My daughter had a vocabulary of about eighteen words before she was one. I just talked to her all the time, starting when she was still in my uterus. My son, born two and a half years later didn’t talk regularly until he was about two.
And she did translate for him. “He says he wants ________.” I was always astounded that she could understand him. I couldn’t. It didn’t occur to me that this was harmful to him in any way so I didn’t discourage it.
As adults she is very chatty and he is quiet. Perhaps that was their nature from the beginning? I really don’t know. I do know that they are deeply devoted to each other but I’m not sure that this developed early in life.
All through their years at home we played a lot of word games and I think that helped with their vocabularies.
I did learn very rapidly not to get into a power struggle with either of them. It was a lose/lose situation for all involved including Dad when he got home from work. And they are to this day very much their own people about what they are willing to do. Sometimes I’m pleased by that and other times I wish they were more compliant for family convenience sake. Ultimately they are facing a world which they adjust to or resist and at their age the choice is theirs. They seem to handle it well.
Potty training with both was nothing short of a nightmare. At aged three and a half I did the overlyverbose thing with my daughter.
By the time my son was long overdue to comply I had gone back to school and was taking a class in behavior modification. Everyone in the class had to have a quarter’s long project and getting the little dear to use the toilet was mine.
I started with a visit with him to a fantastic pre-school and promised that, “Yes, indeed, all this will be yours if only you deposit the precious offering of life essence in the porcelain bowl.” Then we drew up charts, bought the M&Ms and got down to work.
Honest, I felt like a Skinneresque parent. Not a good feeling at all. But it worked like a charm and how I wished I had known about operant conditioning with my first child.
I think that’s the last time I used it, though. More often I just role-modeled how we did it and spent some time developing pride of family in them.
I started too late to teach neatness. We were too busy stomping around on the prairies and swimming in the lakes, fun, science-y stuff like looking at bugs and weeds. I really regretted that when they were teens. But today they are both very clean and neat human beings. Funny what happens when you don’t get free rent anymore.
All the stuff I worried about when they were little just had a way of resolving itself as they expanded their experiences. I watched some hard lessons being learned but they stuck a lot better than me just telling them how to do it and them ignoring me.
We’re all old enough now for me to see areas when my effort made a difference. Hurray. It was a long wait.
Oh. (I think I rambled. Sry.)