Going Parental: Toddlers that talk… and talk… and talk…

My daughter is 3 1/2 years old. Although you would never know it now, she was a late talker. By late, of course, I mean that at 1 1/2 she was only saying a few words, ya know the way most 1 1/2-year-olds are. My girlfriend works for the Early Intervention ^[1] program so when she saw my daughter having fits and struggling to express herself, she immediately had her evaluated for speech therapy, which she qualified for.  To not have her evaluated would have been like a dentist letting his teenage son walk around with an overbite and a snaggle-tooth. There’s nothing to talk about. You slap braces on that kid’s ugly mouth.

Fast forward two years and all hell has broken loose. The kid not only speaks, but she doesn’t shut up. And she’s smart to boot! Forget speaking in full sentences, this kid is reciting soliloquies and singing songs from start to finish — and I mean my songs. I can’t listen to Jason Mraz ^[2]or Cyndi Lauper ^[3] without this tiny little voice in the back seat singing along to the music and ruining it with her cuteness. At the end of Cyndi Lauper’s remake of “All Through the Night” ^[4] with Shaggy ^[5], if you listen really carefully you’ll hear Shaggy say, “Big ups ^[6] Cyn.” That’s slang for giving someone you respect props. If you don’t know what “props” means, get the hell off my site.

So what’s my daughter’s new favorite thing to say? You guessed it! “Big ups Mommy!” “Big ups Dr. Kathy!” “Big Ups Grandma!”

Yeah, it’s cute. Yeah, it’s funny. But sometimes, it’s just plain annoying — all the talking, the constant chatter. And the questions? UGH, the questions are the worst! They’re incessant. They’re ludicrous, but most of all… they’re really hard to answer sometimes.

“Mommy, where do we come from?”

Great. That’s just great. How the hell am I supposed to explain that to her? And I know what you’re thinking. Tell her we come from our mommies’ bellies. Yeah, tried that. “But Phillip at school doesn’t have a Mommy, so where did he come from?” Great. Just. Fucking. Great.

And the car is the worst place to be. There’s no escape. You’re trapped with them. And if you try to make the music louder, they just yell over it. And then they accuse you of being rude because they’re still talking and you’re not listening and that isn’t very nice because when someone is talking you’re supposed to listen quietly and then answer their questions.

I could kick myself for teaching her this shit.

Here are her most recent inquiries, for your enjoyment:

“Can we live in a house? If we live in a house then we can have Christmas lights, even though we’re not Christmas people because we’re Jewish. I just think that if we had a house, then we can have Christmas lights and then we could maybe not be Jewish?”

“You were at Jenn and Carly’s wedding? They got married? But they’re girls. Where was I? How come I didn’t go? I have a dress. They’re my friends too. That’s not very nice.”

“I’m going to be a flower girl in Jaime’s wedding? What’s a flower girl? I want to carry pink flowers. What color is my dress going to be? I want a pink dress. Jaime’s marrying Jenn? More girls getting married? What color are my flowers? Can I tell Jaime I want pink flowers? What color is Jaime’s dress? Maybe we can match. Is the wedding this week? Do we have Dora yogurts at home?”

Yeah. You’re welcome.

Going Parental appears every Thursday. My daughter’s advanced level of speech appears all day, every day, especially in the car and always when you’re trying to sleep.