Emmy is Mute
08.16.2010 That is to say, she does not enjoy using her words. She used to have a vocab that included a few choice words such as Mama, Dada, Moo, Di, Go and Coco. But she seems to have regressed. EP Fan, things look grim. Instead of building on her words and stringing them together, she now points at things and grunts until we say what they are. And when we point back to get her to repeat the word, she looks at us with a raised eyebrow, "I point, I don't speak."
Is this normal? Because everyone else is telling us stories about how their similarly aged children are reciting poetry and arranging sonnets.
I take the blame. The Good Doctor talks to her all day long, "teaching" her, "reading" to her, "enriching" her life. I kiss her on the lips. And I mostly just watch her do stuff and make sure she doesn't fall.
It takes a concerted effort for me to talk to her. It's just so boring and difficult to talk to someone who doesn't talk back. I can only describe so many things to her, "Mommy is playing on the iPad," "Mommy is eating Nutella on bread," "Mommy is watching So You Think You Can Dance."
Now she just runs around and makes some nonsensical sounds like, "Na na na" and she screams a lot and stares you down when you ask her to repeat a word.
The Good Doctor is worried but I think she's just waiting until she can string an entire sentence together. And it will be, "Mommy, I'd like some Nutella while I watch this episode of SYTYCD on the iPad."
Reader Comments (4)
I don't think it's normal...
The reason I asked about EP's vocab is because my son is in a similar situation. He's a week younger than EP. He understands A LOT both in Cantonese and English. Just like EP, he mostly points and grouts for things he want and don't want.
Is this normal? No. He's a happy and otherwise healthy baby so if this is my biggest worry for him for the rest of his long life...I'll take it!
Of course, the day I post about how she's not talking, she decides to add two new words to her repertoire. Today we took her to the park and met another baby, 2 weeks younger than Emmy, she was saying "Hi" and "Moon" and Emmy was silently staring her down. But when we started walking up the steps of the jungle gym, Emmy starting saying, "Up" for every step. And then "blue" when pointing to her blue beads at home. So maybe she's starting to turn another corner...I'm not too worried. I just can't wait to hear her little voice and her thoughts.
Woohoo!
I was going to mention that children who learn more than one language at the same time tend to delay speaking, but when it clicks, watch out!