The Words of Bentley

Bentley is not much of a chatterbox. He's too busy moving!


However, a recent conversation with a friend started me thinking on the size of his vocabulary. According to the Dr. a 2 year old should know at least 50 words (and according to some other Dr.'s they should know at least 100!). I started to wonder... does he make the grade? :-)

So, without further ado, here are the words of the Bentley:

1. bottle (pronounced bobby)
2. mommy
3. daddy
4. baby
5. kitty
6. mine
7. my
8. you
9. me
10. I
11. coat
12. shoe
13. chugga (the word for trains)
14. beep-beep (the word for cars)
15. owl
16. teeth
17. toe
18. eye
19. nose
20. away
21. ball
22. peep (new word from Easter time)
23. hush
24. pool
25. fall
26. bee
27. no
28. way
29. more
30. yeah
31. eat
32. cookie
33. night-night
34. bye-bye
35. num-num (from cousin Felicity, indicates desire for treat!)
36. read
37. book
38. she
39. growl (I think it counts as a word!)
40. bike
41. tree
42. T.V.
43. good
44. Hawaii (don't ask why, I'm not sure)
45. want
46. two (he skips one, counting starts with two according to Bentley)
47. three
48. go
49. ready
50. why
51. thank you
52. sorry
53. guy
54. woof
55. do
56. home
57. tag
58. eat
59. wait
60. duck
61. blue
62. moon
63. cook
64. wall
65. more
66. oh
67. hi
68. Pooh (Pooh Bear is a big favorite lately)
69. happy
70. mmmm (yum!)
71. play
72. fly

There it is. According to at least 1 Dr. he's doing ok, and according to at least 1 other he's a bit deficient. :-)

He combines his words into lovely sentences:

when I ask if he wants to eat: "Oh - no way!"
when I ask if he wants to nap or eat: "I eat!"
when he's done with a cookie or brownie: "I want more!".
when the twins look at his toys "No baby, mine!"
when he's about to jump: "I fall!"
when it's time to go somewhere: "coat, shoes, coat shoes, coat shoes..."
when he wants you to come help him: "Go away!" (He uses it to mean come here)

I was reading last week that at 2 years most children know 200 words (yikes, according to that Dr. Bentley really better get a move on it!), and that at 3 years they know 300. This same article also said children learn fast at this age, and on average learn to say 10 new words a day. According to my calculations this would mean they learn 3,650 new words between 2 and 3 years of age. So how do they only know 300 by age 3? Hmmm... math is tough, I guess.

All in all, I've noticed the experts aren't all in agreement and they don't even all make sense. :-) So we'll stick with the opinion of our Dr. who tells us Bentley is intelligent and on track - why argue with that, right?!