KELLY BROWN Mum's the Word...My little man has already acquired a surprisingly big vocabulary

Now I am starting to think this could be code for ‘chatterbox’.

Of course all children develop at different levels at different ages. It’s not a race and they all get to the same destination in the end.

But now everyone keeps telling me how well my son talks, it has made me really take notice of other children, so I can compare and see what they are talking about.

It was never really something I had thought about before. He turns two later this month and encouraging him to talk is something our family have done for so long, it just comes naturally.

When he was just starting to say a few words, we always encouraged him to try to copy us.

Starting with the simple ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘cup’, ‘nose’ vocabulary, he picked it up slowly, but was soon stringing a couple of words together which we could understand among the baby babble.

And later on we would always ask him to ‘use his words’ instead of merely pointing at what he wanted.

We also sit down and have our chats and tell our stories, and it is the best thing in the world to get a big hug and kiss from him, followed by a ‘love boo’. (He can’t quite say you!)

And he sometimes calls me on the phone (with a little help from daddy/nanna etc) which is just lovely.

We were so lost in our own little world that it didn’t occur to me not all other children were doing the same.

But at the weekend I was watching other children the same age as him, and I was amazed.

He is a little chatterbox! Some children older than him barely say a single word, others can say a few words together and some do talk in little sentences – but not many.

Perhaps I am stirring up trouble for the future by encouraging him to talk so much.

When he starts school he will probably be one of those children who talk all the time during lessons.

But for the moment it is one of the most wonderful things in the world, being able to properly sit and chat with my little man and understand what he is saying.

And I suppose I really should enjoy it while it lasts. I’m sure when he hits those teenage years, all I will get is a grumpy grunt and the occasional ‘yeah’.

* I’m so sad to say farewell to Friends

It was the end of an era – sort of – at the weekend when for the final time Friends was shown on E4.

A staple of the television schedule, you could always count on the endless repeats to be on when there was nothing else to watch.

But now the freeview channel has decided to finally stop showing the programme which was the show to watch during my late teens and early 20s.

To be fair it is probably about time. It seems to have been repeated almost as long as the show itself was shown.

Despite this though, it was always good to be able to just stick it on the telly those days when there really was nothing else on.

And it doesn’t matter how many times you have seen an episode, you still find yourself chuckling away.

For those people with Sky and Virgin, the good news is Comedy Central will be showing all the episodes soon. But for those without, it is a fond farewell to those much-loved Friends.

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