Speaking of Speaking

Today Mike told me that we’ve been slacking lately on teaching Tennyson new signs. I replied that it’s because I’ve been trying to teach him to talk.
But really, we’ve been working hard around here. For a while, we focused on words Tennyson needed to communicate. Which meant signs for things he likes to eat or drink, or things he wanted to watch or do.
Lately, our focus has been on animal sounds. I’m pretty proud to say that he’s getting good. As good as can be expected at least. I really try to ignore the fact that pigs and ducks say the same thing, as do lambs and goats. And pretty much every animal under the sun roars.
Anyway, I thought tonight that I should finally get some of his talking progress on video.
Without further delay, I present to you Tennyson’s animal sounds.

The next video we have here is a sampling of words/signs that Tennyson knows.
I got as many as I could with his short attention span. Honestly, there aren’t much more that he can say/sign. He has a sign for Mickey Mouse that didn’t make the video, as well as a sign for Elmo and iPod. Those signs didn’t make the video because I didn’t want him to throw a tantrum to get one of those three things once mom mentioned them.

He really is making progress. I’m impatient and would love for him to be speaking in full on sentences by this point, but I know that for only four months of therapy, he’s really making a lot of progress. I also know that we still have a long way to go. An average 2 year old has about 250 words. Obviously we have a lot less than that. We’re working on it. And we’ll get there… just on Tennyson’s timetable. Not mom and dad’s.