Babble babble babble
Posted on | March 3, 2010
by | Kim
Thanks for all the birthday wishes. I had a great birthday – McNuggets, a bubble bath, and an early bedtime. Novel concept alert: going to bed early counteracts the 50978347683758274871895 times I wake up at night for the restroom, so I actually am (slowly) starting to feel less sleep-deprived. I still am ready for Little One to arrive, don’t get me wrong!
If you could spare some prayers for Major Dad, he has a surgery on Friday. Nothing life threatening, but surgery isn’t fun (from what I’ve heard, at least). We’re also starting to get into that “stay put, Little One!” frame of mind, since Greg’s parents will be taking care of Elise when we go to the hospital. Everyone would prefer to only have Grandma take care of Major Dad post-surgery as opposed to him AND a very active little toddler. 
I’m feeling more rawr about the whole ELISE IS BEHIND drama that has been brewing. In a nutshell, she’s not performing with the OTHER KIDS in terms of speaking. I’m sure some of you know, Greg was a late-talker (three years old before he said ANYTHING other than babble!), so for Elise to be following in his footsteps is not surprising to us. Greg saw a speech therapist who said that he was exceptionally bright and had nothing wrong – he just didn’t want to talk. Therefore, we’re very leery about this immediate “SHE NEEDS AN EVALUATION AT TWO” jumping to conclusions stuff. Dr. S knows about Greg’s late talking (I was on the cusp, didn’t start until 18 months) but still wants her to be evaluated “just to be sure” – unless she has more words in six months.
Personally, we don’t see the need to have an EVALUATION at two just because she doesn’t have a 15+ word vocabulary. She is communicating, just not with words. We do keep tabs on her in terms of what she is doing/saying/mimicking – she is developing in the sense that she is starting to imitate us when we make words (she babbles in the tones we talk in, for example if I say “bye!” to Greg, she’ll say “bahh!” in the same tone I did), she can learn sounds animals make (“baa”/”moo”/”ooo ooo oo” – monkey, 
). Her receptive language is extremely good, her hearing is fine and so are oral motor skills – perhaps she just doesn’t want to talk.
Our biggest fear is that if she did go to an EVALUATION at two she’d get diagnosed with something that she didn’t have, then have to deal with labels and such. A family member had a misdiagnosis of the developmental kind and holy cow; I saw first hand how much that can affect a person’s life, even 20+ years after the misdiagnosis! We’re not in any hurry to walk down that road, that’s for sure!
At any rate, we have a plan for the upcoming six months, to encourage her to talk should she be ready and wanting to but not force her. Her next appointment formal is in six months, and her ped while being very thorough has respect for parental authority and responsibility; so even if she doesn’t show “improvement” that he’s looking for, I don’t expect a lecture/tons of wank from him.
Comments
9 Responses to “Babble babble babble”
Leave a Reply
Associations
March 3rd, 2010 @ 11:47 am
Just so you know, my oldest (who is also incredibly active) said 2 words at 18 months. Dad’n’ (Daddy) and Ba ba (bye bye). By her 2nd birthday she said maybe 6 words clearly. She babbled all the time, but not much was understandable. Now she just turned 3 and her vocabulary is incredible. She says everything, sings, talks in complete sentences, carries on conversations, she even talks on the phone. Once in a blue moon she will try to tell me something and I can’t understand a word that she is saying, but once we figure out what she is trying to say and correct her pronounciation she laughs and can say it correctly after that.
My theory is that her physical abilities developed so fast (she was walking at 9 months) that she never had time to talk.
Anyways, reading to her alot helped. We read pretty much every childs book we own almost every day. She will quote books and seems to learn so much from what we’ve read.
March 3rd, 2010 @ 12:43 pm
Again with the Dark Ages of 30+ years ago: My brother didn’t speak in coherent sentences or have give and take conversations until well past four. Now, he did have dyslexia diagnosed later, but no Drs. had a freak-fest about the not-so-much talking.
Yeah, the Drs. now have the Big Ol’ Autism thing to whip out at the least sign of “delay”. You are right to stand your ground because labels are applied with super glue. Hypervigilence is symptom in the DSM and perhaps they need to apply it to themselves. [And, for other commentors, I can speak about Autism with criticism because I have it.]
March 3rd, 2010 @ 1:17 pm
She sounds normal to me!!! (:
March 3rd, 2010 @ 2:23 pm
Something I forgot to mention yesterday — our daughter could totally understand everything we were saying to her, she just wasn’t talking in response to us (much). Her intelligence and recognition of what was being said to her was very apparent, so that was another reason we didn’t stress too much. Sounds like you guys have a similar situation.
Prayer said for your family (for surgery, impending labor, etc.).
March 4th, 2010 @ 5:28 am
Just so you know Pearl babbles lots and uses all different kinds of sounds, but we aren’t hearing anything really distinct except Mama, daddy, woof woof (dog), monkey sounds for her monkey book. She uses baby sign language for things, points, makes excited sounds, is understanding and receptive of directions. I know she’s hearing us–makes good eye contact, etc. But yeah, lots of babble. I think it’s getting more defined and closer to words each day, but we have a long way too go. I’m not too worried because of how she responds. Giving things time till her 2 year bday and then we’ll see where we’re at. But can understand the worry you might have. Definitely prayers!
March 4th, 2010 @ 8:41 am
@ Young Mom – if there’s one thing Elise likes, it’s her books. So, she gets plenty of book time (even if she’s mainly flipping through the pages as fast as humanly possible).
She walked at 14 months but if you watch her play, she is extremely physical and so our thinking is a lot like yours – she worked on physical abilities and speech kind of got left in the dust.
@ Anna – “Freak fest” – lol. Her ped isn’t totally freak-feasting but I can imagine it may come, especially if she goes beyond two without “catching up”. The whole autism thing bugs Greg and I because while there are people who legitimately DO have autism, to immediately start walking down that road because of things like lack of speech or whatever gets into that labelling business. A lot of people are just way too antsy to “diagnose” ANY problem – from developmental to physical to mental. Blah.
@ Laura – same here!
I want to meet these 18 month old wonder kids who have a big vocabulary, because I haven’t so far!
@ Belle – thanks for the prayers.
Yes, it does sound like we have a similar situation as yours – we are confident she’ll “catch up” at some point – mainly when she’s ready! 
@ Nicole – thank you for the prayers, as well. It’s hard NOT to worry, isn’t it? Even if we don’t ship her off for an EVALUATION, it’s still hard thanks in part to unsolicited advice + random people on the streets. “Well, she’s a GIRL, she should be talking by 1 year, she’s 18 months? Oh my, you need to get her checked ASAP!” O_o If I had a dime for everytime someone wanked about her being a GIRL and NOT TALKING, I’d be rich.
March 4th, 2010 @ 3:49 pm
You should start charging people 10 cents per wank. That should keep them quiet.
March 5th, 2010 @ 8:29 am
Not only would it keep them quiet, we could use the proceeds for fluff!
April 14th, 2010 @ 11:21 am
[...] since Elise’s 18 month well baby check last month started the whole “she’s behind her peers in speech and may need to be EVALUATED unless she catches up” bon…, Greg and I have been doing our best to 1) not totally believe this need for evaulation due to Greg [...]