Toddler Talk, A Doctor's Visit, and Misperception

My younger son, Luke, started talking at 13 months.  (His first word was “dog” which was unusual because we didn’t have a dog at the time, but I digress…)  He gained words steadily until his ear tubes were implanted at 18 months old, and then his vocabulary and volume of words took off. 

I was a stay-at-home mom at this time.  I swear that boy used his word total for the day by 11:00 A.M.  He constantly talked.  All day long.  He talked to stuffed animals.  He talked to air. He narrated what he was doing.  And he loved to talk to me; I was his favorite person for a very long time.

I say this with humor and wistfulness because now Luke is 16 years-old, and I periodically long for those days of “Ma-meeeeeee” and “remote can-a-trol”.  At the time, I was torn.   As a teacher and as someone with a master’s degree in educational psychology, I celebrated this talking explosion.  It was amazing to watch Luke learn about the world and to learn about how his mind was processing it.  He needed me to converse with him so as to continue and encourage his language development.  As a human being and as an introvert, there were a lot of words being thrown at me all day, every day.  Sometimes I really needed some quiet.  Didn’t get it often, but the idea of silence sounded so very nice. 

So one day we were at the pediatrician’s office for a 2 year check up.   For whatever reasons, Luke was always super quiet when he went to the doctor’s, and Jake (big brother) and I were enjoying the quiet.  The pediatrician looked at me and said, “I’m really worried about Luke because he hasn’t spoken more than two words in this visit.  Maybe there is a problem.”

Jake and I looked at each other, laughed, and then looked back at the doctor.  “He’s good, doctor.  Trust me.”

Lesson learned:  Perception may not even be close to reality.