Did You Hear Me?

I am dooming my son to verbal inadequacy. It has been surprising to me, how often I am reminded that I am a bad parent. There seems to be a lot of known facts about the cognitive development of babies that I have either been unaware of, or have chosen to ignore. It's not as if I flatly refuse to do the things recommended, I just can't muster them.

For instance, I have read that talking to my son, and saying up to 2,100 words to him a day will increase his speaking ability by a considerable percentage. I'm pretty sure I don't even say that many words to my wife. And what exactly are you supposed to say to a two month old baby? Most of the noises he makes are pretty unintelligible.

I know there are great parents that can do this, but I am not one of them. I have nothing much to say to him and frankly, he couldn't be more disinterested. I can't at all blame him. To make up for our inability to talk to ourselves, my wife and I force it. We try and point things out to him. Random things in our line of sight like, "This is a soda can. Some people call soda, pop." Things like that. We end up asking ridiculous questions over and over. "Did someone poop?" We don't even say it normal like that, I sort of wish we did, but we don't. We say it like, "Did somebody pooooop? Did you??" Or we point out things he does as if he was trying to impress us. "Those are some pretty nice spit bubbles bud". I can't imagine this is helping, but it makes us feel a bit better. Maybe all this positive reinforcement will come in handy when he gets held back in kindergarten for his lack of vocabulary.