Most parents find out early that you express concerns about your child’s development at your peril. Other parents will tell you that their little Oliver didn’t speak until he was called upon to defend his doctoral dissertation, and he’s just fine! Your pediatrician will carefully refrain from expressing an opinion and tell you to call Early Intervention. And if your child is adopted, other adoptive parents will tell you with certainty that it’s attachment disorder. Doesn’t matter what it is: wetting the bed? Dislikes vegetables? Kelly-green poop? Attachment disorder.

Aitch has consistently been several months behind his peers in language development. He said his first words later than his friends, strung two words together later, made complex sentences later. (I’m basing my comparisons on children born within a week or two of Aitch.) I am told that this is not unexpected for an adopted child; that it takes them awhile to re-set their language learning apparati. I can’t find any evidence for this, though, and I’ve known plenty of children who came to this country much later, having lived under far worse conditions, whose development is on target or even advanced.

We had him evaluated by Early Intervention, who told us that his language development was within normal bounds. I know that they use a wide range for normal, which I’m sure is appropriate, but I’m sure my informal comparisons are accurate, too. Since Aitch seems to be progressing at the same rate as everyone else, albeit with a few months’ lag, I’m not worried about this, but I’ve been keeping my eye on it.

There are two major syntactical elements that Aitch has yet to master. One is negation. He hasn’t yet figured out when to use “no” to modify a noun, versus using “not” to negate a verb. Until very recently, he has prefaced positive statements with the word “no” to negate them, such as “No Minor is crying now.” We always repeat it correctly (”Minor is NOT crying”), and recently he has begun to use “not” correctly on his own. He often rehearses negative versions of statements as though he’s trying to remember how it goes (”No Minor is sad! Minor is NOT sad!”).

The other element is pronouns. Aitch rarely uses pronouns, even in reference to himself. He is probably the only almost-three-year old on the planet never to refer to himself as “me” or claim something as “mine.” He calls himself by his first name, earning the nickname “Jimmy” after the guy on the Seinfeld episode who referred to himself in the third person.

The other day, Husband said to me, “I don’t think Aitch is going to be studious.” I’ve had the same feeling. He’s just not as book-oriented as Husband and I were at that age, according to our parents. Aitch reminds me of a guy in my Peace Corps class who was crap at learning Arabic in the classroom but was so social that he picked it up in the cafes in no time. What Aitch lacks in natural aptitude, he makes up for in willingness to practice. He starts conversations everywhere we go.

I sometimes think about the kind of child Husband and I might have produced biologically. We are both ept enough socially, but introverts and loners at heart, and we are both very language-oriented (computers for him, spoken languages for me). I’m picturing a little Asperger’s tot, hiding alone under a table, creating anagrams out of XML tags.

I would have loved that kid, but I’m so thrilled we got Aitch instead.