Dear Diary: Two-Year-Olds' Communication

​The kids are all very far behind in speaking, from what every other mother tells me their two-year-old is saying. But the kids are picking up new words quickly. At least one per day. We are at the difficult stage where they try to say a lot of things, and I have no idea what it is they want to convey, and we all get frustrated. One will say, for example, “Baw, baw, baw,” and I can’t figure out for the life of me what it means in that particular context. 

So, I’ll ask another of the children, “Do you know what he is trying to say?” and of course they respond matter-of-factly, “Baw, baw, baw.” I don’t know if they really know or are just acting smart. They refer to each other with the first sound in each of theirs names, except for Molly, who actually gets the vowel “O” with her “M.” After they’ve been in the bathtub for a while, I’ll ask, “Who wants to get out first?” Each kid quickly points to the person next to them, or even tries to lift their neighbor out of the water, saying every other name sound that they can, as fast as they can. Even without words, they communicate clearly they absolutely love bath time!
​—March 6, 1995