistent in using them when talking either, but I *try* to remember!), but he’s signed his version of each of them several times in context. Oh, and like I mentioned with “flag”, a few of the signs are ones I made up that seem like good enough imitations of what the true sign might be. :P

Baby * Banana * Bear * Bed * Broke/broken * Bubble (new?) * Bunny (our own version) * Car/Drive * Cat * Clean * Cold * Cracker * Dad * Door * Eat (new?) * Fish * Flag * Flower * Friend * Girl * Hard * Hear/Listen * Hippo * Hot * Kiwi * Later * Lion * Monkey * Mouse * Music * Pear * Rain * Sad * Shoes * Squirrel * Thunder * Turtle * Wait * Watch/Time * Wet * Window

I wish I had taken a sign language course or two in college along with my Special Education classes. Most of the signs I know I picked up over the years at my different jobs from kids and/or staff who might not have actually had the correct sign down or else learned on my own through sign language books or web sites. And the signs I learned on my own, I’ve either been doing a few of them wrong all along or somehow transformed them into my own version. I usually try to check a few different sources before starting to use a sign with J~, but sometimes that doesn’t always work out as planned. Oh well. I guess as his speech improves, it won’t be so important… but it would definitely be nice to actually teach the right word from the start.