I am no baby expert. That has been made abundantly clear. I do, however, have a baby. BUT— if what Dr. B tells me is true, all babies develop at their own pace and with their own personal agenda. Therefore, I am caveating this post with the fact that the following information is both limited by my lack of knowledge in speech pathology and my test group of my one and only child.
Nevertheless, I present…
THE SEVEN STAGES OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
STAGE I: FOR THE LOVE OF ELMO
With the exception of Mazzy's first word (which was HI), her next few words all reflected the greatest loves of her short life. Her second word was BOO, which is her blankie (so named because we use the blankie to play peek-a-boo) and it is of utmost importance as it is on Mazzy's person at almost all times.
Her next word was DADA. Obviously. Mazzy said DADA for months and months before she even attempted MAMA. You can read written documentation of the torture here. And I have also put together the following video entitled "The Baby Hates Me" to serve as visual evidence:
Soon after DADA and BOO and well before MAMA, and without ever seeing a lick of Seasame Street— Mazzy mastered ELMO. This, as you might imagine, was both impressive and maddening. Here's what happened— Grammy came over one day with a book about Elmo going to the potty. I believe it possesses the brilliantly creative title of "Elmo Goes To The Potty". It took Mazzy all of a half hour before she knew that furry red little muppet on a first name basis. And in one day, ELMO surpassed myself in levels of importance and reached the previously untouchable ranks of DADA and BOO.
To this day, there is no ELMO that goes unnoticed or unnanounced, including the nickel-sized Elmo sticker stuck on a wall visible only through the crack of a doorway at our pediatrician's office.
STAGE II: THE SURVIVAL KIT
Once Mazzy got beyond the three loves of her life, she moved onto basic survival skills. This included BABA (bottle), BA-BA (pacifier— only a mother would notice the slight pause between the two syllables that separated it from bottle) and NANA (banana). After these three basic needs, came secondary necessities. Words like BOOK, BALL, and BABY (most often used to refer to herself in the mirror). The word iPAD showed up in this stage as well. I fault my husband for that one. I am convinced that he fed it to her because he thought it would be hilarious if she said iPAD before MAMA. I should tell you that my husband doesn't fully understand the word "hilarious" and regularly confuses it with the phrase "heinous act committed against thy wife".
STAGE III: IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME
At about a year, Mazzy finally said the word MAMA. She said it while we were skyping with her while on vacation which was wonderful and heartbreaking all at once. Since then, MAMA has become her most frequently used word. It is adorable and endearing. But I am told that at some point it will feel like this:
STAGE IV: THE HUMAN SPONGE
At first, Mazzy was just saying words that we were actively teaching her. Names of animals and their sounds. Names for her toys and different foods. Things we saw on the street like trees and cars. But then she started busting out random words that we had never tried to teach her. Words that were much more complicated like TISSUE, DOCTOR, and KNAPSACK. This is the moment where we realized we had to stop any sort of swearing whatsoever. FUCK.
STAGE V: THE BROKEN ROBOT
This stage started about a month ago. Mazzy now has quite a few words in her vocabulary. And when the moment strikes, she likes to name them in quick succession. She lines up toys on the coffee table and rattles off the names, she picks up books and flips through the pages as she shouts out the items pictured, and she practices her words for body parts by pointing to her nose, her feet and her belly.
But since so many things are entering her brain at once and she often picks up speed as she goes, at some point, she begins to mix all her words and gestures up and get them all wrong. She'll point to a BOOK and say NOSE and then point to her EAR and say MOO and then point to a BLOCK and say AVOCADO until she starts to resemble Rosey from The Jetsons having a meltdown. Or Vicky from Small Wonder after Jamie has spilled water down her back. Or C3PO in that scene from Star Wars (I have now tapped all my Star Wars knowledge with that reference).
STAGE VI: THE SNUFFALUFFAGUS CONUNDRUM
Nowadays, it seems like everybody is fully aware of the existence of Snuffaluffagus. But back when I was a kid, everybody thought he was Big Bird's imaginary friend. I wanted so badly for the rest of the gang to know Big Bird wasn't making Snuffy up. And it was always so close! Snuffaluffagus would have to go home to brush his teeth or something and then two seconds later Maria and Gordon would show up and be all like "Big Bird is such a liar!" It was EXCRUTIATING. This is how I feel now when I try to bring out my GENIUS BABY in front of friends. Mazzy clams up and acts all REGULAR BABY on me. And then everybody is nodding, like mmhmm, just another crazy mommy who thinks her kid is so freakin' special. Which is ridiculous. I don't think that at all!!! Which brings me to the final stage…
STAGE VII: THE HARVARD DEBATE TEAM
Mazzy hasn't reached this phase yet but I am certain it is right around the corner. There's a small possibility that I am wrong. Could be THE YALE DRAMA CLUB, I guess.
Since this post is obviously of no real help or value, I thought I might offer you a resource if you have any actual questions or concerns about your child's language development. It is a site called Your Child Talking run by my blogging friend, Lori, a certified speech pathologist. I am sure you will find it more than helpful.
bwahaha! Very funny!!! If it makes you feel any better, my daughter’s first two words were Backpack and Map (thank you, Dora).
And I heart Snuffy. he was always a big fave of mine!
In that video it seemed that maybe she was allergic to saying Mama since she kept sneezing when you asked her to say Mama. I would agree that it is not hilarious that she said iPad before Mama. (My little one watched the video with me and was very excited to see baby talking on the computer – I have a feeling she will demanding to see this video again).
When my daughter started talking, I was DESPERATE for her to say mama. I devoted large amounts of time and energy to the cause. Now I twitch when I hear it and try to stifle the urge to run and hide.
I’m visiting from SITS! What an adorable little girl you have! I remember when my oldest daughter learned to talk and one of her first words was “Da Do”…she said it for EVERYTHING! Great post!
Dada gets most of the recognition in this house, too. Unless she’s pissed….then it’s “MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Typical girl.
Umm…I actually have a whole post in my head about why “dada” happens first.
I’ll get to it, promise!
And oh my god! I also had the WORST existential angst about Snuffleupagus never getting seen by anyone else. Made me six-year-old’s blood pressure shoot through the roof!
My daughter’s first words were rye bread. My son’s was seltzer. What can we deduce from these facts?
Mazzy is so cute! I can’t tell you how much I love that Family Guy video. It is really the most hysterical and accurate thing I have ever seen!
Also, you should check out this cool TedTalks about a guy who recorded every minute of his newborn’s first year and has compressed all of his kids’ attempts to say water over a long period of time into a 40 second audio clip. It’s totally fascinating! http://bit.ly/fQnWEE
*CHUCKLE*
Exactly the same with my wee tot – you couldn’t have explained language development better.
PERFECT!
OH YES!!!! My kid said MaMa one time, then launched into DADA where she stayed for like 4 months. No one believed that she said MaMa first.
And you forgot the “No” phase. Where they suddenly understand what NO means and decide that EVERYTHING is NO! Even when they really mean YES! at which point they will get really mad at you because you were supposed to KNOW that NO means YES when it doesn’t mean NO!
I love that the next logical step after snuffaluffagus, is the harvard debate team!
In my opinion, they do not show Snuffy nearly enough. Or Big Bird. Since when do those two muppet stars take a backseat to Murray Monster? Who is Murray Monster REALLY, anyway??
My apologies. Mazzy begs and begs and begs to see her videos and the whole baby video making endeavor has come back to bite me swiftly in the ass.
Yes. I am already realizing that she never calls for DA-DEE when she wakes up at 5am. It’s MAMA every time. Actually it’s more like MAAAAA-MAAAAAAAA!!!!! I wonder if I would have an easier time ignoring her if she was screaming for someone else.
Except when she wakes up in the middle of the night (see above comment) which is AWESOME.
Ooops. I think I stole from your comment when I responded to the comments above. I hope you take that as a sign that I really relate instead of suing me for plagiarism.
I am guessing that’s why they changed up the Snuffaluffagus story line. Too anxiety ridden. But I am a firm believer that kids today should have it just as hard as we did.
They they love pickles and Jewish delis?
Just spent the last twenty minutes watching that thing. Fascinating stuff. People are so much smarter than I am.
You are right. I totally left out the “NO” phase. We are currently in it. Very hard to feed them anything but crackers in the “NO” phase. Chicken? No. Broccoli? No. Meatball? No. Cheese? No. Pasta? No. Cracker? CRA-CA!!!!!!!!!
Don’t hate me for cracking up at that video.
That reminds me of my oldest. Though it was Daddy he wouldn’t say. My husband would hold him and say “Da-da” and my oldest would laugh and say “Mum-mum-mu.” The more that Hubs would repeat da-da, the LOUDER my child would scream MUM!
Of course, I only found this hilarious b/c he could say my name. 😉
That I Hate Mama video is fantastic. I mean miserable for you but hilarious to watch.
PS. Random question: why vimeo instead of youtube?
My oldest’s first word was dog ><
Re: Stage 3 video – my recent fb status update actually was the following: “I resolve to not be frustrated by the word “Mommy!” which should be the most beautiful word to hear, knowing there are women aching for the chance to hear it … so will not be frustrated to hear it even if it is for the 500th time in as many minutes. Or seconds. Or halves of seconds.”
My daughter teases me with mmmmmmmmmm-dada!
she’s been doing that for months…why? because she hates me…
So you’ve just come over here to gloat, have you?
A lot of my videos use music and youtube has copyright restrictions. If you upload a video and they don’t have the license to the song, it will appear with no sound whatsoever. Vimeo doesn’t seem to care.
At least he/she played fair.
Uh-oh. How old is your kid? I am not looking forward to this.
That is just cruel. Also? Funny. Smart cookie, that one.
I beleive same (or close to) age as your lil’ pumpkin … 19 months. I have a 7.5 year old, but as they get older they start to ignore us instead of other way around 😉 Also. Not to compare babies. But my toddler doesn’t have nearly the same vocabulary as yours. However. While I am convinced your daughter is a mini-genius for her current language capabilities, I am equally convinced mine is a genius for deciding that rather than waste time learning our silly words, she is slowly converting us over to learning hers 😉 (hooray for not comparing babies as they all rock!)
My son says UP when he actually doesn’t want up anymore, therefore down. Also, all animals are uppy (puppy)
My son says UP when he doesn’t want up any more, therefore he actually wants down. Also all animals are uppy (puppy).
the video makes me laugh, children in the video look a lot like my son.
Hi My Daughter only says certain things. she can say mama, mommy, ball, bye bye, da da, recently no. she is 2 years old and i fear her vocabulary is very far behind. i would think by now she would be speaking in half sentences but no. i have never spoke baby talk to her. i talk to her all the time and i listen all the time. plus i work with her on ABC’s and counting. i still have gotten nothing more then that small list. i even point things out and tell her what they are repetitively hoping she repeats it. im at a loss. how can i get her to talk more? will she ever talk more?
The reason she said “Mama” so late was obviously that “Mama” LITERALLY GOES WITHOUT SAYING. Seriously. Mama is THE most important thing. Mama is ALWAYS there. Using a word for “Mama” is like using a word for “air”. Why would a baby ever need to refer to AIR? She wouldn’t. It’s always there, and it goes without saying. Mama, like air, only becomes important enough to need to be referred to when the ABSENCE of Mama (for any truly difficult to endure amount of time, anyway) becomes a real possibility. Like… when you’re on vacation!
[…] Toddler Talking Last week I wrote a post about Mazzy and her quickly growing vocabulary called The Seven Stages of Language Development, which included stages you have probably read about in important medical journals such as The […]