Mom Baffled by Toddler’s Choice of Words, Then ‘Suddenly It All Made Sense’

A mom who was initially baffled by her infant daughter’s choice of words for describing thing has finally discovered their unexpected origins.

Toddlerhood is an important time in the development of a young child, not least when it comes to vocabulary. As a 2016 study published in the journal Applied Psycholinguistics notes, while the average 18-month-old recognizes around 260 words, by preschool age children can know anywhere between 1,000 and 10,000 words.

Parents can play a role in nurturing this development through activities like reading and simple conversation. As a former elementary school teacher, Victoria Swift, from Florida, knows more about this than most.

Her daughter is just 17 months old and is already developing a fine vocabulary. However, Swift was left scratching her head recently when she noticed her young daughter kept referring to her peppermint and gingerbread man toys as “hippos.”

Swift was initially baffled. “She knows a lot of words and is super smart so I knew there had to be a reason why she was calling all things gingerbread ‘hippo,'” she said.

The one day something suddenly “clicked” in her head. “”She loves reading books and I remembered that hippo is one of the many words she would say while reading one of her ABC books,” she said.

Reading back through the book, Swift discovered that the page explaining “H is for Hippo” came just before one explaining “G is for Gingerbread” which featured an image of a gingerbread man complete with a gingerbread house and path made out of peppermints.

Swift’s initial confusion gave way to something else. In that moment she became a very proud mom. “All parents think their kids are smart but I thought this was next level,” she said. “I used to be an elementary school teacher so seeing her ability to make connections was very impressive to me for her age.”

Swift said this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to her daughter’s vocabulary too. “She remembers many words and pictures and already puts two words together to communicate,” she said.

Eager to share in her discovery, Swift posted a video explaining what happened to TikTok under the handle victoriaj0y. “I share little bits of my life on my social media all the time,” Swift said. “I thought this was a cute video that would make people laugh but did not expect it to get this much attention!.”

At the time of writing, Swift’s video has been watched over 3.4 million times with viewers eager to share similar stories. “My toddler would call Octopus an Applepus. Took months to realize his detangling spray had an octopus with a head shaped like an apple,” one wrote. “My nephew used to call himself ‘Aww’ because whenever we saw him or showed him a picture of himself we would say ‘awww look at you,'” another said.

A third commented: “My son’s second word was ‘Saturday.’ It took us awhile to realize it was his favorite page in ‘A Very Hungry Caterpillar,'” with a fourth adding: “My 2 year old granddaughter was calling lightbulbs ‘ideas.'”