when is "nana" not a banana ?

[throckenholt]

2 days ago one of my 16 month old twins decided he knew the word banana - shouted bnana repeatedly while I was eating a banana.

This morning I was packing a banana for my lunch - he again started yelling bnana - I gave him one and he wasn't impressed - turns out "bnana" now means all food and in this case is was specifically daddy's wheatabix !

How on earth are we supposed to keep up when they keep morphing the meaning of words ?

I can see the tantrums looming on the horizon

DD2 did something like this at about this age - she had basically one word, which sounded like spider, but it did for everything BUT with almost imperceptible variations - I think it had about 14 different meanings at one point (one of which actually was spider!)

Children very commonly over-generalise categories like this. DD (17 months) calls every vehicle on the road a 'car' and uses the same word for a train. She also says 'book' when she sees a 'newspaper'. I imagine it's a stage that will pass once your ds learns that there are lots of different types of fruit. How about having fun with a fruit recognition session?

my son called a lolly Thomas yesterday. he was shouting 'Thomas' for a lolly - where do they get it from?

when dd2 was little I asked her what she wanted to eat and she said, 'flavour'. She had a right old tantrum because I couldn't figure out what she wanted. DD1 and I ransacked the kitchen for yogurts, cereals, etc. After about 20 minutes we figured out that she was after crisps. Cheese and onion flavour.

During mealtimes ds1 used to shout BUGGINS at the top of his voice, pointing to the kitchen cupboards. Took us ages to work out that he meant he wanted PUDDING instead of his dinner.

Buggins?

When it is my husband's mum

DS1 used to use "bobble" for bubble, purple and Bob the Builder so it was fun working out which he meant lol

every animal is CAT! even poor old shrek is called cat.

at one stage dd's favourite snack was 'peter & thomas'- turned out to be pitta bread & hummus.

My DS1 calls bread "mar" - I have no idea why as he uses the correct name for everything else. It's always mar - all types of bread - sliced, baguettes etc so it's not a particular thing. If anyone comes up with any reason why they do this and how his brain works, I'd be very grateful as well!