Quick, When Did Your Kid Start Talking? Forgotten, Haven't You?

10/15/2009

It’s early morning. Zoned, I shuffle into our neighborhood coffee shop in search of caffeine. Next to me, twin toddlers scarf their parents’ pancakes, waggling small fat feet squeezed into Robeez moccasins.

 
“Mmm, mmmm, mmm,” they grunt for more, waving puffy hands at their parents' plates.

I watch the parents struggle to keep one toddler off the table and the other from upending the flower vase. And I immediately feel a sense of kinship. I tell them I also have twin boys, though mine aren’t identical.

“Oh my God!” says the dad, his hair syrupy and spiky. “When did they start talking? Ours are 20 months and nothing! Look at them. They just grunt. We have no idea what they’re asking for!"

He is wild-eyed, manic—with that just-a-few-shrinks-short-of-inpatient-admission look that's characteristic of parents with two toddlers under age two.

 
"Well." I say. Well what? I realize I have no memory of my twins' first words and what they said when.

Nothing whatsoever. Total blank.

But here I am, getting expectant, even pleading, looks from this mom and dad.

"Sooooooo, your twins are 20 months. Great age. They're really coming along." I stall. "Oh, I'm sure it was right around this age that mine started talking. Any day now your guys will be talking so much you won't be able to get them to shut up [snort after lame joke]."

Mom looks doubtful. Dad looks grumpy. "Well I sure hope it's soon. We aren’t mind-readers."

I head out with my coffee, and now this is bothering me. How could I have forgotten when my kids started talking? For crying out loud, I can't even remember their first words. This is pathetic. What kind of parent am I?

OK. Focus. Focus.  Somehow I'm pretty sure the twins were talking before 20 months. But I didn't want to say that to those poor, frazzled parents.

So, before 20 months. Focus, focus. Still getting nothing. Just a blur of respiratory ailments, profuse green snot, potty-training misfires, peed-on sheets, projectile vomit, heated phone calls with day-care providers, traumatic haircuts, and assorted food-throwing incidents.

OK, this is bad. It's like I have complete amnesia about perhaps the most hallowed aspect of kids' development. I thought memory was meant to be kind. Aren't you supposed to forget all the bad stuff and just remember the warm fuzzies, like baby's first words?

 
I've seen studies that show moms with small kids aren’t nearly as gung ho about child-raising as moms with older and grown kids. Maybe the positive-memory amnesia is just temporary and returns with gusto once the kids are older?

Time to get on Google. First I do a search on parents and memory because I need to find out if this amnesia is normal. Perhaps the raising of small children, much like giving birth, brings on a sort of amnesia to ensure propagation of the species. This theory would seem to be backed by certain grandparents who have completely forgotten how to change a diaper (for the record, my mother is a SIGNIFICANT exception to this).

But wait. That argument doesn’t work because it would mean parents only forget the negative stuff. My issue is I only forget the positive stuff.  Either way, my Web search reveals zero support for my parental-amnesia theory.

My next stop is an old blog I used to keep when the kids were six to 22 months olds. Why didn't I think of this earlier?

 
Here I have a record of their happy milestones!

The first thing I notice:  When the twins were 17 months, I was obsessing—and I mean FREAKING OUT—that they didn’t have 15 words yet.  For Pete’s sake, that totally wasn’t worth it.  Because by the time they were 18 months, I was all, “They say ‘bah bah’ for baby, bye-bye, and ball: so cute!” and “OMG, T-Rex said ‘sheeeoooo.’ His first word, shoe!” He has always been obsessed with feet; but that’s another topic entirely.

I mentioned that Punk’s first word also started with “sh” but isn’t FCC-approved, so we were furiously trying to rework it to “shirt.”

Two weeks later I was just tickled that T-Rex was calling his brother “Doo Doo.” (Glad that one didn’t stick.) And then, by the time they were 22 months, they pretty much had 50 words. I actually listed them all. (Did I happen to mention that I’m obsessive?)

Now this would have been good information to pass on to those stressed-out parents in the coffee shop: That I was also freaking out about the language thing when our twins were their twins’ age, and then “poof,” in a matter of weeks they had partial words. Then full words.

But after looking at my old blog, I think the timeline wouldn’t be my focus at all. What I’d want to say to those parents now is, write it down. Write down every articulation. Because if you don’t record when your kids utter those first syllables, those first words, you’re going to forget.

Comments

[Derek]

As a joke I spoke gibberish and had my sister interpret what I said. My mother thought I had a serious speech problem. Nothing like a subtle performance art at a young age. I forgot how old I was at the time.

[gigi]

You often hear the saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" - but when it comes to kids growing up I think we rely too much on pictures to record our memories. We forget that our digital cameras aren't recording their words or the cute, funny little incidents that happen along the way. All we need is a little old notebook and pen to jot down the things we want to remember, or a spot on Word to record those moments, or they may be gone forever!

[penny]

You're right, I don't remember my kids' first words. But I do remember an occasion when my elder daughter's 3-year-old vocabulary made a creative leap. She was trying to describe something that had happened on the playground and she said, "And then I - I - foonch!" with great emphasis on the last word. We didn't ask for a translation, we were so amused by the word!

[Cyberchondriacmom]

Derek, I bet your gibberish act suddenly stopped when your mom booked an appt with the speech therapist eh?

Penny, hold up. Your daughter said she foonch? Wonder what, in her three-year-old brain, that meant!

[cyberchondriacmom]

Punk has a word sort of like "foonch."

When he doesn't like something, he'll pull a face and say, "no, too buuuuwdeee."

We have no idea what buwdy means, but we know it's not good.

[fey]

Punk must have been reading Shakespeare - "bawdy" jokes and characters are all over the plays...
When it comes to remembering my own kids' language growth, I do remember that the older one used a lot of gibberish/babble before the first words came along, and the second child worried me to death because she was extraordinarily silent until she was about 20 months old. And then she spoke a "sentence": Pointing out the window, she announced her father's arrival home with the words "Daddy walking." That's hard to forget, but I almost did. Your column jogged my memory. Thank you.

[penny]

I think of my young motherhood days as rush rush rush - trying to hold down a part-time job and work on my master's degree and get the kids where they needed to go and still get food on the table, etc. If only we could slow down and enjoy the moment, maybe we could build memories that stick...

[carma]

You make a great point about writing it all down. I have over 70 pages of quotes that I've written down. Amusing things my son has uttered over the years. He's 13 and I'm still writing it all down :D

[cyberchondriacmom]

My God. 70 pages of quotes over 13 years! Now that is inspiring.

[Marcie]

You poor thing!

I gotta start writing this stuff down.

[generic viagra online]

They start babbling around this time. My daughter said Dada and mama around 6 months or so. My Son however didn't say a word until he was pushing 1 year. It really depends on the baby. they all learn at different speeds and at different levels.

[generic viagra online]

Two isolated fossilized footprints have been tentatively assigned to Tyrannosaurus rex. The first was discovered at Philmont Scout Ranch, New Mexico, in 1983 by American geologist Charles Pillmore. Originally thought to belong to a hadrosaurid, examination of the footprint revealed a large 'heel' unknown in ornithopod dinosaur tracks, and traces of what may have been a hallux, the dewclaw-like fourth digit of the tyrannosaur foot.