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I Love Watching Children Learn Speech and Language
It was one of my favorite parts of being a preschool teacher and now one of my favorite parts of being a parent. It’s why I considered becoming a speech language pathologist and took many of the classes I would need to become one. (I ended up not making it into grad school and decided I was happy “just” being a preschool teacher.)
I love that kids learn speech sounds in a predictable order.
I love that they make predictable mistakes. Like once they figure out you can add an -ed for past tense they’ll follow the rule too much and add it to words that aren’t like that.
But I also love that each kid is unique. Mine are both likely on the spectrum and watching them learn has been especially fascinating in my opinion.
My younger one, who’s three, has many words but mostly uses them to label while he’s playing. He can tell you the name of nearly any vehicle, color, letter or number. He also does a lot of sound effects. Just in the past few weeks he’s finally begun using words in context with other people such as saying “good bye now” or “eat more animals” when he wanted me to bring him more cheddar bunnies.
