“Will you hold me, help me go upstairs?”
The 3.0 version of my youngest granddaughter clung to me as I rose from the bed where we had been “hiding together” under the covers, playing with a flashlight. We counted the twelve steps upward, pausing at eleven so that we could jump, and shout “TWELVE!” As I handed her off to her mother, she asked me, “What number is this one?” pointing to a step into the kitchen. From then, she counted to twelve, and knew that the next step was thirteen.
I used to be Myah’s daytime caretaker, starting when she was 5 months old. She will be 4 years old in May of this year, and her spitting and smiling communications have developed into conversations, many with full sentences. I listen to her speak and am delighted by her learning. She used to say, “Mommy, you smell good. You smell very good.” She wrestles with pronouns, as we all have: “Me turn!” Or “I do it, I self!” She used to bellow “I done sleeping!” when she woke from her nap, but she now bellows “I’M done sleeping.” I’m sure that she is unaware of her usage of the contraction for “I am.”
My oldest daughter converted pronouns in a similar way. Her mother and I taught her that she needed to “urinate,” and she later told us that she had to “my-inate,” or “mynate.” When my son told his mother that he had to go to the bathroom, she later told me that she hated that I taught them “the right words,” because when he was refused, he belted out in a crowded theater, “But Mom! I have to move my bowels!” The theater howled. My mother was a pediatric ER nurse and she told me that she would interpret for the kids the words that the physicians used. When asked if they had moved their bowels or urinated, my mother would whisper into little ears, “Did you poop, or pee?”
Myah’s language is growing daily. She demonstrated that recently, on the last day I cared for her before she started attending daycare. “Clop,” she queried me after I had gotten her up in the morning, “you know what the routine is?” When I admitted that I did not, she told me, “First play, then get dressed, then eat, then watch TV, then sleep.” Well, alrighty then. I love to hear the ways in which she adapts her knowledge to express herself. She will tell me, “This is boring,” or, “It’s actually not a real waffle.” When asked what she is doing, she responds, “I’m trying to put this on.” When we were “betending” to speak to each other on her toy cell phone, she handed it to me, saying “It’s not FaceTime: It’s EarTime.”
My grandson once lamented to his mother that he had “sent Cool Papa a run-on sentence.” He is now 17 years old, and recently responded to my description of his chuckling “snort” by saying, “a sharp exhalation through the nose.” I love it. His parents play Scrabble, and they will call me to mediate a dispute when his father invents a word.
Many of the parents reading this are likely to have a child whose language skills were superior to what I’ve chronicled here. When I muse on Myah’s language to a friend, she notes that her girl had faster development; I don’t engage in one-upmanship. The seeds of language are broadcast by my conversations and watered by my songs and stories to my grandchildren. I love listening to the blooming of the art of communication.
cjon3acd@att.net