I came across this article yesterday which outlined the top 25 words that your two year old should be saying. Apparently, beyond these essential 25, there are 310 words that toddlers are supposed to master. I’m fairly certain my kid has mastered 5,670 words because as you have read here before, HE NEVER AND I MEAN NEVER STOPS TALKING.

Top 25 Words:

Mommy
Daddy
baby
milk (sounds like Monk…)
juice
hello (How bout Hi?)
bye-bye
yes (Does OK Count?)
no
dog
cat (Kitty Kat is just as good right?)
ball
nose
eye
banana
cookie
car (With a weird Boston accent)
hot
thank-you
bath
shoe
hat
book
more
all gone

I know there are real concerns when it comes to language development and toddlers. I am constantly, and I mean almost every time I see her, bugging my speech pathologist friend if what Luke is doing or saying is correct and “normal”. She often pats me on my head and basically gives me the “stop being a freak woman” eye and sends me on my way. Just last week after Emma’s baptism I was bugging her about the way my kid like humms into some of his sentences…she’d never heard of this…he’s strange. GREAT.

Theres the pressure to read to your kids enough, to limit their TV, to talk to them and engage with them because if you don’t do this to the designated standards, your kid will be the friendless weirdo talking to the turtles in the corner of the classroom.

“The bottom line is this: Children should have 50 words by the time they are 2 and they should begin to combine words into phrases”

I don’t know for sure HOW many words Luke knows or says, but I know that he is a canary and repeats just about everything he hears us say. The other day while playing “hide n seek”, aka Lukes sits in the same spot and says “wheres luke” you pretend to not find him…then find him…he says “again” but doesn’t move and you start the whole process over again, Luke was laying on the ground and said “Where could he be?”….I think we’re on the right track as far as language goes…

He may still say truck like a dirty sailor, but he can say “excavator” and “helicopter” and “crushstation”, sings weird songs to himself, and yesterday at dinner we had a whole conversation about how daddy put a shirt on, went to work and took HIS (aka mine) car to work and he was NOT ok with it. Ahhh…toddlers.