Thursday 10 September 2009

Little Miss Chatterbox

I have just finished reading the most excellent book, "Toxic Childhood" by Sue Palmer - a superb read which I recommend wholeheartedly to all parents to be, parents, grandparents etc. It talks about the importance of outdoor play, imaginative indoor play, restriction of TV and screen time etc etc.

One of her throwaway remarks (or it may, in fact, have been in her subsequent book, "Detoxing Childhood" which is basically a precis of "Toxic Childhood") was by 18 months a child should have up to 50 words and, by 2, up to 200 (one of her points was that children are increasingly coming to school with less and less language than they used to which is part of the reason for the difficulty teachers are having in getting them to read and write). Now, I promise you, I try my utmost not to be a competitive parent. I know that that is not good for me or Immy (there is no way I want to be like either of the mothers in the "Goodness Gracious Me!" sketch!).

However, it set me wondering - how many words does Immy know now, at 19 months and a week? So, I started making a list. It is now quite a long list. About 150 words, in fact. And those are just the ones I've remembered. (I'll spare you the actual list. Partly not to bore you and partly because I don't want to sit here copying it out!!) If ever I wanted proof that there was any of me in her (she's the spit of Marc and I struggle to spot my contribution), then I think this is it. Hopefully this is a small sign that I'm doing at least SOMETHING right.

2 comments:

Sass said...

Hi there. I found you via Ravelry. This made me smile. I have a list like that.

Now Peaches is three, she's trying out the bigger words. 'the houses are attractive', 'that block house [block of flats] is enormous'. I'm not sure if it's me or the childminder who is most preoccupied with housing.

As a result, OUR language is getting cleaner and cleaner...

Christopher Trottier said...

Interesting point, but nowadays (in order to survive) each person must accumulate a specialized knowledge. How this affects children, I don't know -- but it must. Perhaps the reason children are going to school with less language is because it is hard to make sense of all the specialized language in the English language.