At a friend's house on Wednesday afternoon with another family whose daughter is one week younger than Chris. She is a talking machine, speaking in full sentences. At the age of twelve months, she uttered single words and proper names, even agua for "water" (her nanny was from Mexico) which she continues to say.

Chris's entire vocabulary consists of about six words, including his frequent "u-huh" for "yes". He says the usual stuff, "momma", "dadda", "hi", "bye-bye", "no" and "uh-oh". He communicates very effectively through gestures, just now showing me that he wanted to color with his markers. Of course, he understands absolutely everything that I say.

None of my boys talked much before their second birthday and Kenny had the most language exposure of the lot: I read to him several books a night from the time he was three months old and he spent a year in a regular child care setting. He talks alot now! But he didn't start putting words together until after he was two years old. I haven't thrust language upon the others as hard as the first child but we still read regularly and, of course, have conversations.

The parents of the talkative girl credit her home environment but I think such credit is misappropriated. I mean, the differences are too striking to be attributable to environment alone. She exhibits very strong inter-personal behavior and is much more interested in hanging with grown-ups than running and playing. IOW, Chris fell in with the older kids on the playset, up the stairs and down the slide, and she stayed on the patio with her parents, talking - bonding in her own verbal way.