What really matters- Early Conversations- As two word sentences and vocabulary expand, our toddlers can better communicate their ideas with us. Words are ideas and concepts so toddlers can exercise their growing grasp of the world with their staccato dialogue. These warm exchanges are adorable and also deepen the social bonds between us.                                                

How to put it into practice-

My Experience-

Here Whitney asks me to “Sit” down and join her for her lunch (see “lunch conversation” video). She even asks “please” with some prompting. When she announces that “no” she does not want to eat. We move on to discussing her usual nap after lunch, conversing about “wake-up” and “sleep”

Tuning In-

These early conversations are such a joy as they better reveal what ideas are forming in our toddlers minds. Whitney knows that she usually takes a nap after her lunch. So when she tells me she does not want to eat any more, she has in her mind the idea that I might be taking her up for her nap. When asked what she wants to do, she says “wake-up”. It appears in her mind that wake-up is the opposite of sleep, so she is letting me know that she wants to stay awake instead of the usual naptime. When I ask her why she does not want to nap she says “sleep”. And since “No” is always a popular word around now, she announces no she does not want to sleep yet also announces “no” she does not want to wake-up. So dad gets stymied in the conversation. This is typical that conversations reach blocks as our toddlers express their ideas in words. The more back and forth conversations we have the better they get at expressing themselves.

Extending/Bridging-

In this specific conversation, I could have done a better job at extending it. Instead of getting bogged down that she said no to both sleep and wake-up, I could have easily speculated that she meant she did not want to take her nap. I could have continued the script by describing the salient features of the nap. Such as saying “Whtiney, you like when your daddy carries you up to your room, places you in the crib, and gives you blanky to cuddle up with.” “You feel so much better rested when you wake-up after your nap, right”. Again our toddlers receptive vocabulary is so much larger then their expressive vocabulary that most of the words in this script might be familiar to her. We always want to extend these exchanges as long as we can.