Say What?

We've struggled with Sophie's speech for a long time. In fact, when she was about 18 months we took her to an audiologist because she was saying so few words. There might also have been the fact that she absolutely did not listen to me and I would much rather think it's because she has hearing issues than that my parenting was lacking. Well, thanks to the fine specialists at Seans Bobkins, we found that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her ears. (read: it was, in fact, bad parenting)

So we've spent the last year and a half struggling. She with her attempts to communicate to us and us with our attempts to understand exactly what she was saying. While we watched the vocabulary of all of the kids around us grow and grow. While younger children spoke more clearly, communicating in phrases and sentences, Sophie continued to be nearly incomprehensible.

One of the cute but frustrating elements of her speech was something that sounded much like gidda-gidda-gidda. Said rapid fire, it was my theory that because she didn't know the words, she used that as a placeholder. As time wore on, I wondered if it was some sort of speech impediment, perhaps the beginning of a stutter. But as she slowly, ever so slowly, began to say more words and phrases, it became clear that it was not taking the place of words but was more of a transition sound between words she did know.

I'll be honest, I was beginning to get a little worried. She turned three in October and she was still so hard to understand. I talk to people all the time who say their kid barely said a word until they were 3 or 4 but that doesn't make the anxiety any less. But then, just in the last month, she has had a vocabulary explosion. All of a sudden, she is communicating relatively clearly in phrases and sentences. There are still words that I have absolutely no clue what she is talking about, but they are far outweighed now by those I do. So my frustration level, at least in this ONE area, has gone done significantly.

Now, if I can just get her potty trained. SIGH.