He's fun, he's chatty and such a little handful! By Imogene.

From other articles I've written on this page you may now be aware that I have a 2yr old son, named Freddie. Being part of a 2yr olds life is interesting, fun and hard work but totally rewarding in every way! Freddie’s always been a talkative baby and that hasn't stopped during his development. His favourite sentence at the moment is “Mummy, what you doing?” and I take great pleasure in telling him exactly what I’m doing and letting him be a part of it – even if I didn't want to, he’s incredibly nosey so he would find out one way or another! But it can also get incredibly annoying after the 1000000th time.

In my last article about my time with my little man I was talking about how he’s increasing becoming more aware towards my deafness. He still is and now when he wakes up he shouts “Mummy!” really loud in my ear and well, it wakes me up. He sits on the bed talking at 100 mph, telling me everything he knows. (Yes, he really is that cute!) Eventually once I've stirred and have woken, I say “Slow down Freddie, I can’t hear you” and he jumps off the bed and gets my hearing aids and hands them to me. However cute it sounds, it does make me realise how aware he is of my deafness.

In our house, he has learnt that if he wants my attention, he is to either to come to my face and say what he wants (normally with pointing to it too!) and/or pull at my trousers/arm. Because I’m terrible if I’m busy and doing something that my hearing just fades out (I don’t know if any other people have this?) and I rarely hear what is being said. My husband is very supportive of this and does tell him to come to me rather than stand in the other room shouting my name! (I think a lot of this will get better with his age, and if we have any other children, he will probably teach them too.) We also have subtitles on the television all the time, even the children’s programmes, simply because it helps me for when I finally get to sit down or get dragged to come and watch a specific programme. So I can help interact about what the characters are doing and ask him questions!

I’m also finding that the older he gets the more he looks at my face whilst teaching him a new word, like the other day I was telling him how to say “Elephant” as he has a toy Elephant, he kept saying “Eleant” and I mouthed it and he kept saying it, but yesterday he said it properly – They always used to say that for a Deaf child you have to tell them the word 100 times before they knew how to say it properly. And I said it about 15 times to Freddie and he was saying it perfectly – so it also makes me think about how much my Mum must’ve interacted with me and spoke to me, saying the long words and getting pronunciation right! Bless her; she’s still helping me now with some things!

It's becoming quite a comedy in our Household most days, as only the other day the phone was ringing (I didn't hear it what with the lounge door shut) but Freddie did, and he kept coming to me and back to the door and because he can't say the words 'the phone is ringing' he was chatting madly and I just couldn't understand what he was saying, then it clicked the phone might be ringing and I pretty much went to run for it, and Fred ran with me going "run, run run!" - safe to say when we picked it up we couldn't stop laughing!

Is anybody else having the same experience at the moment with their little one or ones? Do you have a way of telling your child how to get your attention? I’d love to hear anyone’s experience or what they've heard are great tactics!