Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Jaden update

I just wanted to make a note of how wonderful Jaden has been doing talking. I feel like it's important to sort of keep track on how he's doing because it can be easy to forget in the midst of all that goes on during the day.
He has made leaps and bounds since just the beginning of the year. It is sooo nice! I can't even tell you how wonderful it feels to notice how "normal" his talking is becoming. When your child develops normally you might not even notice these sorts of things. I'll try to explain what I mean - before we had to really look and really listen for each word that he was able to say. We've gotten used to really tuning into every approximation and praising the heck out of each little bit he gets closer to the actual word and really enunciating our words with him. Kinda like our everyday language turned up a notch. Eventually, he began to say more and more individual words. Then, he started saying maybe two words together. One might have been a little clearer than the other but it was better. Then, we started to hear more endings on words. A big step in and of itself. Now, things are coming together so well that he is able to express thoughts (tell us when his sister does something to him!) and ask questions about things he wants to know with sentences instead of just using the words that got him something that he wanted (food or toys). He also will self-correct if he says something and it doesn't come out sounding right or if he notices that it sounds a little different from what he said when we respond back to him. He's using sentences now!
I think we still have a way to go but today I am so much more hopeful.
Just an example of his progress: Today the battery on my car was dead. I left a light on apparently. Chris came home to fix it. Jaden was asking "What daddy doing?" It wasn't a question that I asked for him to repeat. It was something that he just wanted to know. It was so good to hear. He also said, "I go help Daddy".