Lincoln: Learning Colors

I have been so amazed at this extremely simple change in language that has pushed Lincoln over the edge into talking a lot (for him). I'm well aware that at 20, almost 21 months, most boys and girls we know the same age or younger than Lincoln are talking A LOT more. They're using two word - even three word sentences. Technically Lincoln is not behind. He's just different. We've casually talked to our Pediatrician as well as 4 other people with degrees in the field of speech therapy or communication disorders and everyone says he's fine. "Don't worry until he's 3." Then worry. But, as a mom, I can't help compare my child to other children (no-no, I know) and wonder why he's not talking the same as other kids and when or if he will -especially with my sensitivity to communication delays given B's lack of spoken word and reported language delays across all the Wagner boys.

Anyway, I casually came across this post Why Johnny Can't Name His Colors on Facebook via my step-aunt/sister-in-law/Dad's wife's sister/what/who the heck are you Amy Ciucci??, and I read it because I like what she posts. It made perfect sense to me. I remember learning Spanish in 7th grade and one of the first things I got wrong on a test was for putting the color in front of the noun.

Brilliant. I switched up the order of my colors and nouns. Lincoln loves cars. He sat on his potty and we went through all of his cars naming, "Holly Shiftwell is purple", "Lightning McQueen is red", "Sally is blue". And I shit you not, the very next day he was naming everything he could see. Cars, balls, blankets, loofahs, cups, bowls, clothes, EVERYTHING. "blue", "purp", "pink" (his FAVORITE next to blue), "re", "ye", "gree", "black". I say, "Lincoln, what color is this whatever?" and he will always offer a color answer. He still gets them wrong sometimes (blue being his default everything color), but he will almost always re-evaluate his answer and change it to the right one. It's been so fun to watch his language burst just with focusing on how to identify colors. I'm looking forward to two-word sentences and more!! Well worth reading and thinking about how our casual sentence structure impacts language learning in our young children as they listen and observe! WEEE for learning fun!