You are your child's first teacher (but just don't say YOU)

Our morning preschool is a Head Start-type program that gets state funding for some of the qualifying children to attend 10 hrs of preschool free of charge. I attended a parent night informational meeting and we were given sheets to log our time that we spend in educational type activities with our child/ren, and then $16/hr goes toward the inkind gifts that help to keep the funding alive. Or something like that. So all of our library times and story times and many things we do count, if I can remember to write it all down. The director was also saying that just walking with our child/ren and talking about everyday things we see counts. Just talking to our kids counts, because we are our children's first teachers. That got me to thinking and feeling bad because we are so behind in that regard. I haven't been able to teach AKA much, not in the way of discussion about things we see. About 99.9% of the time our conversations end in a freak out, because she doesn't like or understand a particular word I said. It's very stressful. So my strategy the past year has been to limit talking to only when necessity calls. Unless, of course, the talking involves her saying something and then me repeating it, which is the only talking that is allowed, and is actually demanded. If I don't repeat what she said, then all hell breaks loose. But as for normal conversation, it's really hard to have any of that when I have to avoid a ton of words that make AKA upset:

• You ("I am not a YOU!" she screams. And she screams if I say her name too, so try to talking to someone without using any pronouns or their name)
• People ("Not PEOPLE!" That word bothers her because it's collective, and we're still working on the individuals)
• Friend (too abstract)
• Neighborhood (way too abstract)
• City, state, country names (forget it)

However, our safe topic is animals. So we know a lot about nature science stuff. I can talk about animals without using any problem words, except for when we get into animal collective groupings, but she seems more accepting and willing to try to understand that. So maybe once we learn mouse/mice, goose/geese, sheep/sheep--?--oh crap, never mind.