# Does your toddler cry when they get hurt? And language development question.



## crunchy_mommy (Mar 29, 2009)

My DS doesn't cry when he gets hurt. Well, not NEVER (occasionally if he gets _really_ hurt or is extremely over-tired, but even then it's just fussing for a few seconds)... but most of the time he just continues about his business. Sometimes he'll come over and tell me he got hurt & ask for a kiss, but he seems to just do it because that's the routine, not because he's actually upset about the injury. Every once in a while he does this fake cry (which is hard not to laugh at)... kind of like he feels like he *should* be crying but doesn't actually feel the need to. If another kid came over and pushed him over or hit him, he'd just keep playing (sometimes looks a little offended about the invasion of personal space, he likes his space!) If he trips and falls, he just gets up and keeps going. Falls from 2+ feet will get him crying for a minute or two though. Is this weird at all, or just a 'boy' thing or personality thing or something? (My friend thought it was weird...)

Other question is about language.... What is your toddler's conversational style like? Most of our toddler friends seem to talk... well, conversationally. "Do you want to go play?" or "What's that?" or "Hi! How are you?" types of sentences.... My DS, on the other hand, talks more narratively (and calls himself 'baby')... like, "Mama and baby went to the store and bought bananas and saw a yellow car. Sun was out. Baby pushed the grocery cart." I don't know, it's hard to explain in writing exactly what I mean... I have to prompt him to ask questions and respond appropriately. If someone says Hi or Bye, he doesn't respond unless prompted. He might say to me, "Baby wants an orange," but he won't ask the person who's holding the orange and he won't say, "Can I have an orange, please?" unless prompted. He never asks, "Why?" or "Where are we going?" or whatever. He has a huge vocabulary (thousands of words) and seems to have pretty complex thought processes, and he talks non-stop, but something seems missing in terms of being conversational in a social way??? Maybe it's just because he's still young (he's 26 months)???


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## pranava (Aug 11, 2007)

Sounds like he's doing really really well verbally, and taking his imense vocab and making it structurally and socially on target may take some more time. I mean, he obviously has A TON of thoughts and words to organize. Maybe kids who have a smaller working vocab, don't get sentences as jumbled because they are trying to say fewer words together. I don't know - just a thought.

DS 24 months actually seems pretty similar. He doesn't ask many why or where questions, but will often request things through a question like "Do you want an orange?" then answer himself "yeah, OK!!" I think he's trying to imitate me asking him a question and he doesn't know how to initiate a request himself. I've tried to stop asking him so many questions and start using more statements.

As for refering to himself as "baby", DS usually refers to himself by his first name instead of using "I" I think that's pretty common at this age. DS also does the narrating thing too, only about half the time though. I've sometimes wondered if the narrating is coming from the enormous number of books we read in a day. Maybe hearing that story style narration so often is getting ingrained into his speech pattern

When he gets hurt he whines "I'm OK, I'm OK, I'm OK" but doesn't really cry.

I don't know, but it sounds like a really verbally advanced normal to me


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## physmom (Jun 15, 2009)

With DD and getting hurt it really depends on her mood, how/when she got hurt etc. Pushing wouldn't phase her unless it was from an adults and then she gets extremely upset and calls them out on it!









As for conversation... I think all toddlers are different. With DD she talks a lot, all the time and it's hard for me to remember one single strand of conversation because she's all over the place. She uses "I" for some sentences and other times she uses her name. Sometimes she uses "you" and sometimes she uses Mommy or Papai. She does ask a lot of questions but it's not necessarily something like "why are you wearing a bandaid" instead it could be something like "Mommy put bandaid on finger? Mommy booboo?" Verbs are still optional.







She's starting to get how conversation flows a bit more and will even introduce herself to other people now. That doesn't mean she has any interest in asking questions directly posted to her or necessarily addressing the correct person in the room for a request. Normally she'll speak to me first because I'm more intuned to what she wants and listen more. DH, for instance, get zoned out a lot in whatever he's doing and you need to say his name LOUDLY or physically touch him to break him out of his trance. DD hasn't learned that yet so instead she'll come to me first even when she actually wants DH because she knows I'll hear it first.


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## Caterina (Jul 18, 2008)

My daughter cries way more when she is surprised or startled than when she's hurt (unless she's really hurt).


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## DevaMajka (Jul 4, 2005)

Ds2 is 20mos old, and rarely cries when he gets hurt. Ds1 is 6yo, so ds2 is tough. lol. He can fall from 3 steps up on the ladder at the playground, and get up and not even think twice about it. He falls really well too; as in, he generally lands so that it won't hurt much. If he's tired or grumpy or something, then he'll cry at any little bump. And obviously, he'll cry if he's majorly hurt. When we're at the playground, sometimes he gets "hurt" and other people will sort of gasp and say "is he ok???" and I don't even make a move towards him, because I know he'll be fine, and he always is.

I don't know about the language thing, really. I know ds1 had 3 words at 21 mos old, but caught up really fast. Still, I don't think he was talking in sentences at 2yo. Ds2 is more in the normal range verbally, and has lots of words at 20 mos, but he doesn't seem like he's anywhere near using sentences. In my non-professional opinion, your ds sounds perfectly fine, language wise.


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## mckittre (Jan 15, 2009)

My 25 month old will cry a little bit and ask for a kiss. Most of the time, the kiss stops the crying instantly.

As for language, it's probably partly a style thing, and maybe partly that some pieces of language haven't quite clicked yet? My son is very talkative. He's very conversational a lot of the time, but will also tell me long narratives about things, and spends even more time ordering me around. He converses with inanimate objects as well. He's always ordering his toys around when they aren't behaving as he'd like them to. But he only recently started using "I" talking about himself. He called himself "you" or his name until just around 2 years old, when pronouns suddenly clicked for him. Now he does that correctly. As for questions, he's been asking some "what" and "where" questions for a long time, but is just starting to ask definition type questions "what does ___ mean?" and he doesn't really ask "why" questions yet, though he answers them. As for asking you instead of the person with the orange, I think that's somewhat normal. When they're little, mom always has to translate, so it takes changing a habit to ask someone else. My son will do it now that he's confident people will understand, but that's quite recent.


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## hildare (Jul 6, 2009)

i can't answer the second part of that because we're still working on sentences to begin with, but: dd rarely cries when she falls. we have encouraged that for the most part, by not paying lots of attention to little spills ever... it's funny, though, when we go places there are kids who fall, then look around to see if anybody's looking, then cry if so. also, other folks react when dd falls by rushing over and helping her up and saying oops or uh-oh (i hope they don't think we're bad parents b/c we don't) and she clearly doesn't care. i think i mean to say that the kids who cry every time they fall have kind of been taught that that's an expected or acceptable response by the reactions of people around them... (and of course if dd does actually hurt herself, we're extremely attentive and we do pay attention each time she falls or whatever but don't react if it's a 'tiny' ) we've never said 'shake it off' or anything - that kind of makes me cringe just a little-


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## crunchy_mommy (Mar 29, 2009)

OK so I guess the not crying thing is normal.







And he more than makes up for it in other situations lol...

Yeah maybe language just hasn't clicked all the way for him. He doesn't just call himself 'baby', sometimes he calls himself by name, or by 'you', or by 'I' -- funny thing is, he says 'I' more when he's not thinking about it but when he stops to think he says 'you' or 'baby' lol. I don't think that really concerns me, I only mentioned it to make my example sentence make more sense... I guess what does concern me a bit is the lack of interactive language. Like not responding "hi" if someone says "hi" to him... and not asking questions... Physmom, he totally would say something like "Mommy put bandaid on your finger? Mommy has a booboo?" So in that sense he does ask questions but they don't sound like questions except by his inflection. I guess he just doesn't totally 'get' everything about language yet. I noticed that other kids his age that talk well, have a much more social/interactive style of talking, so I kind of worried that maybe it's a social issue (not necessarily a language issue)... He & I have long drawn-out conversations but he won't even answer if someone else asks him a question (even though his comprehension is fine and his pronunciation is very clear so people CAN understand him if he does talk!) I think I will probably worry about every single little thing he does or doesn't do for the rest of his development lol. I'm paranoid!!


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