or at least helping her deal with frustration...
I seriously feel like I felt just before she started to be mobile (we had a lot of tears before she figured out crawling). DD's been so frustrated lately when it comes to communication. She has a decent vocabulary for her age (she had 30+ words not counting letters, numbers, and animal sounds at 12 months, I haven't counted recently). But she doesn't talk consistently now at 14 months.
Ever since she was pretty little she's gotten her point across through baby signing, pointing and occasionally using a word here and there but lately she's been wanting to communicate at a more sophisticated level but I don't think her body is ready for it yet! When she speaks her pronunciation is still pretty poor (I have the impression she's probably saying a lot more than we understand) and she's also getting frustrated because she can't do a lot of the baby signs due to her lacking fine motor skills. For example, she's currently OBSESSED with numbers and can sign 1,5,10. However, something like 2 would be too difficult for her because she can't move many of her fingers independently yet. And then she gets MAD. She threw a tantrum today because she saw the number 6 and wanted to be able to say it. She actually said it once but couldn't sign it or repeat it and then she got really upset!
DH was a late talker (went from no words to speaking fluently at 2 years old) and I did something similar but my parents don't remember at what age, although I *think* I at least had a few words first, but we're both gifted. So I'm not really expecting DD to necessarily start speaking soon. But I would like to help her somehow to avoid all these tantrums! We're also a bilingual family and she's had a lot of passive exposure to 2 other languages, so I'm sure that doesn't help.
Does anybody have any ideas? I mean we specifically are doing baby signing because we were anticipating that it might take longer for her to talk and she really likes it and does the signs that she can very often. But beyond that I'm not sure what else to do?
I get we're probably just entering into a tantrum stage. We've had so many puzzles thrown across the room lately if she can't get the piece in just right so I'm hoping this is just a stage that will end SOON?
