Character Voices

On Friday the 9th we were able to have a little 18 month old friend, Ella, visit. The whole day Dani talked about her saying "This my new friend, Ella". Dani had her doctor appointment in the morning, and so I had dropped Trent off at work in order to have the car. On the way to pick up Trent, I heard Dani using a low character voice in the back, and then switching to other character voices. After a while a realized she was telling Ella a story with at least three characters.

1. A Dinosaur who wanted a "valentime box" - The dinosaur had a low voice, like a man's.
2. The dinosaurs mother - She had a really sweet sounding voice.
3. A baby - The baby had a high pitched voice and didn't say much.

Ella found the voices quite funny and would laugh after every phrase, which luckily encouraged Dani to tell more.

The different voices all started back in January when I was taking Dani down the stairs. She was wearing her coat and realized she had pockets. She put her hands in her pockets for the first time and told me she had a parrot and motioned to her wiggling pocket. The parrot then began to speak in one of my favorite voices that she makes "hello, I a parrot". We went into the stairwell and Dani pointed out the exit sign to the parrot saying "There's the egzick (exit)" and then repeated the same phrase in her parrot voice. She asked the parrot if it knew what happened in a show she had recently watched and the parrot answered back asking "what happened?"

Anyway, this well developed little character voice has appeared many times since then. It often shows up as voices for other stuffed animals, and has even made appearance in her prayers a couple days ago. Daddy asked her who said the prayer, and Dani answered that she did, but then he asked what voice she used and she said "the parrot voice".

Here is a sample of her voices and story telling. You can't see it in the video, but it is the stuffed frog (parrot like voice) and the kitty (mommy like voice) who are talking to each other in the beginning. My prompts were about the story she told Ella to see if she would replicate the voices for the video.

Though the stories are quite random at the moment, you can see how stories that she knows seem to end up in her own stories and pretend play. The baby's "sound box" and the dinosaurs' "valentine box" are from her favorite letter books, written by Jane Belk Moncure, where the characters ("Little A", "Little B" etc) find things that begin with their letter sound and put them in their box. She is able to "read" most of these books since they are similar enough in pattern that many are easily memorized.

A couple days ago, Dani was telling us another story where the baby was born and grew into a dinosaur. I'm curious what she thinks her little brother will grow into.