A week ago yesterday, Ellie - out of the blue - began using first-person pronouns correctly. "I'm going to ride my bike!" she announced, running over and climbing on the giraffe stationary bike I'd gotten her that day. I couldn't believe my ears. I'm not sure what prompted this foray into first person, although it could be related to the Dora videos she'd recently started watching. She's learned a lot from Elmo, to be sure, but I admit I've always wished Elmo would show kids how to use pronouns correctly. (The fact that her father, her babysitter and I use pronouns correctly doesn't seem to matter a whit.) It's interesting to me that she seems to learn more about language usage from TV characters who are her age than she does from the adults interacting with her.
She didn't - and hasn't yet - completely switched to correct usage. There's still a lot of "You want to ride your bike?" Ellie like to prompt us what to say to her, as a way of describing what she's thinking or wants to do. I was curious when she'd start switching over to first-person; two and a half (give or take a couple of months) seems to reasonable.
In other news, Irie has been doing a lot of vocalizing these recent weeks, and increasingly, when she's agitated she includes the noises "mama" among her stream of communication. I'm not convinced this is entirely intentional, though. I don't think it quite qualifies as a first word yet.
But I do like where this trend is heading. : )
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