hi guys.
was going thru ur posts on speech and justfelt like writing to u.my son was born in may05 and he will be completing 19months this dec. he still does not make complete sentences.he says singlewords and will start off sentences like'this is' ' i see' and then will blabber the rest. i too was concerned but have seen that most babies in his peer group are at a similar stage.even the doc said theres nothing to worry.he understands everthing.
i also stay overseas and i feel this delay is partly due to the language confusion our kids feel. at home we talk to him in our native. in playgroups he hears me and other mums speak english and in our other social circle he hears us speaking hindi..now he understands all languages cos when my friends say something in english or hindi he responds well.but when it comes to speaking i guess he just doesnt understand which word to speak for what.infact for some of the things he has formed his own words.if we realise back in india our kids would not be in such a situation. more or less they would be exposed to one or max two languages.and our native language willd efinitely be spoken more esp if we have grandparents at home etc.which is not quite the case being abroad and alone.
just wanted to share my observation if in any way it could lessen your anxiety.
love to all the kiddos.
rr Bhairavi replied. Hi everyone,
I just went thru the posts on speech by Anitha, Sheetal and rr.. and I also agree that kids outside India take more time in learning language. The earliest I have seen kids speaking sentences here is somewhere around 20 -24 months and its totally normal... In India there are so many people from whom kids can learn how to talk, but here they learn only from their parents.
Nikku sometimes says some phrases now, like 'Papaa aa gaye', 'kya hai' etc.. I can share some things that I tried and which worked. Nikku was not saying enough words some months back eventhough I talk a lot with her.. thats when I realised that maybe I am doing soemthing wrong.. So I started by teaching her animal sounds, since its easy.. I showed her animals in book and wud make their sounds, but still she wont learn. So I brought the baby einstein neighborhood animals dvd. When she would see the animals on TV and hear their noise, and when simultaneously I wud teach her, then she started picking up the animal sounds.. And then within a week she knew the sounds of 5-6 animals. Similarly, when the train wud go near our house and make the sound, I wud say 'what noise does train make' 'toon tooon'.. So within couple of times, she started saying 'toon toon' whenever she wud hear the sound.. Now she says 'tain' too. Similarly she learnt all her body parts, now she says 'eyes' too. In short, what worked for me was, starting with simple sounds, teaching along with toys and dvds, talking in question answer format, and not providing her everything easily.. that way she tries to say what she wants. Also another imp thing I observed was that I was not listening to her properly.. like she wud say 'too thee' many times since many months, and I thought that she is just babbling, till one day when I said 'One' and paused and she said 'too thee'. Its difficult to interpret baby's babbling, but it does make sense sometimes, and once they come to know that you are able to understand what they are saying, the communication starts.. I dont know if this wud work for other kids as well, since all kids are different.. But I do think that its important to understand what makes our kids learn and then teach thru that medium. Sometimes, this works.
take care,
luv to little ones,
Bhairavi.