Durgoose is almost 2. And as an almost-2 year old, she is fiercely independent, highly mobile, loves to make people laugh when not being afflicted with bouts of stranger-anxiety, and as cute as can be. But she doesn't talk. She babbles, often outcompetes her almost-5 year old brother, Ani, when it comes to making disgusting noises, communicates very well, but won't say any words.
Contrast this to Ani, when he was 2 and was not only singing the whole "Wheels on the Bus" song, but also ordering a roomful of people to do the same.
All these months, I used to brush off concerns about her lack of speech with a long list of counterarguments: she's shy; she communicates perfectly, but just not with words; she clearly can hear quite well; she's probably doesn't get much of a chance to talk since her brother prattles loudly all the time and so on.
Then, I came across a couple of other two-year olds and got a shock. Both these kids are girls and are Goose's friends and speak wonderfully. I looked up online and found that the average two-year old's vocabulary is a 100 words! Goose doesn't have a 100 words... I'd be amazed if she has 50.
I got seriously worried. Ram and I discussed sharing our concerns with her pediatrician and wondering if the doc would suggest speech therapy. During these discussions I realized two things that might contribute to Goose's lack of words:
Firstly, the one thing that I hadn't been doing with Durga was reading out age-appropriate books. Durga and I do read, but usually we read along with Ani and we read one of his books, either the ones with superheroes, or comics, or ones without too many pictures. But I hadn't spent any great length of time reading books solely for Durga. This struck me as quite careless- why would I think that reading Ani's books would be particularly enlightening for Durgoose when she isn't at the stage to understand bigger words, let alone plot lines?
Secondly, the number of languages Durgoose has been exposed to, understands quite well and responds to is 4, 2 more than the languages that Ani had been exposed to at this age. Durgoose follows English, Tamil,Telugu and Kannada. Maybe she's just confused about which word to use.
That afternoon, I left the lab early and headed to the library to pick up two books that I thought she might like, "Goodnight Moon" and "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed", because she loves looking up at the moon at night and also loves to jump (and in fact, "jump" is one of the words she knows to say... maybe because I use "jump!" even while speaking to her in Tamil?)
Most fortuitously, two events occurred that very day that reassured me a lot. One was a little chat with her teacher in daycare. Ms.Nona, a new teacher, but with kids of her own, assured me that while Durgoose was shy of crowds and generally a bit on the quiet side, she was perfectly able to hold her own in any conversation, even using words when prodded on and given a lot of attention. The second event was a visit that evening by our real estate agent, who also has a five-year old son and a two-year old daughter. And she said her daughter didn't speak either! This kid too was bilingual (Hebrew and English), her older brother would talk all the time, this girl wouldn't talk, but had fairly advanced motor skills because of keeping up with her older brother. What was more, most of the time, the older brother would talk for his little sister (just like Ani!)
Phew! What a relief to find another family with the same pattern! Maybe for Durgoose then, it's a younger kid phenomenon and not really a "can't talk" problem. I guess I haven't really understood her need for complete attention, instead dividing up my attention between the two kids.
Later that evening, after dinner, when I pulled out the two books from the library, Goose plonked herself on my lap, Ani crawled to my side and the three of us read them over and over again. And we did this all through the weekend. And late last night, Goose said, "Monkey!" and then a few minutes later, pointing to the sky, "Moon!"
Yesss!!
* Fist pump*
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