All of our kids have different ways of saying certain things don’t they? They develop their own speech translations for certain words and most of the time it’s adorable and we don’t correct it (or at least, I don’t).
Both of my children are in speech language therapy and work hard to correct their words and make the proper sounds. My daughter is working on her ‘f’ sounds right now – first, four, flower, fun – and my son is focusing on ‘L’ in the middle of words especially – below, follow – etc.
But over the years, some of their words have become our words. Nachos are still called ‘cho chos’ in this house. Once at the speech therapist appointment, my daughter was talking about grandpa who she calls ‘bampa’. I translated for the therapist but insisted we aren’t working to correct that. We call grandpa ‘bampa’ now and it’s adorable.
I have on video somewhere my son describing how he was hungry – which at the time he pronounced ‘horny’. Which, of course, we thought was hilarious.
One of my favourites is how my daughter says ‘ate. As in ‘you ate my bagel’. She says ‘you H my bagel’. Replace ate with H and I dare you not to giggle. Adorable.
Yes, we are working hard on proper use of sounds and language, but these smalls pieces of their childhood won’t all be corrected at once. I’m holding onto their little voices and sounds as long as I can.
Do you have favourite words that your children have been saying?
