Use your words

Jesse is at a wonderful learning age he seems to absorb everything like a sponge which at times can be stressful when you mouth of a bad word in a moment of not thinking and he mimics it back… thanks hubby, but otherwise it’s been wonderful, I just feel like I have appreciated these milestones so much more this time around and it makes me feel a bit cheated especially with Gabriel because his babyhood went par on par with my divorce but that’s getting off topic.

We have found that since Jesse started signing and then talking if he was feeling shy, lazy or is just in a bad mood he would either mumble or just point to what he wants instead of asking for it and that is where we came around with the phrase “use your words”, since we started with this not only has his vocabulary increased dramatically but the times that he actually mumbles or points has also decreased to an almost non-existent point.

So basically what we did if he mumbled or pointed we would look at him and go no Jess mommy/ daddy cannot understand you, or we don’t know what you are asking for, use your words, over a period it reduced to just use your words and he just understood and would know that he needed to tell us clearly what he wanted, this was obviously within reason, if he got really frustrated or was upset we would not push him and we also bore in mind age appropriate words but it really did make such a difference.

I would love to know if anyone else has implemented anything like this in their home for their little ones or if anyone signed with their kids, we only used the major signs for poop, eat, milk, all done, bath, sleep… I think that was about it but Jesse really caught on quickly and it didn’t affect his speech or how early he started speaking at all.