Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Phonics for the very young

Ooooh! I haven't tried I spy yet! and we're going on a road trip tonight!! Good idea!!! .

We also try to do allot of animal sounds because he's REALLY good at it. The cats go (well I can't really type the noise he makes but...) "mmmmeeeeeeooooo" instead of just "meow". The dogs go "Arf, Arf, Arf"; thank goodness he stopped barking whenever our dogs did, that was getting embarrassing!! :lol: The cars go "RrrrrrRRrrrrrRRRRR" but I think every little boy can make that noise. The cows go "mooooooooooooo" except his silly walking cow toy (his favourite toy) which goes "aaaaaaaaaaa" because it's cheap .

Little smarty pants!

Just tossing out another perspective...
It might be good to remove yourself from the role of evaluating (that's right) and praising (very good!) and emphasize communication simply as a social experience. So that might be something more like "That's a pretty tractor" or "I'd like to take a ride on that tractor", etc. It might help shift him away from feeling like he must master this now.

hmmmm, I'm going to try that, your right that might be why he's correcting himself so much.

We do alway do "look there is Brian on the Tractor" (our neighbour) "wave to Brian", which makes DS very happy! .

I want to repeat he does practise his words completely on his own, frequently it's not prompted by me at all. This morning he was running around going "st" "st" "st", I have NO idea what he was trying to say, maybe Elmo said something he's trying to imitate? (He's a big fan of Sesame Street, Word World & Sid the Science Kid - really the only TV he watches other then Wheel of Fortune).

Although DS does frequently have discussions with inanimate objects such as standing in the driveway pointing at the tractor saying "Tractor, TRACTOR! tractor (blah blah blah) TracTOR!". He's such a funny monkey . His new favourite is the microwave, but he can't say that yet.

I'm going to concur with passthepotatoes. This sounds like a totally normal phase in speech development. I think the general advice for parents of toddlers is to just ignore speech problems/difficulties/differences, and focus on the meaning. I think correcting or even discussing pronunciation can make kids really self conscious. It sounds like your son is already pretty self conscious, and you might want to downplay pronunciation even more on that account.

I took everyone's advice, and I'm trying to really downplay pronunciation. He's still picking up words faster then I can come up with them though. We saw a back hoe in the weekend and "Look Lucas, that's a backhoe, it digs up all the dirt" we got "ba ho! ba ho!!".

I'm still teaching him his ABCs, but I don't know what to do about Seasame Street, etc. He LOVES word world too and because these shows are about reading there is allot of slow pronunciation. I have no interest in teaching him how to read RIGHT now, but I do think he'll be reading small words in another year or so because he LOVES books.

I'm also not really convinced that he's being self conscious about his speech. Everyone who has ever met DS immediately remarks on how much he talks! It's a constant stream of mostly nonsense* which he forms into sentence structures. In fact he gets VERY upset when you don't answer him when he asks questions!

*mostly nonsense, to us! He's quite convinced he's talking and every now and then does actually seem to be saying something. Like he was telling me "find dada, find daddy" and started running around looking for his dad, when he found him he said "FIND Dada!!!!".

However I am going to keep trying to downplay my pronunciation for awhile and see if that changes anything, couldn't hurt.

Discussed it was Mom this weekend too & she confirmed (now she's raised 2 above intelligence, one way above & one ADD/ADHD etc. so she knows!) the little man is awfully precocious for such a young toddler but there is a good chance we're looking at ADHD, except the my brother didn't talk until he was 4, so who knows! Then again DS did have an entire tartufo instead of dinner and nothing but candy and chocolate since breakfast...

(Oh grandmas, can't live with them, can't live without them! :D).

Oh & on the mommy front, he's trying to call me Vanessa... *sigh* I'm inclined to let him until he's old enough to understand I'm mommy.

I guess I am just confused about what it is you are hoping to change. It sounds like your son is going through a perfectly normal stage of speech development.

Your son's speech is brilliant for a 15m old.

I often refer to this chart: http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/Table4.htm for my son. He is 5years and has issues with the /l/ sound: it nearly always comes out as either /y/,/w/ or /r/. I have had two occasions where we have chatted about soemthing for an hour only to find that the "pilots" were actually "pirates", ditto lorry/lolly.

Some sounds are physically beyond their ability to say - their mouths are just not co-ordinated enough. On the chart you will see that the /ch/ is aquired by 75% by 4 years old.

I like his adoration of Tractors! my DS was obsessed with cars and then Thomas the Tank engine from 6/7 months until he was between 2 and 3.

There has been some concern about him practising his sounds, I really think he's just practising though, not correcting himself. The same way he will sit for 20 minutes and practise putting a straw into his juice box. He's big on puzzles!

That chart (thanks for posting!) doesn't even make sense by Lucas' standards :S he's taking a good bite out of the first category. Although he will be able to say something like "horse" one moment and loose it another, I don't worry about that too much as obviously that is a word he shouldn't be able to say. Very interesting.

His first word was actually "tickle" which he pronounce perfecting in a very clear voice at 7 months. He said it twice and has never said it again. Same with saying "Lucas" the other day, I don't expect him to say that again for awhile.

DS is BIG on Tomas too I know grampa's really happy to have another train-enthusiast in the family finally! Anything with wheels & DS is ALL over it, it's a full-time job keeping him from stealing all the strollers when we go to the park (babies in them or not :D).

Hi Nes - My DS5 had lots of language very early too. I did have access to some information like the posted link, so I never tried to correct, beyond repeating the word properly in response like you do. "Yes, I like tractors too." I would tend to agree with PtheP on trying to avoid saying "yes, that's right!" although I know at the age of your DS, many times you are naturally saying that in response to one of many questions. E.g., Kid: "Dis ice?" Mom: "Yes, this is rice."

My DS cannot do the 'r' sound yet, which is developmentally normal, but since his vocabulary is so big, he will say things that most people won't expect, and so they can't catch it without the 'r.' Also, he speaks REALLY fast, and that doesn't help. (The school system even referred him to speech therapy, but the therapist said basically what I wrote above and said he didn't qualify.) His big vocab also helps, though, because he can usually come up with a variation of a word without an 'r' if someone is confused.

When he was 18 months, we had a very funny incident with DS's pronunciations. He was napping, so I took the chance to go to lunch while grandpa was watching him. Of course, he woke up, and started asking for "ice beans." Grandpa knew that DS wasn't asking for ice cream, since DS has a dairy allergy, but he couldn't figure it out, so he gave him an ice cube. DS screamed and screamed "ECEBEANS! ICEBEANS! ICEBEANS!" He wanted his favorite food at the time, rice and beans. i returned to a cried-out kid with a box of snacks in his lap and a worn-out grandpa!

Thanks SPG, yeah I was having a little trouble today as the tractors came down the road, but I tried some variety with "what colour is that Tractor? is it green? Yes, it's green!" (DS doesn't do colours yet).

We also like to count motorcycles :D, DH has been calling me Seasame Street... (thinks he's funny!).

But most of the time I'm still asking him "Is that a tractor or a car?" because he's still learning the differences between tractor and car and truck (although I think he's got it now as he was telling me "ba ho" (back hoe) then "car!" yesterday).

Thats a great story about the icebeans! My sister was completely mystified by Lucas this weekend and just kept saying "He talks SO much!!" as he's standing at the top of the backyard steps telling everyone what to do, wagging his finger while he talks .