Say What?

When our darling little puppet child was still enthralled with building his vocabulary Ben would repeat sweetly whatever we asked him to. Anything. We just about fell over drunk on our power to get him to preform. We should have rented him out as party entertainment...those animal noises, nursery rhymes, alphabet with missing letters. Oh it never got old..."Ben say..." and he would and we would laugh and it was all good.

Well into his third year now, Ben's gigantic vocabulary has triggered a great deal of independent thought and if you ask him to say anything he will respond the same each time. "No". Not so entertaining.

What happens in the interim however? It knocks my socks off. He is clever, articulate, curious and thoughtful. With, yes, a mind of his own.

I can't help my verbal requests though. I am still trying to script him, out of habit and a sense of obligation. I feel like it lessons the awkwardness from a parenting standpoint when he is handed something and says nothing. I can say "Ben, say thank you". He can say "No" and I can shrug my shoulders and smile with a quick roll of the eyes as if to say "aw well three year olds will be three year olds". I have noticed lately that he is resenting these promptings rather than ignoring them, as he once was. He will be annoyed with me much like I would be if Jon was standing beside me saying "Say thank you for the nice socks, Jenn". I would look at him with aggravated annoyance and the same degree of "are you for real?" that Ben has. He knows what he wants and how to say it, he doesn't need me over the shoulder whispering cues. And yet? I can't seem to help myself. "Ben, say thank you, sorry, your welcome, the magic word, may I, goodnight, goodbye." Whew. I really need to back off. He knows when to say these things, we model this for him and certainly he has been cued enough in the right circumstances to use social etiquette appropriately. And when he wants to, he will. Equally still he will give and receive physical affection when he feels it right to do so, not because some second cousin is coming at him at the family reunion.
Ben talks to me openly and constantly right now. He approaches me constantly with "Mommy, I have a question for you...Mommy, I need to talk to you...Mommy, what do you think about...?" I want this line to always stay as open as it is right now. Truly there is nothing he can't say to me right now. I am adding a brick to a wall however, anytime I (accidentally) correct his grammar, tense, pronunciation or ask him to say something he wasn't willing to say on his own.
I am not raising a small parrot. I must allow him to articulate his thoughts (or not) in a way that is comfortable for him, or risk losing access to those thoughts completely.