Reasons I Would Like to Give When Asked Why My Eighteen-Month-Old Isn't Talking Yet
Quippy comebacks for a question I'm sure everyone is thinking (not that I'm overthinking this at all).
This piece is from 2022, when my now-four-year-old was not yet two, but time has borne us all away on its ever-flowing stream and now I have another child who is one-and-a-half and saying only a handful of words. I am a lot less stressed about it this time around—my 4yo never shuts his pie hole these days—but this piece was a lot of fun to write and fun to revisit, too.
Talking is overrated, am I right? The real question is, “what is he doing to reverse climate change?” Come to think of it, Barbara, what are YOU doing to reverse climate change?
We are practicing Neanderthals, so his father and I only communicate in variations of “ugh” at home, and he’s picked that up beautifully. Plus, his cave drawings are quite good.
Tragically, a hideous witch cursed him at his christening. Next time we’ll remember to invite all of his father’s side of the family.
Oh, he talks! He talks when you’re not around. When none of you are around. He talks a lot to his girlfriend, in fact. Who goes to a different day care. In Canada. You haven’t met her.
There’s a $5 charge for inquiring about his speech progress; thank you for contributing to his college fund! Want to double your donation today and ask when we’re planning to have another one?
Wow, glad to hear your precious little Emmayleighn was talking in full sentences at eleven months. That’s incredibly reassuring and completely reinforces the conscious decision I made on his birth day to compare him negatively with every other child he meets, for all eternity, or until he develops a complex.
We are focusing our efforts on developing his gross motor skills at the moment, because we think it would be a lot funnier to have a toddler who can drive a moped backwards through Costco than a toddler who can say “bye-bye, Grandma.”
He’s taken a vow of silence to protest the fact that season 4 of Bluey has not yet been announced.
Idk I guess I’m a bad mom lol.
In-person conversation isn’t his thing; maybe you should follow him on Twitter.
It could be worse, right? I mean, what if he talked incessantly? What if he talked only in the voice of Peppa Pig? What if he talked only in the inane rhyme of Dr. Seuss? What if he acted out emojis? What if he only talked through scuba gear? What if he blew all his communication through a kazoo? Where are you going?
He speaks in frequencies your ears simply can’t pick up. It’s a natural part of aging, unfortunately. Maybe you should get that checked out.
He got into Red Pill Reddit one day when my back was turned for 0.2983 seconds, and has decided to sulkily abstain from all audible speech, lest he “offend someone” and get “canceled” or accused of “mansplaining” or “arrested by the woke liberal mob and thrown into a forced-labor vegan snack manufacturing camp run by feminist AI bots.”
He very clearly quacked like a duck just now. Maybe you should be more accepting of other species and their languages?
Frankly, there’s too much noise in the world already, so we aren’t encouraging him to add any more until he gets a job to offset his verbal emissions.
The only thing he wants to talk about is Bruno, and, well…
Yep. You’ve guessed it. It’s because we got those darned pediatrician-recommended vaccines. As soon as the tube of poison entered his veins, our sweet and formerly perfect son’s verbal communication abilities dried up. Do you want to contribute to my GoFundMe so I can start a MLM for products that will reverse this?
This piece originally appeared, with slight variations, in The Belladonna Comedy in 2022.