Receptive language

I'm coming to you from my lunch break at (wait for it) jury duty. Yes, you're right--this has been a really weird few weeks.

Anyway, today's topic is receptive language and how it can be years ahead of verbal or even sign language. It can be really easy to assume that what kids can indicate is also the limit of what they can understand. But for the majority of kids, the amount they receive and understand is months or years ahead of what they can say back.

I know that my older son got far less agitated, even as a 5-month-old, when I'd tell him where we were going and what we were doing before and as we went. And when he started to speak, his grasp of the vocabulary and concepts surrounding our normal schedule was advanced, as if he's always known it and was just waiting to be able to say it (which I think was exactly the case).

I've watched friends' kids pay attention carefully to situations, and then respond to questions about them by turning their eyes to the answer, at extremely young ages.

So I'm convinced that kids are taking in a ton, waaaaay before they're even close to being able to sign or say anything about it.

Can we share anecdotes or thoughts about receptive language? I'll start: When my older one was about 8 months old, I took him to my hometown and we went to a local pizzeria called Inky's and ate dinner with my brother and a friend. About 18 months later, back in my hometown, someone mentioned Inky's and my son (who was talking by then) blurted out "Hot pizza!" We were gobsmacked, as none of us had mentioned Inky's in the interim.

What have you got?

Comments

[Katie]

Oh, this is one of my favorite stories! I know she was older at this point, and saying 1 or 2 words, maybe, but what's amazing is that just talking to her really solved a big problem.

When my daughter was turning 1, I was trying to wean her from night nursing, but when dh went to her, or if I went to her and didn't nurse, she would cry until she would throw up or start to gag. Then one night I had a talk with her at bedtime. I told her that she wouldn't be nursing during the night anymore. She looked really mad, and she divebombed onto my boob and looked up at me defiantly. And I said, no, no, you can nurse now, but after you go to sleep, we're not going to nurse again until it's light outside. I explained to her that mommy/daddy/big sister didn't eat during the night, she'd have a water sippy, etc. Partway through this monologue, she got weepy. She totally understood.

During the night she cried and I went to her, and she didn't even try to nurse. And she didn't cry with the usual urgent cry. It was like she was mourning. She cried a little, I told her that I knew she was sad and I was sorry, and she pointed to her crib and went back to sleep. She never nursed during the night again.

[maria]

I have a story very similar to the Inky's Pizza story. When my daughter was 9 or 10 months old, we went to a park near a friend's house. We didn't go back there again, and winter came – long, snowy, frozen, winter, during which we certainly weren't going to any parks. The next spring, at *least* six months later, we visited the same friend and took a walk, in a different direction from the park. Lo and behold my child, who had learned to talk in the interim, started pointing towards the park direction, talking about the swings, talking about what we'd done there, etc. etc.

I was, to borrow Moxie's perfect word, gobsmacked. And really worried about what-all I'd talked about in my daughter's presence before I realized she understood EVERYTHING.

Yeah, they understand long before they can respond.

[Elizabeth]

I can't think of one particular incident, but I just thought I'd put in what I learned when we had my daughter evaluated for a speech delay. During our initial intake assessment, they tested for all kinds of cognitive and motor delays. She was 20 months old, and they told us that while she had the expressive language of a nine-month old (she said "moo," "baa," and "woof"--but she did have about 50 signs) but the receptive language of a 30-month old. I know all those kinds of things need to be taken with a grain of salt since each kid develops differently, but it was very interesting to realize how much she understood.

[the milliner]

I love this topic. Can't wait to hear the stories. Like @Elizabeth, I can't think of a specific example, but I've almost always felt that my son could understand waaay more than he could communicate. His educators at daycare were just saying the other day that they see him listening intently to what they are saying (often in Spanish, which we don't speak at home), and he seems to understand.

He's 20.5 months now and doesn't really have words other than mama and baa and de l'eau (water)...though I've never personally heard the last one. We're raising him in a bilingual household, and they speak 3 languages at daycare, so I'm assuming the delay is normal while he works it all out. Though, after reading @Elizabeth's post, I'm starting to wonder if he should be tested for a speech delay. But anyhow, he really can understand what I'm saying and in the last few months has been able to follow more and more complex directions.

I'm always getting annoyed with my DH for talking about things like Santa and surprise gifts etc. in front of our son. I'm sure he understands a lot more than we think and I'd hate for some great folklore/magical things to get ruined for him because we let the cat out of the bag, thinking he didn't understand.

[MemeGRL]

My oldest is now 6. When he was 2, we went to Disneyworld. We are going again. And when I mentioned we'd be going somewhere for dinner that we'd been to before, he asked, "Was that the place with the couscous?"
It wasn't, but there certainly was a restaurant with couscous. Dang.
Same boy: 18 months old and not really talking yet. I was reading a book with him about Elmo at a playground. "Where are the swings?" I asked, expecting him to point, and he abruptly got up and walked away. Fine, he's done & bored with Elmo, I thought. Not quite. He pulled out another book, one that had only one thing per page, brought it over, flipped to the swings page, and settled back in to finish the Elmo book. I guess he didn't like Sesame Street's swings!
Do NOT underestimate early receptive language. Boy oh boy, are they ever absorbing it all. I know I'm preaching to a choir here but this has been driven home to me over and over again. But those were my favorites.

[Steph]

This is a little off topic, and more about language acquisition, but it shows the amazing capacity of the child's brain to absorb.

I used to work in a bi-lingual pre-school in the Netherlands. The Dutch teachers spoke Dutch and the native English speaking teachers spoke, well, English.

I was AMAZING to see kids, maybe 18 months or 2 start at the school possibly having neither Dutch nor English. There's one little Spanish girl I'm thinking of in particular. After about 6 months of not speaking at all at school she was all of a sudden, literally within a week, speaking Dutch and English fluently. And I mean perfectly fluent.

So those few quiet months were all it took.

[Karen]

I am constantly blown away by how much my daughter understands, but my favorite moment was recently, at 16 months old.

She was standing at the top of stair gate holding some bath toys and I said (mostly to myself) "let's put these back where they belong," which is a phrase that shouldn't make sense to a toddler because it doesn't have toddler-friendly nouns and verbs. But what did she do? Ran into the bathroom and put them in the tub. Wow. My jaw literally dropped.

[Kate]

I had a similar experience to @Elizabeth when my son was evaluated for speech @ 19 months. They showed him a picture of a baby, wanting him to say baby or ba or something like that. He looked at the tester and signed "bath"--because the baby had no clothes.

I can't think of anything specific, but he was totally making jokes (with gestures and facial expressions) long before he could speak.

[CaliBoo]

It amazes me not only that my toddler grasps language and context, but also understands emotions and can be pretty empathetic. I guess she was 18 months, and I was trying to get her to bed before losing the battle to a stomach virus. I had to explain that mommy didn't feel well, couldn't read a story and would she please lay down and go to sleep. She said "OK" leaned out of my arms to go in her bed, and I didn't hear a peep from her the rest of the night. Pretty cool.

[anna]

There's a book called "The Philosophical Baby" all about how clever babies are & how totally we under-rate them. At least, I haven't read it, but that's what my mum tells me it is about.

[parisienne mais presque]

@the milliner - we're raising our son bilingual French/English too, and although he didn't have any real delay (he wasn't early, but with his first words at around 15 months, he wasn't late either) it seemed to me that he was working much harder on receptive language that on expressive language at the beginning. You could almost see the effort he was making on his face sometimes.

Now, at 2.5, he favors French but speaks and understands English with ease, too. "Beud'eau" (his contraction of "un peu d'eau," or "a little bit of water") was one of his first words and is still part of the family lexicon.

My I-was-floored moment came when my son was a bit older, 18 months or something, and woke up for one of those hours-long screaming fests in the middle of the night (that thank GOODNESS seem to be a part of the past now). At one point my normally calm husband lost his temper and yelled (loudly, but something perfectly polite), at which point I carried my son out into the living room (since sometimes showing him the dark world outside would be convince him to fall back asleep). Then as he started to calmn down, my son repeated a rather impolite expression in French that roughly translates to "you're seriously annoying me."

In my son's mind, Daddy yelling -> the expression in question. I hadn't yet convinced my husband to avoid talking about the office in front of my son, you see.

We couldn't help it, my husband and I burst into laughter, thus ensuring the expression would remain in my son's vocabulary for some time.

So, yeah, they are paying attention.

[Mothering from the other side]

Such a great thread. We probably had some language delay in our household (two languages at home and a different community/and now school language).

Our second daughter has always had a remarkable memory. Before she was speaking we were in the park one day and noticed an unusual bird. We stopped to watch him for a while and then he flew into a tree. About three weeks later we were back in the park down the same path. Our daughter began indicating the exact tree that the bird had flown to and began signing 'bird, bird.'

There's a lot going on inside their wee heads that's for sure.

And for those who are in the early stages of multi-lingual experiences, I would like to encourage you to continue. As I mentioned, we may have had some initial language delay, but all on target now (ages 4.3 and 2.4) and to have communicative children in three languages rarely ceases to amaze me. (And yesterday our eldest was waiting with us to pay a bill and she read the clerk's name that was posted by her window - in Chinese! It's not possible to phonically read Chinese and we were overwhelmed that she could basically correctly sight-read three Chinese characters in a row.)

Yes, lots going on in there.

[hedra]

Mr B, 7 months old, HATED HATS. They were devil spawn, head-eating, vile things that must be flung with disgust as far away as possible.

Raining hard, and cold. Coat had no hood. Hat available... uh, shoot. I knew he was going to fling it.

I took him to the door, pointed outside, and explained that it was raining, it was cold (let him touch the glass - cold!), and that the hat would keep the rain off his head. He could take it off when we were inside the car, but it would help between the door and the car.

I'd never been able to keep a hat on him more than about a half second.

I put the hat on his head. He just looked at me expectantly. I ran him to the car... hat still on his head. Put him into his car seat, and the second his butt hit the seat, he flung that hat all the way to the windshield. But he kept it on in the rain!

Mr G, years before, I'd taken to see the elephants setting up the circus tents. He was about 8 months old, I think, maybe 7. We'd talked about elephants a lot.

Just under a year later, drove past the same spot, and he pointed out the window (NO circus tents there - another month out before they even put up signs), and said 'elefantz!' Uh. Whoa? Granted, that was full sensory experience not just receptive language... (ah, the aroma of elephant poop!)

[Raia]

Same thing as Elizabeth...according to the speech pathologists, my 20 month old has a speech delay affecting expressive language but receptive language is above and beyond. I've known that, though, ever since the first day (can't recall when exactly but it was before any words), I mused aloud while trying to get ready where are my keys and he brings them to me (he'd gotten ahold of them so who knows if I would have found them without his help). Since then, whenever I'm looking for something I ask him and he almost always knows where to find said object. Oh, and that time I was looking for my phone and he had me following him around the house peering under the couches and tables? I'm positive that was a joke on me even though I can't prove it! I'm sure that's one of those things that makes him laugh in the morning before he gets up.

[LJP]

As a speech-language pathologist, I can tell you this is certainly the case. Assessments often show children with differing abilities in expressive and receptive language. Often when the foundation for receptive language is a strength, a child has an easier time overcoming expressive language difficulties. So keep talk, talk, talking to your babies everyone! Its great to both talk to them in full detailed sentences, and to also expose them to short, specific 1-2 word phrases, so they can really focus in on the labels you are providing. (e.g. "A dog! Big dog! Brown dog! Grandma has a nice dog like that!"). Get right down there, face to face. Babies and children also benefit receptively from not only hearing a large number of words, but a large number of different kinds of words, so haul out not only nouns and labels, but verbs, adjectives, different parts of speech, etc.

Ha, I never comment anywhere, but I love this topic. I'm on maternity leave now and won't be back to work for a year (bless you, Canada) so its fun to talk shop for a minute :)

[daniko]

This isn't exactly language, but rather symbol recognition. My dd has always blown me away by recognizing company or organization logos. I can't even remember when this started... 18mos? She is 3.5yrs now. She always new when something was from the library, or if we passed a papa johns (she would say pizza!)even if we had never been there before. Pizza is obviously a motivating thing for kids.
The one I will always remember was when she was about 2 and we went to Borders. When we got home she said I had bookstore coffee. What? I realized that they serve Seattle's Best coffee at Borders and I had some on the counter. Maybe these things are normal but they always blew me away....

[Cobblestone]

My story is similar to Katie's. Pneumonia antibiotics made the the end of weaning very abrupt for us. We had been on vacation and our first night home was the first night of no more boobs.

I had explained it to ShortStack but he was MAD. Finally, I said, "what can we do instead so that you can go to sleep?" He cried for a minute and then started to race around the room gathering pillows and dragging and positioning me as he tried out different ways to lay down.

He also knew at about 13 months that "We're going to K&Ds for dinner tonight" meant to get his coat and hat, go out the back door, walk across the yard and on the trail to their house. How do I know he knew it? I followed him and didn't prompt him at all.

[Cobblestone]

Another thing ... I wonder if this receptive language time is really when a lot of the self esteem gets established. Even though they can't respond they have such a clear understanding of how we feel about them.

[Mogget]

Like @daniko my son recognizes logos like crazy. And he's always right. I have always been in awe of the things my children understood before they had the speech to talk about it, and how they remember it to talk about once they do have the language. I don't have any specific stories right now, but this is a topic that I will watch with great interest.

[Erin]

One of the best pieces of parenting advice I ever got was from my mom and from my Montessori book - it was all about narrating events as they happen to your child, starting from a young age. So I was always in the habit of telling my DS from eight months or so on what was going on, what was going to happen, what we were doing. He is one of those kids with super advanced motor skills and slower-developed speaking, which started worrying me a little bit when he was around 12 months - how would I know what he understood if he couldn't speak? But then I was narrating that we were going to put our shoes on and go outside, and he ran over to the door, and sat down near the shoes. Then he started running to the door and picking up shoes and bringing them to me whenever he wanted to go outside. And I realized that he had extremely good receptive language understanding, and I stopped worrying about the expressive. You definitely have to watch for the signs in a child less than 12 months old, but man do they understand, and if you take the time to explain things to them, then you can communicate - with or without them being able to talk, or even to sign (though we do limited signing with him as well).

[Fakey]

My daughter is 15 months and I've actually been kind of worried about her receptive language. I can't think of one instance when she's clearly understood more than what's going on. It's all about the physical clues.

For example- we talk about going out, but she doesn't show any excitement or anything until we start putting coats on.

I've started trying to narrate more activities, but I don't know...

[marci]

my 3yo son's receptive and expressive language have consistently sucked until very very recently. he has a huge noun vocabulary & can recognize letters & numbers anywhere, but hasn't been able to harness all that to tell what he wants fluidly (he's been using 'scripts' to say things the same way every time) or describe simple actions in books, and i think explanations and requests have just been too fast for him to process. like, in preschool, the teacher will say 'time to go outside. everyone line up by the door' and there will be 11 little bodies heading to the door & my son still sitting on his mat.

he was *very* premature, and i think just hadn't caught up to himself & integrated everything.

but recently, he's been able to tell me some simple things about his day, and ask for things without his script, and follow more directions. (he's had speech therapy for the past year.)

anyway, this is more of a data point for someone who might be on a similar path.

[agnes]

I too have been amazed at how long they retain something that you don't even think about. We did a lot of signing with our baby when he was 6-9 months old, but he didn't really pick it up until he was almost a year, and we had backed off of most of it except "more" and "please", which he picked up eventually. Then at about 15 months, he signed "orange" out of the blue - I think it must have been at least five months.

Similar story, last summer we read "Don't let the pigeon drive the bus" a lot. But we haven't had it out of the library for 8 months. Yesterday I hear "Vroom vroom vroom! Pigeon at the wheel!" out of the backseat.

I also was amused when I realized my son recognized where we were going in the car (he would get upset if we didn't turn off to go to daycare).

[hush]

Cool stories. Unfortunately, I can't remember my DS doing anything like that. At all. I worked a lot during his first year, so I probably didn't catch on to anything "advanced" that perhaps he did do. That, or he's not a supergenius after all. But rest assured he is now a normal, talkative, defiant 28-month-old, despite no such early moments of great wonder!

[Cathy]

Ah, this topic squeezes my heart. I had such a hard time for the first six months with my daughter -- nothing wrong really, just not *feeling* much other than exhaustion and regret. I'd talk to her all day long, hoping that I could fake the attachment thing until I made it. Then one morning, I changed her diaper and she was clutching the tiny bear she slept with as usual, and as I lifted her off the changing table I said, "Should we put little bear back in the crib?" And as we passed the crib, her arm shot out and she dropped the bear in, and I thought, "Oh, thank god, there's someone in there. Hello in there!" And it was truly never as hard again.

Off-topic, but relevant to a few other stories that have been told about emotional comprehension/sophistication: I've written about eight thousand emails to Moxie in my head over the past few months, all asking how I was ever going to wean a two-and-a-half-year-old who valued nursing more than pretty much anything else. (A recent failed attempt to broach the subject with her went like this: Me: [trying to seem nonchalant] "You know, M, when you get a bit bigger, you won't nurse anymore. Big girls do other things instead." M: [ignores me; then, sternly, after several minutes of silence] "Mama, I'm little. It will be a *long time* to get me big." Okay then.) So we were in this apparently interminable holding pattern -- I'd casually mention not nursing, M would give me the stink-eye and change the subject -- and I really didn't *want* to force her to wean, and then things suddenly got super-painful physically -- like, worse than with a newborn -- and I gritted my teeth through it for several weeks, not sure what to do about it. Then I discovered in the shower one morning that M's teeth were gouging little holes on the underside of each nipple, and those little gouges made continuing to nurse even one more day seem impossibly masochistic. But I had zero confidence that I could talk M into giving up her beloved nursing, and I wasn't sure I could face her weeping. So that night as we went up to bed I said to her, "Mama has a problem. Nursing is hurting her, and it isn't your fault, but I really need to take a break. Can we take a break?" And M said, "Okay." And that was that. Within three days, I didn't have to remind her about the break, and the weaning was done. No tears, no further discussion. It was like the little bear all over again, this flood of relief and gratitude that someone was in there, who understood me.

[Kelly]

I've never been one to talk down to my kids, so I can't say as I've observed much that I can compare. I do find it hilarious and adorable that my, then, 2.5yo son used to ask me, every afternoon as we came down the stairs after his nap "So, Mommy, how was your time my nap?" (I ask him how his nap was, but he figured out how to rephrase it himself.)

I'm also very careful about what my 5.5yo hears, now, because even when he's not intentionally listening he still hears and remembers things - even things that have nothing to do with him - he sucks it all up like a sponge.

[Rbelle]

@Fakey, not to worry you, but you might consider getting your daughter's hearing checked. I've been reading this book: http://tinyurl.com/yf44drt, and one of the main points she makes about hearing development is that it often takes between 2 to 3 years for parents and even doctors to realize there's a hearing problem. If she's reacting to physical cues but not verbal ones, maybe she's not catching everything you're saying? Then again, maybe she's just got a busy little brain and is too distracted to pay attention :)

And Cobblestone, I wonder about that same thing with little kids and self esteem - it drives me crazy when parents start talking about their babies/toddlers, *in front* of their babies/toddlers, especially when the bulk of what they're saying is complaints about the kid.

[marian]

Whenever it was naptime, I'd start by telling my infant son (starting around 3 or 4 months) that it was time to lay down with his Mr. Elephant, it was nap time, time to sleep, etc. I'd repeat it over and over before I'd bring him to bed and give him his lovey and put him down. Around 6 months he would start yawning and rubbing his eyes whenever I would start whispering "naptime, Mr. Elephant," etc. He totally associated my words with sleeping and always went to down pretty easily. Now at 1 year I just have to say "are you ready for naps and Mr. Elephant"? and he'll walk over to the stair gate and look upstairs and get really excited to get his lovey!

[Cloud]

I'm looking forward to reading through more of these... this is fun!

My memory is scrambled right now, so I can only remember a relatively recent one that is more about recognizing things than language. We had a plumber come out one day, and Pumpkin saw his truck. A few weeks later, we were driving home from day care and passed a truck from the same plumbing company. Pumpkin looked out the window and said "Look, Mommy! The plumber!"

[Brooke]

I wish Karl (17 months) had some (more) expressive language. He has a few signs that he uses consistently, but no spoken language. It is making all of us crazy. I wonder if I should get his hearing checked or if I'm just paranoid.

[paola]

Our kids are also bilingual (English/Italian) and for the moment the dominant language is English even though we live in Italy. I'm the SAH parent so I expect that has a lot to do it.

I was reading on @Bella's Child of Mind, that bilingual kids at around 15 months are a couple of months behind monolingual kids in terms of active language, but catch up at around 20-22 months. Also bilingual girls are a bit faster when it comes to producing language.

My son (first child) was a bit delayed, although probably about right for a bilingual boy. My daughter (no.2)was producing short phrases as early as 12 months, which wowed me completely seeing my son had been so slow.

Now at 5, my son is comfortable speaking both languages, although narration is not his strong point, in either language. He gets stuck on words and ums and ahs a lot. I'm wondering if this is typical of 5 year olds or is it becasue he is bilingual( I'd say he is pretty much 50/50 right now) Anyone? My daughter is a much better comunicator in many respects, but obviously doesn't have such a wide vocab, and her interests are pretty limited.

Sorry for not exactly sticking to the topic.

[MrsHaley]

Totally o/t, but @Cloud, your story reminded me of a funny one:

We were having our kitchen remodeled last Spring, so my daughter would have been about 2.5. There were contractors in & out all the time, and she required everyone's name and specialty. The large, moist and somewhat unwashed plumber came to put the new sink in early one morning, so he effectively joined us for breakfast, which was when she met him for the first time.

When we got back to the house after our morning outing, the contractors were on their lunch break, but as soon as we walked in, she pipes up, "It smells like plumber in here!"

Indeed it did.

[CaliBoo]

@MrsHaley - maybe it was the full sensory experience that made it stand out in her head, like Hedra's elephant story :) :) :)

[Judy B]

I think E had a lot of receptive language before I realized it and finally started taking advantage.

Our biggest yippiee moment was just last month at a toy store. The best toy store in our area. As you can imagine it was bliss for E (20mo) and he did not want to leave when we needed to leave. After one epic fail at putting him in the stroller, I got eye-to-eye and explained that when daddy was done at the register we were going to go back outside and leave the store. Two minutes later, whole new kid with no problem getting strapped in and heading out the door.

He's usually quite cooperative with our requests around the house, but does not have his listening ears on when we ask him to pick up stuff he's dropped on the floor. That needs work....

I'm also having a lot of conversations about weaning (no more num-nums) and I think it's really helping him with the transition. We're cutting out the before bed session today, and in a few more days I plan on ending the early AM session (I expect this to be the hardest) and that will be it!

[LittlePumpkin]

Great stories, everyone.

I love how little ones can come up w/ creative ways of communicating, even when they don't know the correct word. One day when my daughter was about 15 mos. old, she kept repeating "hello back" again and again. My husband and I couldn't figure out whom she was saying hello to. Then she started pointing to the cordless phone cradle on the wall. It was empty -- the phone wasn't there, and she was trying to tell us to put it back. She didn't know the word "phone," but she knew that we always said "hello" when we answered the phone, so she called it the "hello" and wanted to tell us to put it "back" in its place! She's now 4.5 and that's still one of my favorite moments :)

[SarcastiCarrie]

@Brooke - A hearing evaluation with an audiologist is prety quick and totally painless (and because it's a test and not with a doctor, I didn't even have a copay from my insurance). I think it's a great idea. They put little ear plugs in that did a pressure sensing thing on the ear drum, then they did something to make sure the cilia were working. (and for an older kid they did the beeps and some language games.)

My Big Kid had it done in December (result: some hearing loss from recurrent ear infections).

My Small Kid is getting ear tubes tomorrow (and I swear, I am not freaking out. Much.) and then will be going in for a hearing test with the nice audiologist to make sure everything is honky dory since he has no expressive language at all at 15+ months. He may have receptive language, but I fear we all sound like the adults from Peanuts to him. He will follow a one-part direction with gesture, so at least I know he's learning something.

[Fakey]

Oh geez... Hearing problems?

After I posted my earlier comment, I started thinking and wrote an e-mail to Ask Moxie.

She doesn't like books except as physical objects, and there are only a few that she likes the pictures. We're trying to incorporate stories into our bedtime routine, but it's been a no-go.

And my husband is worried because she often doesn't respond when we call her name. I told him she seemed busy, but I don't know.

But- she dances to music and a talks a bit (latest word is cah-cah for cracker). She had her hearing checked as a newborn and the results were fine. Only one ear infection that cleared up quickly.

[Johanna]

I remember the first time I raised my voice at my daughter - she was about 11 months old and going through a really awful phase where she would cry and whine non-stop. It got to me one day and I yelled at her briefly - nothing awful, but it was the first time I had raised my voice.

I talked to my sister about this on the phone after my daughter was in bed, and told her how badly I felt. I felt that I had betrayed her trust, etc. My sister, who is a bit of a baby and child expert, reassured me that all parents yell sometimes and it's really ok, but that it might be really good for both of us if I apologized to her in the morning. What occurred to me when she said that was a) how will she understand complex ideas like "I'm sorry" at such a young age, and, will she even be able to connect the apology to the yelling I had done 18 hours before?

The next morning when she woke up, I lifted her out of her crib and said, "Sylvie, I'm really sorry that I lost my temper with you yesterday and yelled. I bet it was scary and really upset you, and I am really sorry for that." She immediately averted her eyes - as toddlers (not babies, or so I thought) do when something emotionally heavy is brought up - but then did something that I'll never, ever forget - my completely (until recently) un-snuggly baby rested her forehead against my face and kept it there. She had never done this previously and didn't do it again until at least 2, when she started to become more affectionate.

This was the first time I realized that not only was she able to really understand the words and some of the intent of what I was saying, but that she was able to grasp connections between what's going on right now and what happened in the past. I have apologized to her many times since then and there is almost always a moment of closeness that takes my breath away.

[Ck]

I love this topic! I know there are a million times when we have been amazed at the knowledge our 21 month old has, without ever being "taught" but of course I can't think of any examples right now.

However, last night, B put a ball in an easter basket, brought it over to his dad to show him and said "basketball!!" then fell over laughing. How does a 21 month old kid understand word play humor?!

[SarcastiCarrie]

@ Fakey - My Small Kid (who will get the ear tubes tomorrow) does not like books to the point of actively disliking books, which is so strange to me since I love books and my Big Kid would literally sit for an hour and read books with me. I had not (until I read your comment) put that together with not being interested in the pictures since he can't hear me and the words. Thanks! I'll stop worrying about the books until we get the hearing thing squared away.

My Small Kid has had 8 ear infections since October 1st (and more before that), including one that got completely out of hand. He's 15 months old.

Not to be alarmist or anything, but our pediatrician is also going to screen Small Kid for autism once we have the ears fixed because lack of language acquisition can be a marker. He'll be getting an M-CHAT in a month or two (and I hear that's with a pediatric neurologist...I'm sure their schedules are wide open for scheduling an appointment with me).

[Carla]

Maybe it's just a coincidence but my little boy who is 2 and a bit now (and also bi-lingual German / English) used to get really annoyed when he was around 6 months if I told him I just needed to prepare the fish / prepare the vegetables / hang out washing and then, instead, cheekily continued to do another task. Like I said, maybe pure coincidence that he would get restless and upset just when I changed tasks.

[BlueBirdMama]

Echoing the other multi-lingual families here-- you really see receptive language in play when a kid can understand a second or third language but not speak it well yet. I speak German to my 3 y.o. son and he goes to a German language pre-school, my husband speaks Turkish to him and we live in the US, so that's three languages in the mix. The weakest link is Turkish, because only my husband speaks to him, but he understands every single word, even though he has trouble answering in Turkish. Same w/ German until we started the German preschool, after which it took him just a few weeks to become totally German dominant. Meanwhile, his English is progressing amazingly well, even though he only gets it here and there. They are indeed little sponges!

[Meg]

I love these stories!
@ Johanna, that was so sweet, it brought tears to my eyes!
I wish I could think of an example with my own kids... I'm blaming it on sleep deprivation.

[J]

We took my daughter for her first eye exam at 5 months (eye problems run in the fam). When we returned at 11 months, she was talking and asked me where the bouncing bee was. Sure enough, at the 5 month appointment there was a bee hanging in the corner of the room on a spring. We were in a different room @ 11 months, hence no bee.

[chris]

Our daughter was 14 months old for her second Christmas. She LOVED a book of German winter/Christmas songs to the point that at the start of February I banished it to a bookshelf in the guest room. This past December (25 months) I finally brought it out again, and she clearly remembered it. As if just remembering the book wasn't amazing enough, I opened it to the first page and asked her "do you remember what this song is?" pointing at one page, and she correctly answered "Schneeflöckchen Weißröckchen", even though the last time she saw it she couldn't talk!

We have had many other "wow she knows a lot" moments, but I think that one was the most jaw-dropping.

[Amy Neal]

This is so totally true. I'm a natural talker, okay motor mouth, so narrating activities came really naturally to me when my kids were babies. It was always amazing to see how much they were taking in and how much they are able to remember.
The biggest success story about using this to our advantage with my son was in sleep training. He was still having quite a lot of night wakings at about 9 months old and never wanted a bottle, just seemed unclear as to what to do when he woke up in the night. So, one night is occurred to me to tell him. At bedtime, I just said to him, "You know how we're getting ready to fall asleep? You have your binky, you snuggle blankie, you lay down quietly with no crying and you fall asleep? If you wake up in the night, you can do it again, just like that! You can find binky and blankie and lay down quietly and fall asleep. You call me if you need my help but you are a great sleeper and I know you can go back to sleep when you wake up and it's still dark."
I felt totally retarded making this speech to a 9 month old, but I swear it worked. It wasn't immediately perfect, some nights I'd have to go in a reprise the speech but he started quickly putting himself back to sleep when he woke up.
And then, one night when he was close to two and talking I was heading to bed quite late and heard him in his room saying "find binky..... snuggle bwankie..... lay-down-no-crying and I fall back to sleep. I do myseff!" And he did. It was like a revelation to me. I had taught him that at nine months old and he had understood me and used it to self soothe!
There aren't many parenting moments better than that! :)

[meemee]

My son had a very fast and difficult birth, in which I yelled "I am going to die" at the top of my lungs about 8 times with complete conviction. Everything was fine, I was just truly in a panic.

My son slept 22 hours a day until he was 3 months old, and would rarely sustain eye contact. I knew this was not right. Then one night I thought about his birth, and I wondered. So I said to him right in his ear, "When you were born, it must have been very scary. I was scared and was yelling very loud. But I need you to know that I always loved you, and I always wanted you to be born, and I am happy you are here."

The very next day he woke right up, was awake throughout the day and made great eye contact!

Holy smokes!

[Bronze]

I'm 36 and I remember seeing a snowy owl fly across the beach before I turned one (I got a snowy owl toy for my first birthday because I'd liked the real owl so much). I know it sounds unlikely that I could still remember it, but I know it is a real memory, and in fact the picture in my mind is from the perspective of lying down in my pram.
I'm fairly sure I have a real memory, also, of being held by my father, and knowing who he was, but not having a name for him yet.
Much older (about 4 or 5) I remember listening to adults talk about me as though they didn't realize I was listening, and so I have always tried not to say things in front of my daughter that I don't want her to hear. But it's hard to watch my mouth!

[B's Mom]

When my son was 11 months old we were living out at our family cabin. The first day we were there my husband took him around showing him all the important things. He showed him the cuckoo clock and how it worked, but it was one of MANY MANY things that he showed him that first day. The next day my husband was joking around with me and said "you are so cuckoo" and our son, who was at the table eating" turned around and pointed to the cuckoo clock.

[hedra]

RE: the hearing tests - definitely worthwhile. We had Miss M tested as a toddler because she never looked up when I called her, and would only look up if her twin went over and told her to (usually getting in front of her to direct her attention). Turned out her hearing was PERFECT (better than mine!), but she was just 'screening her calls'... sigh.

BUT, that got me paying attention to some other things, and it turned out she is an introvert who is very task-oriented, prefers to work solo (strongly), and had very high anxiety due to dietary issues (too much fructose, she's on the low end of the absorption range - 'Fructose Malabsorption' is the dx - and the fermentation caused a drop in serotonin, which then caused a spike in anxiety behavior). She is much better on a lower fructose diet, but still has a strong focus and preference to Not Be Interrupted when working. Still will put people on 'ignore' if she's busy. She likes books/reading, but was mainly interested in photo books (not drawings/paintings/art). Scientist brain from birth.

Worth exploring the possibilities - anxiety, ASD, hearing, speech/language, etc. It may be none of the above, but paying attention through the process of getting testing done helped me figure out a lot more about what was going on. (Her anxiety was so severe that it would set off attachment function failures, where she would show signs of disordered attachment - just regular life was incredibly traumatic for her, poor bean...).

We also were glad we did the Speech Eval with Mr B - he does have an articulation delay, and has been through speech therapy once (and is going back in again at 8 years old, we think- find out on Monday)... baseline the first time was normal range, but we went back in six months and he'd fallen off the bottom of the range (had only advanced a little). Much better feeling to know and be able to help, than to just wonder.