Language Post

Warning: Boring

Over the past 48 hours, and yes, the window seems to be that specific Charlotte made this sudden jump with her use of personal pronouns.  She is finally sorting out how to use "me" vs. "you" and "my" vs. "your" and all the other first and second person pronouns that change according to who is talking.  

As an aside, a hallmark language sign in kids on the autism spectrum is an inability to ever sort this out. These kids will often use "I" for "you" and "you" for "I" for example, which makes sense, when you consider abstract thought and perspective taking is really hard for these kids.  So when their dad says, "It's my turn" they think "my" always means the other person, and never get that the meaning flips depending on if you are talking or listening.

But Charlotte does not have autism and she is outgrowing that error pattern.  She still says "carry you?" when she wants me to carry her up the stairs but other than that she is pretty adept at flipping the pronouns around, much more so than when the weekend started.

And then today we were taking Pancho for a walk and she was using "us" and "our" for the first ever.  She was telling me how Pancho was going to "walk with us" and how the snow shovel was "our snow shovel."  Kind of neat to see that just happen in a blink of an eye.  

I'm so used to having explicitly teach these concepts in creative and endless ways, so I continue to take note when it happens so organically and quickly, like it is supposed to.  So none of this is probably interesting to anyone but me, since I am describing language development in over 90% of all kids.  But to me it is noteworthy when I spend my workdays seeing the kids who are not in this 90% group.