ok, I promised happy and fun

[seborn]

And our DangerBoy is frequently both!

I am realizing that with age and wisdom, DangerBoy is not necessarily the most accurate name, but it's silly to keep changing. He is actually FollowingRulesLad at this point, and dutifully stays on the sidewalk (and objects when characters in books do not), mostly keeps out of puddles without his boots on,

Comments

[trowa_barton]

Congratulations!
We're still working on Commander Xander

[topologist]

He is currently wrestling with pronouns, and will use i/you/me/my in the same sentence as each other to refer to himself.

Children also do this with conjunctions, happily using, for example, because to simply mean and. It's like they understand what pronouns and conjunctions do grammatically, but have trouble assigning actual meanings to the function words

[seborn]

I'd noticed him using reflexive pronouns, and creating the proper reflexive pronoun Dangerboyself. I hadn't been listening closely enough before you mentioned this to notice that he uses them almost entirely in the context of "x does y all by x-self". Which is a vital stock phrase for toddlers. I heard him using "myself" for "me" twice yesterday, and no other reflexive pronoun use. I'm going to keep listening harder now to see when he gets it, thanks!

oh, because. He's learned that why questions get answers starting with because, but since he doesn't quite get why yet, it's more "because... ." "Why is Anna going to the store?" "Because... onna bus." Then again, most "why" questions, like "Why are you putting that spoon on your head?" don't make a lot of sense to ask.

[gnomi]

Dangerboy sounds like he's in a similar place, language-wise, as Muffin and Squeaker. M and S come up with crazy-long sentences but still haven't figured out the exact rules for "thank you."