A customer story, as told to the VeloraCo Early Years Team · Early Years Desk · Updated October 11, 2026

I Felt Ridiculous Saying "Banana" Eight Times at the Kitchen Table. Then He Said It Back.

My son had six words at twenty months and a shelf of beautiful picture books he closed by page two. This is what three weeks of one-word books looked like at our table — the silly part, the quiet part, and the part where I cried into the cereal.

Six words

At twenty months Theo had six words, and I knew the number because I had counted them at 11 pm more than once. Mama, dada, ball, dog, up, and a sound for the cat that I was generously counting. The girl at daycare who was born the same week was narrating her snack. Our paediatrician said "let's see where we are at two," which is a reasonable thing to say and a terrible thing to hear, and we kept the appointment on the calendar.

What we had in the meantime was books. Lovely ones. Big illustrated pages, four sentences each, and a boy who would sit for the cover and slide off my lap by page two. I had started to think he didn't like books. He liked the lids on the pots. He liked the garage door. He liked anything that did something.

The video

A mom in my feed peeled a paper banana. That was the whole hook — "toddler moms, watch this" — a board book with a banana on it, and the peel was a flap, and she said the word and let the kid peel it. Ten of them in a box, one word a page, each page with a flap or a slider or a tab. I bought the set because the math was silly not to: $34.99 for ten, which is less than I'd paid for one of the lovely books he closed.

It arrived in a yellow lidded box. Theo got into it before I had read the leaflet, which in hindsight was the leaflet.

Week one: banana, banana, banana

The method, as far as I understood it from the card in the box: one book, one sitting, five minutes. Say the word on its own. Point. Say it again slower and let them watch your mouth. Then let them open the flap — the flap comes after the word, not before. And wait, longer than feels natural, before you say anything else.

So at breakfast I said "banana." I pointed at the banana. I said "banana" again. He grabbed the peel and lifted it and looked at the pale banana underneath and lifted it again and I said "banana" again, and by the eighth banana my husband was laughing at me from the sink. I felt completely ridiculous. I also noticed that Theo was still on the chair, still on the same page, still looking at my mouth, which no book had managed in a month.

Week two: the zebra

By the second week he was bringing me the Animal book. Not any book — that one, open to the page where the lion is roaring and the zebra is on a tab that pulls out past the edge of the page. "Oh no, the lion is coming!" He pulled it out. He pushed it back. He looked at me and waited.

That wait is the thing I want to tell every mom about. I'd read, somewhere in the speech-therapist corner of the internet, that the pause before a reveal is where a child gets a chance to say something — that wanting the flap to open is the same engine as wanting to tell you something. I didn't believe it until I watched him do it. Zebra out, zebra in, look at Mama, wait. I said "zebra." He did it again. Fifteen times is not an exaggeration; I counted, because I count things at 11 pm.

Week three

It was watermelon, not banana, which I find funny because watermelon is three syllables and I'd assumed we were years from three syllables. The Fruit book, the page where the melon slides open to the red inside. I said "watermelon." I slid it. I said it again. I waited.

"Meh-meh."

Which is not "watermelon." I am aware. But he was looking at the melon and he said it twice and then he slid it open himself and looked at me for the next one, and I am counting it, the way I counted the cat. I did not have my phone out. I had cereal. I cried into it a little, and my husband came over from the sink, and Theo said "meh-meh" again, for the audience.

We kept the paediatrician appointment. I'd tell you to keep yours. What changed in three weeks was not a diagnosis or a milestone; what changed is that I had something to do at breakfast that he wanted to do with me, and the quiet after the word stopped feeling like failure and started feeling like a space.

One word, a flap, and four seconds of quiet. For $34.99, that is the best thing on our kitchen table.

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What I'd tell another mom

It's a book, not a cure. If someone sells you a toddler book as the thing that will make your child talk, close the tab. These don't promise that, and the box doesn't either; it says talk to your paediatrician, which I appreciated. The pause is the whole trick. Say the word, then shut up for four seconds, which is harder than it sounds. Five minutes. Twice a day if you can. Not twenty minutes once, which is what I used to try and what made him slide off my lap. Let him pick. Hand him two. The Animal book will win.

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Straight talk: the story above is an illustrative composite written by VeloraCo from customer feedback, not one specific family's account, and it makes no promise about when or whether any child will say a word. Little Lifters is a children's book set, not a medical, diagnostic or therapeutic product. Ages 1 and up, with a grown-up.