liz wrote:Mine are stubborn little kids. They will not say a single thing I want the to say. I want them to say the names of things so they can ask for them. They won't even say peanut.
They ask questions, give answers, make sentences by rearanging their words but will not repeat what I want.
Stubborn.
Liz, I've been working with Dante to try to get him to talk when I'm in the room. When I'm out of sight, he chats and sings up a storm, but as soon as I enter the room, he gets quiet. I've been trying to get him to say "I love you" after I say "I love you" to him. He absolutely refuses to do so. But the kicker...when NIKKO says "I love you," Dante IMMEDIATELY says it back! I guess I know where I stand with him, huh?
As for the environment, my birds have their own separate room. That allows me to run an air filter to keep the grey dust in the rest of the house to a minimum. I also have the lights set on a timer so they boys have exactly the same amount of light each day. I'm also able to close their door when they get too noisy and I'm trying to visit with company or talk on the phone.
When I am out of the room, Dante talks quite a lot, and I respond back from wherever I am in the house. I sing all the time. I mean ALL the time. (I actually had someone I was dating break up with me once because of it. Joyless git. But I digress...) As a result, a lot of Dante's vocalizations are musical. He sings several bits of tunes with recognizable words, but also makes up his own melodies and "words". He's got a great vibrato!
When I want him to learn a particular new phrase, I repeat it a lot, and usually a bit more loudly than I really need to. I try to feel excited about the word, because I believe he can sense that. In the end though, he'll pick up whatever sounds seem interesting to him. He does coughs and nose blowing and even the squeak of the floorboards outside the bird room. He says night-night but never Good Morning (Nikko says that). When I'm not trying to teach him something new, I just speak in my regular voice to him, even if I'm clear at the other end of the house. The birds have incredibly good hearing, and don't need me to raise my voice to reply to them, even if I'm 40 feet away. He's quickest to pick up new words that get ME to respond back to him.