YO MAMA: Baby’s first unique… word?

OPINION

It sounded like he was saying “Dad” with a polite little English boy accent, lilting up at the end as if it was a question. “Daht?”

The kid was almost one year old and Daht was his new favourite “word.” What did it mean? Or was it absolutely meaningless? Only the kid knew, and we couldn’t exactly ask him.

Life with a kid is like a series of cliffhangers, each as riveting to a new parent (and as boring to their childless friends) as the last. First, you wonder what your kid will look like. What colour will their eyes and hair be? Will they have any freckles or birthmarks? Soon, you start speculating about when they will roll over, sit up, start crawling, and begin speaking. In the never-ending story of parenthood, you are always wondering what will happen next.

Our son already said mama and dada but my husband and I both agreed those didn’t feel like real first words. Every kid says mama and dada. Boring. I was waiting for that first unique word to be uttered. I felt that it would tell us so much about his personality, his wants and needs. Would it be a playful “ball”? A hungry “apple”? Or a social “hi”? The anticipation was killing me. I was also mildly worried that it would be something horrendous like “poop” or “boobies.”

My husband and I had been on high alert for new words for the past couple of months.

“Oh! Did I hear you say ‘night night?’”

“Hey! That sounded awfully similar to ‘banana!’”

There were a lot of false starts as our son seemed to be getting close to a word and then discarded it a few days later. I felt like an idiot when I told my parents he’d started saying “hey” only to have him stonewall me at their next visit. It really made me look bad, you know, like I was making it up. The kid smiled silently — smugly — and I really believe he zipped it on purpose.

I was reading a book at the time, Brain Rules for Baby, and the neuroscientist father-author (John Medina) had written a section about his son’s first word at six months old. It was, drumroll please… octopus.

OCTOPUS! Seriously? Was that really his kid’s first word, I found myself wondering, or was the Dad just showing off?

I realized I wasn’t even sure what constituted a real word. The kid said “num num num” at mealtime — was that in the Oxford English dictionary? I was also pretty sure “nana” meant “the cat” but I have no idea how he arrived at that. He had also inexplicably discovered how to roll his r’s, something neither his father nor I could do. You could see his little tongue flapping like a door stopper. Maybe “Nana” was teaching him how to purr.

Lately though, it was Daht over and over and over again.

“Daht!” to my coffee cup.

“Daht!” to the clock.

“Daht!” to a picture on the wall.

“Daht!” to the kitchen tap.

“Daht!” to a slice of toast.

We joked that he thought all these things were his dad, or his “daht” I should say.

I would carry him on my hip and he would point to things, going “daht, daht, daht.”

One day he was pointing excitedly to something on the bookshelf.

“What, that?” I asked pointing to a little horse figurine. “Or that?” I gestured to a blown glass paperweight.

“Daht!” he said, pointing to the paperweight.

Of course. He was saying “that.” Duh. It had been so obvious. He smiled gently and sighed, visibly relieved that I finally got it. 

We spent the next two hours walking around the house, him pointing at this and “daht” while I carried him over to various objects. At dinner, when we tried to give him his broccoli, he scrunched up his face and pointed instead at the cheese: “Daht!” he commanded. It was amazing how one little word had altered the communication dynamics in our household. With it, our son had developed a newfound sense of agency and assertiveness.

What did this, his first true word, say about his character? It was definitely functional. Very utilitarian. Direct. Succinct. To the point. I liked it. And it suited him.

The Octopus Dad says kids pick up about 50 words by the year-and-a-half mark, exploding to 1,000 by their third birthday.

One down, 999 to go. I couldn’t wait to hear what he says next.

— Charlotte Helston gave birth to her first child, a rambunctious little boy, in the spring of 2021. Yo Mama is her weekly reflection on the wild, exhilarating, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring journey of parenthood.

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