O the temptation! Once you have kids it is so tempting to compare and compare and compare — How old is she? How many teeth does your baby have? When did he start walking? How many words does he say? Does he do this? Does she do that? Blah blah blah blah BLAH! The questions are somewhat important because we use these types of behaviors as a type measuring stick that may or may not indicate whether a child is developing normally. Lucas has been very ‘average‘ in that when a book tells you that a child will do x between the ages of y and z, he does it exactly in the middle range (y + z/2).

So basically we’ve never worried ‘is he normal?’

The other day I got a book that focuses solely on the development of one-year-olds and tells you about the development of a child from twelve months to 24 months of age. Lucas falls pretty well within the spectrum of normal with some blips that are precocious. Note: He’s self-determined, easy to get along with and observant.

However one chapter focuses on speech and how many words a fifteen to eighteen month old child should have in his vocabulary. I quickly started tabulating how many words he will articulate: shoes socks hat hi water hot light &tc (all said with that Lucas flavour: choos, docks, hhhat, how, hhhhot, lighhhhht) & started worrying ‘omilordisa, he doesn’t say enough words’. Also notice that ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ are glaringly missing from the list (o shizzle!)
I started to worry.

I grabbed wade and asked him “do you think that Lucas can say twenty words?”

He paused and counted in his head and said “Uhm, not really…maybe about ten.”

I quickly filled him on the what the book had said.

We both started worrying.

Now let me just say that wade & i really try not to worry too much. We give mon cheri lots of room to explore. We don’t stress out about this that or the other, but for a moment we were both in that dark room asking ourselves ‘is everything okay with him?’.

Then wade said “even tho he doesn’t call you by name, he know who you are. If you ask him where’s mama, he’ll point to you. he knows that’s your name.”

And i said “yeah, and look at me. They thought I had development issues cos I talked late & look at me now. Maybe he just takes after me and since he’s a boy and in general boys talk later than girls, it’s a little more pronounced…”

The worry dissipated.

But we spent a lot of time this weekend asking him ‘where’s soandso?’ just so we could see him point at the person or item.

This morning I asked him to say ‘mama’ repeatedly cos he’ll mimic sounds that you say to him like ‘ah-doo-dah-dee-dah-doo’. He refused for a moment and then he looked me straight in the eye and said ‘mah-mah’.

It felt so good to hear that I cried a little.

Boy, has he got my number…

& he can say ‘mama’ when he wants.