Master Z – Conversationalist and jokester

At the last check up with our maternal and child health nurse, the nurse commented on how impressed she was with Master Z’s language. She told me that at two years old, they’re happy with two word sentences, such as “Mummy up” and a handful of words. It just boggles my mind to think about how little we would know of where his brain was at, if he didn’t have the ability to tell us. As it is, I am often surprised by the memories he has, the words or phrases that he will use which were clearly absorbed months and months and months ago. He is taking in so much on a daily basis, but I am only made aware of just how much because he verbalises it. Case in point: We give him vitamins every morning – a glass of Vital Greens, a measure (in a medicine cup) of olive leaf extract, a teaspoon of flaxseed oil and a couple of drops of vitamin D. He loves them and asks for them every morning now. This morning when I was measuring out the olive leaf extract, he kept asking for the big cup, referring to the bigger medicine cup that we were using but haven’t been able to find for the past couple of weeks. I thought we’d finally moved on in the past couple of days from him wanting the “big cup”, but apparently not. His grandparents were having breakfast with us this morning and when I explained to Master Z that we didn’t have the big cup, just the small one, he responded by saying “Grandma or Grandad or J washed it”. This was the explanation that I gave him two weeks ago – that I thought that Grandma or Grandad or J (our wonderful cleaner) had washed it and put it away somewhere that I couldn’t find it. There is no way I ever would have thought he’d remember that level of detail, but he did. I wonder if he mentioned it again because his grandparents were present and he was hoping that they would bring it out.

I was chuffed the other day when R was about to read “Peggy” by Anna Walker to Master Z and Master Z said “This is my favourite book!”. He recognises lots of his books and can ask for some of them by name. He knows his first author name too, Oliver Jeffers – probably his favourite author.

Master Z has also been asking for music every day. A couple of weeks ago the conversation would go something like:

Now the conversation is more like:

So far he likes P!nk, Gondwanaland, Queen (“We will rock you” had to be played several times!), Florence and the Machine,  swing music, Afro Celt and jazz music. He needs to start asking his Daddy for music on the weekends so that he gets an additional spectrum of music!

I’ve been teaching him to ask for things more politely than jut using “Want” as a way of asking. He is really good at saying the whole sentence structure when I ask him to ask for something nicely, and I think I’ll be a little sorry when he finally gets the word order correct. For now, his “polite” form of asking is “Can I have please some <insert noun or verb>?” , for example “Can I have please some more fruit?” or “Can I have please some listen music?”. If I model the correct structure for requests such as listening to music, he will use the verbs correctly, but still place the “please” after the verb, not before.

He is starting to play with language, and make his own little jokes up, either by deliberate mispronunciation or unusual usage of words. “Yoghurt” has become a word of hilarity in our household of late, all started when I was teaching him to say “Have a good day” to his daddy, and he was focused on eating his yoghurt so came out with “Have a good yoghurt daddy” Laughter ensued and now “Bye bye Daddy yoghurt” is a source of amusement every morning. Many mornings he experiments to make it funnier – this morning it was “Bye bye Daddy yoghurt zaaaa”. I laugh at the play but more than that it is the expression of mischief, and expression of “I’m being funny” on his face that cracks me up every morning. And so it goes on, as long as he is getting the reaction that he wants, and I find it hilarious and encourage him just so that I can watch the expression on his face.