At 17 months

I'd been wondering whether Kevin's language development would really be delayed or messed up given that we are trying to raise him bilingually. I always talk to him in Dutch and John in English. The theory goes that usually in such cases, the kids will be perfectly bilingual, but initially their language development will be a little delayed and then they catch up quickly.

But the last cuple of weeks, I feel much more reassured. At his age of 17 months, regular (mono-lingual) kids are supposed to be able to say 5 to 10 words. Of course, that's on average. Some kids are advanced, others a little slow. And I'm happy to report that Kevin seems right on track, despite having 2 languages to deal with. He's saying 'car', 'bye bye', '(ge)daan' (dutch for done), 'waf' (for dog), 'mama', 'papa', 'wawa' (for water), 'bak' (for 'vuilbak', which is duch for garbage bin) and 'kaa' (for 'kaas', which is dutch for cheese). He's also saying 'nee', which is quite funny, as it's often accompanied by him motioning 'no' with his indexfinger and by little sparkling lights in his eyes. He definitly knows what he's saying :-)