Conversations with Sophie

[Another old post from May 2011, when Sophie was 2.5]

Crazy language progress here at the moment. Every day, more and more complete sentences are coming out of Sophie's mouth, with concepts, comprehension and vocabulary getting more and more jaw-dropping every day.

Some signs of the incredibly advanced level of her language- she's now using all the words in her sentences- every one. She's using plurals (in fact, she corrected me last week when I said "feet", and she rather loftily told me, "It's "foots", mummy". Ha!) She's "reading" books by putting her own interpretation on the pictures. She questions us relentlessly about everything, and tells us in her own words what she's just heard. She has a very thorough understanding of past and present tense. She knows many positional and comparative words and uses them correctly and regularly- over, under, inside, outside, now, later, and so on.

Sophie likes to talk about other people and animals, and tell me what they're doing or what they want. Her imagination at 2.5 years of age is also quite stunning. In the last twenty minutes, we've walked home from daycare, come home to see the cat, and turned on The Simpsons (which she loves).

On the way home, we passed a dog barking behind a fence:

Sophie: "Mummy, you hear that dog?"
Me: "Yes, I do- he's barking very loud. What's he saying?"
Sophie: "He's saying, "Excuse me, Sophie. Please come back."
Me: "He wants you to come back?"
Sophie: "Yes. He's saying, "Sophie, come into my house."
Me: "What does he want you to do there?"
Sophie: "He wants me to play ball."

We were also keeping a sharp eye out for cars, making sure we didn't get squashed, and every car that passed us by, I asked Sophie the colour. She has really clicked with colours in the last month and now knows all the big ones, and a few extras. Blue, green, yellow, red, pink, orange, purple, black, white, brown- she's all over them. But I wasn't expecting her to get this one just right- when I asked what colour the just-passed car was, I would have thought white or blue was a good enough answer. But when she correctly said, "Grey!" it was another jaw-dropper. She knows grey? Whoa.

Halfway home, we talked about Sophie's beloved cat, Sheba:

Me: "Who's waiting for you at your house?"
Sophie: "Sheba!"
Me: "What's she saying right now, do you think?"
Sophie: "She's saying, "I need my mummy and my Sophie! Where's my mummy and Sophie? They're outside, right there."

Just watching the Simpsons a few minutes ago- a Halloween episode featuring the glass-enclosed aliens Kodos and Kang.

Sophie: "Look, mummy- it's a monster!"
Me: "Oh dear! What's he doing?"
Sophie: "He wants to go in the house."
Me: "What does he want to do in there?"
Sophie: "He wants to drink a bottle of milk."

Sophie is also now consistently counting to eleven and is able to "add" one plus one, or "subtract" one from two (I wouldn't quite call this a done deal yet, because it's pretty simple stuff- she can count what's there before and what's there afterwards- but it's not a bad start!). But she really flummoxed us the other night when we had friends over for dinner, and one asked how old she was. I was halfway through saying, "Oh, she doesn't know that yet..." when Sophie piped up and said, "Two!"

Double whoa.

She has a favourite story she likes to tell me about daycare lately when I ask her what she's been doing during the day.

Me: "What did you do at daycare today?"
Sophie: "I play with Anna."
Me: "That's nice. What games did you play?"
Sophie: "Sophie and Anna went driving in the car."
Me: ".... Oh, really? Where did you go?"
Sophie: "We went shoppies."
Me: "And what did you buy?"
Sophie: "An orange."

Yesterday relating the same story, she said she didn't know where they'd been, but they'd seen lots of others cars.

On the weekend, after her swimming lesson, she said, "Excuse me, mummy? I want to go swimming in the other pool."

She's also coming up with absolute howlers, like the other night when she informed daddy, "When you're a big girl, you can cook cakes too!"

She has a bright animal frieze around her bedroom wall, and can now name all 26 animals

She also makes oddly perceptive comments about a whole range of things, especially when it comes to other people- often noting that someone "looks sad- he needs his mummy" or is angry. Watching the TV mini-series of Tim Winton's Cloudstreet the other night, which features a living, breathing, and somewhat haunted house, she informed us that the house was "very dark." It wasn't literally dark in the part we were watching, but she just got what they were trying to show.

And lastly, she's now learned her full name, first and last, which neatly completes the last of the four-year-old language milestones in the Ages and Stages Questionnaire. That's right, she's scoring 100% on the 4-year-old ASQ in communication, and in fact she passes every other developmental category of the test for that age as well.

Sometimes I find myself wondering whether her brain injury had the opposite effect to what we expected, and has actually caused her neural pathways to re-route in ways that have amplified her original language potential. I don't know if it's that, or if it's just that the damage somehow avoided every important neuron and synapse in her head. I have no idea. But I am completely fascinated watching her grow and unfold, and quite astonished at the conversations I find myself having with her at such a young age.