Speak for yourself

Tobey's speech has really been taking off, especially noted by friends who might not have seen him in a couple of months. Not only is his vocabulary and sentence structure improving, but he talks a lot more, even in previously shy or quiet moments.

The one thing I'd like to work on though is for Tobey to learn to speak with adults. It might be a lot to ask of from a toddler but I noticed that he doesn't answer simple adults' questions like "What's your name?" or "How old are you?" or "Is this your baby brother?". Or actually, he might answer them, if I repeat the question to him. Or worse, yesterday when Shoba, Ellen and Joyce all said hi to Tobey, he turned his head away from them. How embarassing.

I don't know how I got into the habit of doing that, repeating adults' questions to Tobey. I imagine it's a natural parent habit back from when he was first learning to say anything. I just did it on Sunday too at the church's "health fair." A woman at the table said hi to Tobey and after a deer-in-headlights reaction from him, I said, "Tobey, say hi back".

He says, "Hi back!"

I do hope for our kids to be confident and mature enough (eventually) to be able to speak to adults, like my cousin E.E. did. Even when he was just in high school, he'd extend a hand to shake with adults and introduce himself or say, "Hi, Uncle Marshall" whereas most teenagers (like us) would often just stand and say a soft "Hi, Uncle " (because we could never remember names right). The kid version of that was Nicholas the other night when out to dinner with Richard & Angel. He would speak right to the waiter in a confident curiosity, asking if we could have dessert among other requests. It could be personality but at the same time, I'd like Tobey to have that confidence, not to be intimidated by adults, if not by Nicholas' age, then at least by E.E.'s.