"Peas" and other such wonderful things.

John has some issues in the speech department. He says a few words like "Mom" and "Dad", "hot" and "John do". He also has a number of John words such as "zah"(juice/water), "durrr" (big), "doom" (spoon/shovel/scoop). A number of his words (both the ones he creates and real words) are multi-purpose words, such as "blue" which he uses for all colors and "two" which he uses to count. I typically understand about 90% of what he says (thankfully) but sometimes I can't help feeling guilty as a parent because his speech is so delayed. I joke that I need to create a John to English dictionary for everyone who interacts with him.

I think the hardest part is when people ignore him because he doesn't appear to be saying anything. I worry about him going to Pre-school next fall, will the other kids bug him? Will anyone play with him? Will he just get more frustrated because no one understands what he wants? I worry that it is damaging his self-esteem when people ignore his "conversation", he wants so badly to talk to them, yet for some reason the words just don't come. Well, not all the time anyway.

The other day we were over at a neighbours house and the girls were playing on a jumping horse. You know the kind, the big ones with the springs that are so fun to bounce on. John was patiently waiting his turn and Morgan and Melissa were taking turns back and forth. The girls were conveniently ignoring John as he stood there signing to "please", well, actually he was signing "thank you" but it was obvious what he wanted. After each girl had a couple turns I figured I'd better get down there and help John so he could in fact have his turn.

I bent down looked my little man in the eye and said "Are you waiting for your turn?". He nodded, signed thank you and then said in the tiniest little voice the most beautiful word I've heard to date "peas"! Just to be sure I wasn't imagining things I said "You want a turn John?", and he nodded and again said "peas"! I almost cried....I kissed him a million times, kicked the girls off the horse and let him have the longest ride on that bouncy horse any kid has ever had.

He's using "please" on a daily basis now, and it makes me melt every time he uses it. I'm really hopeful that this will be the crack that opens the flood gates in his speech.

A note about signing:

I had decided a few weeks ago that it may be a good idea to teach John a few signs, at least it will help with Pre-school and may help his frustration level a little. He seems to have picked them up quite quickly, he now signs "sorry", "thank you", "baby", "more", "milk" and he tries to sign "help", "please", "juice", and "sister". It's a great tool.... for more information on baby signing check out http://www.mybabycantalk.com/content/dictionary/dictionaryofsigns.aspx?letter=A for a huge dictionary of signs, or http://www.ehow.com/how_2183494_teach-baby-signs.html for some simple instructions.