Ball Ball Table

My baby boy L has been babbling for a while now. He knows a few words and is starting to understand more of the world around him. I have been trying to teach him a few more words as we have nightly playtime between the two of us. Currently, I’m trying to teach him the words table and chair by playing with miniature versions of the items.

L loves to stack things and say wheeeee when it stands by itself. We have been doing that with those miniature tables and chairs. When I take the table, I slap the table with my hand. I say table and play them like a drum. When I say chair, I pick them up and shake them a bit like a maraca. He has the word and the action to distinguish between the two types of objects. Then we will stack the items and he knocks them over.

This has been very entertaining for L the past few nights, but recently, he went over to the big art table that is in our playroom and started smacking it with his palm. He kept saying ball. I know L says ball for anything that is round or circular and he is usually good at finding those kinds of shapes. I looked all around the table and couldn’t find anything round or circular. He kept going over to the art table and slapping it to say ball.

I had no idea what he was doing and thought nothing of it. When I finally put him to bed that night, it hit me all of a sudden - he was trying to say table! He couldn’t say the first part with the T because he doesn’t know how to make the sound. But he was playing the drums like I did while saying ball for the ending of the word table because that’s what he knew how to pronounce!

I started to smile when it finally occurred to me what L was doing and I ended up telling my wife about it when she came to the room. It was a funny moment for us and I’m glad I decoded what L was saying. Maybe I’m reading too much into what he is doing, but the fact that he was mimicking the drum action I was doing with table makes me pretty confident he was trying to say table!