\nFrom the Internet and from books I get the impression that “baby’s first steps” and “baby’s first word” are considered to be important milestones. My experience is that the very first ones are actually not particularly interesting at all.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe first time Ingrid stood without support, she didn’t realize she was doing it. Same for the second, third, and fiftieth time. But then one day she understood that she can stand, and from that moment on she can stand.\n<\/p>\n
\nHer first steps happened one or two at a time, but again she didn’t realize what was going on. Although she was taking steps, she wasn’t walking – she was standing but happened to move forward. And again, one day she understood that she can walk, and from that moment on she walks confidently (though not effortlessly or faultlessly) and probably won’t be doing much crawling at all.\n<\/p>\n
\nI imagine the same applies to language. First words are irrelevant. For many months now she has been able to say a few words and put them in context, i.e. she knows to say heja<\/i> when coming home or leaving home. But for a long time that looked like simple mimicking without understanding the meaning, the purpose of language. Only recently she started showing signs of really understanding that words belong with things, that things have names – she likes pointing at objects around the house and hearing their names. Just like with learning to walk, this happened quite suddenly. So one part of that quantum leap has probably taken place. I’m not sure about the other part – actively and purposefully using<\/b> words in order to achieve something. Maybe she already knows how to do it but cannot twist her tongue into the right shape, or maybe she hasn’t understood that yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the Internet and from books I get the impression that “baby’s first steps” and “baby’s first word” are considered to be important milestones. My experience is that the very first ones are actually not particularly interesting at all. The first time Ingrid stood without support, she didn’t realize she was doing it. Same for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ingrid_johanna","category-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}