Deciphering

Anyone who has spent any significant amount of time around toddlers knows that you need to learn their language.  Sure, they most likely speak English, but it's more like "toddlerese".  Over the years I've learned to decipher some pretty interesting words.   Here is a sampling.

First off, there's the soft "fff" sound instead of sharp sounds like "dd" or "tt".
For example, if a dragon is a fagon and a trap is a fap, then a truck is a ..... yeah. That had to go, fast!

Other words I've come to understand in toddlerese:

"Tecknicky" (Technically)

"Nassaticks" (Gymnastics)

"Apopalips"  (Apocalypse)

"Toesswisssam" (Toast with jam)

and

"I'm attendy"  (I'm pretending)

Then, at times, the kids will amaze you with their perfect pronunciation of unexpected words.  For example, the 3 yr old who says "who dey" for "who's there" can say perfectly clearly the word "diagnosis."  Thank you, Doc McStuffins, for that one!

The baffling thing is, what on earth do you do when a toddler tells you something, and you just CANNOT understand the all-too-important bulk of their sentence?  They look at you with expectation and all you can say is something brilliant like "Really?" or "Okay", hoping they're not asking you if they can have/do something that you'll have to tell them no to later.  :)

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