Like mother, like son. Toni McCann says her newborn, Cillian, already has her gift of gab and says “hello” — at just seven weeks old. The Belfast, Northern Ireland youth drama-school teacher, 36, caught one of his amazing utterances on video and posted it to YouTube, where the footage has gone viral, raking in more than 366,000 views since March 3.





“I am a huge talker,” McCann tells Yahoo Parenting. “Cillian had been trying to communicate for a while, but it really surprised me how clear his ‘Hello’ was. I’m glad I got it on video, as I’m sure no one would have believed me.”

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The mother of four – including Sophia, 12; Ellie, 11; and Eva, 8 — with her husband Paul McCann recently told one of her daughter’s music teachers that the girls’ little brother had said “Hello.” But, the mom admits, “He just looked at me like I was nuts.”

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Ditto regarding a few viewers of the clip. “Some people don’t believe it’s real, that it’s been edited, but on the whole most people love it,” McCann tells The Daily Mail. “That is really lovely for me as there is so much bad in the world it’s great that my wee son is spreading some joy.”

But the tot’s biggest fans are right at home. His sisters are so excited about the pseudo talking that they’ve been trying to get Cillian to keep practicing. “After he said hello to me, my youngest daughter tried and he said a much quicker ‘hawo,’” McCann tells Yahoo Parenting. “It was cute but not as clear as the first one.”

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Still, the mom believes her boy’s greeting wasn’t just luck. “He was trying to speak for a while, but that day I knew he was trying to say something,” she tells the Mail. “I’d read that babies communicate from a young age and to give them space to answer when you talk to them.” McCann says she was mindful, then, of giving her son a moment, as opposed to how she’d communicated with her girls: “I think I probably just talked ‘at’ them and didn’t give them space to respond.”

And now the mother says she’ll continue to foster Cillian’s babbling. “I’m saying ‘I love you’ to him at the moment,” she adds. “He loves it and is trying to respond.” There is one thing, though, that she doesn’t want the little man to mimic. “I’m hoping he doesn’t pick up swear words,” McCann admits.

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