Whale Butt, you are driving me barrels

Heehee..... I think he'll grow out of it. Try not to let it bug you.

Weren't y'all down south for a while?

Where "well" can sound like "whale"?

Maybe he's experimenting with accents.

"Driving me barrels" is tickling the southern idiom section of my brain, too -- not that, exactly, but something like it.

A frequent question to sozlet after a new language foray is "Where did you learn that?" She picks stuff up from all over, wouldn't be surprised if Mo picked up new and interesting language on your travels, if it's a little hard to remember precisely.

All in all, I think this kind of exploration is great, developmentally. Even if it drives us barrels. :-D

Heehee yourownself, littlek!

One of the biggest fights Mr. B and I ever had regarded "wheelbarrow" v. "wheelbarrel"

I am an imperfect stickler.

In the south Mo picked up "G-- damn it" and tagging his sentences with "you know". Perhaps he's been processing "whale butt" for the last couple of weeks....

I do know that for a while he insisted we call him "Stayy-vuhn" and it took us forever to figure out that it was his cousin's stepson Steven who had inspired the name.

I grew up in the south so I do speak the language but when you said "whale" could equal "well" I nearly fainted with recogniton, soz.

Why is it great developmentally though?

Things "driving him barrels" has been around longer than our trip south. I figure that it is one of those things that will eventually click with me like the demon Winnie.

Which is it? Wheel-barrow or -barrel? -barrow, right? My neice (6 years) starts most of her sentences with "SooOooOooo....." just like a teacher might do, which is where she must have gotten it. My nephew (nearly 2 years) now makes pshpshpsh gun noises and we have no idea where that came from.

I correct the neice when she misspeaks something these days, but we let her switching 'f' for 'th' go for too long. Finally, I would sit there with her and make her watch my mouth when I made the 'f' and 'th' sounds to try and correct her. She told me I was wrong about 'fwee' for three, etc, but she got the hang of it.

The nephew now has issues with his 'r's. We've mostly let him alone about it, but we've started trying to correct him a little here and there now.

Anyway..... I think it's ok, and even creative, of lil Mo.

Driving me barrels could be his version of
Driving me BONKERS ?

try copying him for awhile.
Make up strange words on the spot and jumble their meanings. Maybe turning it into a game that is confusing and has no real " rules" will take away his feelings of it being important or him thinking that it makes sense.
Catching him off guard with something silly like-
you need to clean your lawn before you are going to fly it' ( meaning clean your room before we go) will stop him in his tracks I bet. You would get a good belly laugh from him too I bet , and it may help drive home the point of " watching your words"

Driving me bananas?

Barrows move and can be driven. Bananas can't.

Another finely titled Boomer thread inspired by Mo.

Barrels... Cracker Barrel... Barrel full of monkeys... driving me crazy... driving me nuts. I got nuthin.

Exploring most anything is great developmentally. It shows confidence and curiosity, both important elements in achieving mastery.

Sozlet does that all the time, just kinda tries out words and combinations and sees how they go over. We have several sozlet-isms, things she said first and now the whole family uses. ('Course, can't think of any right now. If I do, I'll come back with examples.)

I think you can just treat it like any other behavior where there are hits and misses, with, for example, a lot of positive reinforcement for the hits ("man, what a great word!").

I'm not sure sozlet has ever driven me crazy with words, though that is probably a deaf thing and the fact that I can tune her out when I want to. E.G. gets annoyed sometimes, especially in repetition jags.

I'm told that Mo has an excellent vocabulary. I don't notice it. Maybe because I spend so much time talking to him that his use of words doesn't surprise me. Other people do comment on his word choices though.

A lot of his Moisms don't bother me at all "drive me barrels" is fine. "Chinchy thing" is not an issue. A broken umbrella, of which we have many, is a "cabrella". "Big cow" has been incorporated into the family speech pattern to mean anything lovely and amazing.

When he starts a sentence with "By the way...." it doesn't bug me. It's the "but" and "well" and "you know" things -- those verbal tics that drive me crazy in adults that make me crazy with Mo.

I suppose I should lighten up -- I don't want to impair his search of language but I also don't want him to have those annoying (one of Mo's favorite words) verbal tics.

I should confess that what passes as baby talk really drives me barrels and I've never understood why parents seem to encourage it by repeating it back. I've just never thought of it as cute and as a kid gets older it can be downright obnoxious.

Okay, I'm going to lighten up. I'll quit making those gagging sounds when Mo starts a sentence with "well" or "but".

He's giving his tongue a chance to catch up with his brain.

I swear my not-yet-2-year-old nephew said "cum-own' for 'come on' in the manner of Zaphod in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Could it have come from "driving me batty" ? Creative use of language is fine, but correct sounds are important. I had a cousin who spent years in speech therapy because everyone thought her lisp was so cute when she was 3, it was not so cute when she was 12. And don't get me started on baby talk, that should only be used when addressing one's favorite pet.

Typically when Mo's brain gets ahead of his tongue it sounds like this: "Look! Look! Looklooklooklooklooklook".

With me calmly suggesting that I AM looking.

And littlek, the Wiggles caused so many pronunciation problems (it's not "cahh" it's car) that I was going to ship Mo to Austrailia or at least Boston. Now he's picking up weird pronunciations from the Harry Potter movies.

Its like living with Meryl Streep around here.

Green Witch, that is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. In the name of "cute" it seems that people often reinforce their kids verbal tics and speech problems.

Some of Mo's crap is so silly and so funny that it is hard not to repeat it back to him. Then I think of how uncute it will be in a few years.

I grew up in a family where I was allowed to use slang and to cuss all I wanted as long as the context was appropriate. At all other times we were expected to speak clearly and with deliberation.

I'm blaming my dad for my fanatical approach to Mo's speech.

And Dad is dead and can't comment.

So there.

I've given the Momese lecture enough that I won't reprise it, (unless asked!) but "baby talk" has a very important function, really!!

When she was teeny, sozlet asked for her favorite Wiggles video by signing "dance" and "potty". What? Dancing potties, we don't have any dancing potties videos. Oh, "Dance Party"!

I agree with Soz, there is a time and place for baby talk. I don't mean over-the-top adults turning into 2 year olds type of thing.... but kids do it for a reason. Let them be the age they are. We were all so 'adult' with the first of my sister's kids that she turned out to be super serious (to a fault, really). This second kid is talked to with adult tones, but we have more fun with him and his learning process. Instead of correcting him all the time, we let him be his silly self. But, then, he's not even 2 yet.

Mo's not only got an active brain and a vibrant vocabulary, he has a greater need than many kids to have the center of the state when his bestest and most favorite adults are the audience.

I'm noticing that Mr. Noddy is using more and more "filler" material to preface his conversations/observations. Precise words are escaping him, but he wants the world to know he's still talking.

I agree that baby talk serves a purpose -- with a baby. And I agree that "family slang" is a fun and interesting thing.

Saying things correctly is more of a game than a lesson around here and we are not super serious about it.

Take, for example, what happened yesterday at Target:

Mo decided that we weren't allowed to open our mouths to talk so we had to muph-hump-umf everything and try to gage each other's meaning by inflection. We could understand each other remarkably well and it was funny as hell.

I guess my point is this -- isn't it better to not let bad speaking habits start in the first place?

My friend's daugher always referred to herself as "Me" -- "Me wants to go to the park". The family thought it was cute and tee-heed and made a fuss and now the girl in nine years old and she still refers to herself as "me".

Mo DOES know that he can capture people's attention and draw them into conversation using words like "clever" or "absurd" so I think you are right, Noddy.

That is very interesting about Mr. Noddy. You nudged me to remember when my Dad started losing words. That is a hard thing to witness.

Hold your dominion.