Boy Wonder did not “acquire” language until he was 2 and a half. He wasn’t mute, he just relied on other forms of communication to get his point across. Consequently, the stories of him actually
using language tend to be humorous, if rare. Our child was not a poet, he was a man of action.
At the time, I obsessed over it. It didn’t help that we were in a play group with 6 other boys all born within 2 months of each other. The comparisons were unavoidable. Those little boys had vocabularies at 16 months. Real Language. Our child had a language reminiscent of Chinese. In fact, the local Chinese restaurant used to love to have him visit as much for his gusto in eating as for his ability to hold down a conversation with the waiters. They would ask him questions and he would answer back. Not a word of the conversation was in English, but they didn’t seem to mind, and neither did he.
He had inflection and pauses down pat–but none of it made any sense. Pure nonsense. No amount of analysis on our part could distinguish a pattern other than it sounded like spoken language, it just wasn’t. In turn, I spent hours pointing out objects and labeling them only to be met with a look
that seemed to imply I was a little touched to be stating the obvious. He thought he could talk.
When his two year old check-up rolled around I decided it was time to get to the bottom of all this silence. I took him to his pediatrician and while there his doctor did the standard check-up drill. Every time the she would try to put a tongue depressor in his mouth, he would politely take her hand and move it away. After a few minutes of this, I summoned up my courage to ask the question that had brought us there,”Is there a reason he isn’t talking?” She answered, “Probably because he concentrating on perfecting his mobility skills. Which, I have to tell you, are pretty impressive.”
She then went on to explain that a minority of children acquire language differently than the vocabulary building we read about in all those baby manuals. For these kids, labeling is a bit pointless as they are working building concepts not lists. She sent us off with the promise that he would indeed talk, eventually.
And he did, eventually. The most vivid memory I have of his use of language came over a row he and I had about a diaper change. Shortly after visiting the doctor, he ended up with a stomach flu that made changing diapers unbearable. Stuff got into everything. When it became clear that this particular change was going to be a great deal more invasive than the usual routine, he became indignant and began to scream. When we finished up, which took some time considering how upset he was, he summoned every word in his short little vocabulary to tell me exactly what he thought.
“Daddy no do. We go now. Car keys.” He proceeded to repeat his message over and over and over for the next 45 minutes, pounding on the door of the garage, until I finally called his father
on the phone in tears and exhaustion. Clearly, in his little mind, I had gone too far. I had committed the ultimate sin, I had not done it like dad.
If I had known then that he would develop a penchant for pointing out how I don’t do it like dad, I
would have never encouraged speech. I would have banned all talking in the house. No language, period. TV would have been watched on Mute. I would have printed up t-shirts with messages that read, “Please don’t coo at the baby. And for Heaven’s sake, don’t teach him to talk.” If I had known then that the 2.5 years of relative silence would give way to incessant talking–I would have blasted the car radio at such high decibels that I would have blown out my eardrums along with the speakers.
Anyone who says there is nothing sweeter than the sound of a child’s voice, has not listened to an 8 year old talk nonstop for 12 days. NONSTOP. Did I mention, NONSTOP? If I had known it was going to be 12 days of continual observations regarding my lack of “dadness”, I would have volunteered to paint the house.
