Compared to Leo, Joji’s language ability is far behind. I’ve been reassured that this is typical of a second child, but it still is something that had me very worried.

Leo was just a little chatterbox, and going back in these blog posts it is possible to see that he started talking early. Every kid is different though, and where Joji is lacking in language ability he makes up for in coordination. At 2 years old he is throwing and kicking balls with decent accuracy whereas Leo was not.

There was a period of time when I got really worried because Joji was using the word “up” for a couple of weeks and then just stopped completely – as though he was incapable of using the word. Then it was just babbling for a couple of months, with “mama” eventually showing up as part of his vocabulary. He repeats the final word in a sentence now which is helping with his pronunciation, but there are still a lot of sounds that he cannot do well and instead falls back onto substituting them with a ‘D’ sound or a ‘G’ sound. (“Leo” started as “Leelo” but is now “Gee-o” as of last week)

So, Joji’s words are: open, shoes (can mean socks), socks, outside, “oishii”, “oishii, ne”, mama, Leo, daddy/dada, food, “choudai”, go, ball, “wan wan”, apple (any kind of fruit is apple)