Thursday, September 21, 2006
Remembering, "A Balloon to Chew"
Through the day there are so many little things that I think I will write about later on the blog...but, then, by the time I find the time to sit down at the computer, I can no longer recall what it was I had planned to write! There were a whole STRING of "Raynaisms" this morning that I mentally noted so I could replay them here later...but, alas, my memory is quite pitiful!
When Darcy was a toddler, I was quick to correct her grammar and her pronunciation. Along came my youngest...and, somehow KNOWING there will be no more babies, makes you in less of a hurry to grow the youngest one up. Instead of worrying about her poor pronunciation and dismal grammar, I found myself inwardly smiling at it and finding it rather adorable. (Such an unexpected turnabout on my part.) So, it is that I have wound up with a four and a half year old that has very "interesting" use of the English language...unlike her older sister who spoke precisely and with utter accuracy and an amazing vocabulary from about the age two onward....but, also unlike her mostly non-verbal older brother who has PROFOUND language disabilities. Maybe that has dampened my drive to IMPROVE her language skills...she is, afterall, so much further advanced than her older brother that it doesn't strike horror in my heart to hear her funny misappropriation of words and her mangled grammar and her slight mispronunciations. Things go unchallenged, for the most part...like her insistance upon speaking about "Batmaam" when she MEANS "Batman". Or, telling me that "Doug put chapstick on his lips because they were dryed off." DRIED OUT makes no sense at all in her mind...she thinks the rest of the world has it wrong and SHE has it right...lips dry OFF. Just like I cannot convince her that it is proper to say someone has a "cold". She insists on asking, "Do you have a cold nose?", if she thinks someone might be sick. To her, THAT makes a lot more sense. You have to have a cold SOMETHING, afterall!
Lately, though, I have been making a concerted effort to help her fine tune her language usuage. This morning, I found myself correct THREE sentences right in a row that came out of her mouth. She would say something. I would restate it correctly. She would not notice as she stated her NEXT item of business, which, I promptly restated correctly and, she blithely went to the third item of business (equally incorrect gramatically). Maybe she thought I was reflecting things back to her to demonstrate I was LISTENING? At any rate, it doesn't seem to occur to her that I might be wanting her to ROLE MODEL off my revisions of her utterances! She hasn't got time for unnecessary things like that!
It tickles, me though, how eager she always is to appropriate new words. She can hear a word just once and, sure as anything, she will make a POINT of using that word in the course of her own conversing later that day. Almost always, she has totally missed the actual meaning of the word. So, she comes up with some very interesting sentences!
Which, reminds me of a time when DARCY was just a little thing. She wasn't even quite two yet when we went on a roadtrip. As always, we stopped along the way to pick up snacks at a gas convenience store. I was craving bubble gum for some reason. (I hadn't chewed any around Darcy up to that point, nor had her father.) I tried to be discreet with my purchase because I didn't want my toddler daughter asking for some. Kids have that built-in radar thing, though! And Darcy instinctively KNEW I was trying to keep something from her. I saw her zero in on that pink wrapper as the cashier rang up our purchases. On the way to the car, I discreetly removed the gum from the sack and slipped it into my pocket. Once in the car, Darcy began asking for the pink thing. I played dumb. She dug all through the sack of snacks, determined to make me understand what it was she was talking about. But, it was no where to be found (hidden safely in my pocket!). I thought I was a pretty slick parent. A bit later, I carefully slipped a piece into my mouth. All was fine for about fifteen minutes. Then, I slipped and blew a tiny little bubble that I quickly sucked back into my mouth. Being in the front seat, I didn't think Darcy could see that from the back seat...but, she did! She didn't KNOW the word for "gum", much less "bubble gum" and I wasn't about to TEACH her that word, because THEN she would be asking for gum. It was easier just to play dumb. Ever DETERMINED to make herself understood, she tried yet again, this time calling out, "Mom," (she always called me "Mom"...never "Mommy", from the moment she began speaking),"I want a BALLOON TO CHEW!" With that one phrase, my toddler found my achilles heel! She didn't know the word "gum", so she made up her own name for it..."balloon to chew"! I was just so delighted with her creativity and perserverance that I gave the child a piece of bubble gum right then and there. She IMMEDIATELY logged the word "BUBBLE GUM" into her very large vocabulary...realizing at once what a USEFUL word it was! She wound up being one of the few two year olds in the world who could actually BLOW bubbles. But, then she had LOTS of opportunity to PRACTICE now that she knew the magic name of that substance that so tantalized her. There was POWER in words...she instinctively grasped that from a very, very early age! ¶ 9/21/2006 03:22:00 PM
When Darcy was a toddler, I was quick to correct her grammar and her pronunciation. Along came my youngest...and, somehow KNOWING there will be no more babies, makes you in less of a hurry to grow the youngest one up. Instead of worrying about her poor pronunciation and dismal grammar, I found myself inwardly smiling at it and finding it rather adorable. (Such an unexpected turnabout on my part.) So, it is that I have wound up with a four and a half year old that has very "interesting" use of the English language...unlike her older sister who spoke precisely and with utter accuracy and an amazing vocabulary from about the age two onward....but, also unlike her mostly non-verbal older brother who has PROFOUND language disabilities. Maybe that has dampened my drive to IMPROVE her language skills...she is, afterall, so much further advanced than her older brother that it doesn't strike horror in my heart to hear her funny misappropriation of words and her mangled grammar and her slight mispronunciations. Things go unchallenged, for the most part...like her insistance upon speaking about "Batmaam" when she MEANS "Batman". Or, telling me that "Doug put chapstick on his lips because they were dryed off." DRIED OUT makes no sense at all in her mind...she thinks the rest of the world has it wrong and SHE has it right...lips dry OFF. Just like I cannot convince her that it is proper to say someone has a "cold". She insists on asking, "Do you have a cold nose?", if she thinks someone might be sick. To her, THAT makes a lot more sense. You have to have a cold SOMETHING, afterall!
Lately, though, I have been making a concerted effort to help her fine tune her language usuage. This morning, I found myself correct THREE sentences right in a row that came out of her mouth. She would say something. I would restate it correctly. She would not notice as she stated her NEXT item of business, which, I promptly restated correctly and, she blithely went to the third item of business (equally incorrect gramatically). Maybe she thought I was reflecting things back to her to demonstrate I was LISTENING? At any rate, it doesn't seem to occur to her that I might be wanting her to ROLE MODEL off my revisions of her utterances! She hasn't got time for unnecessary things like that!
It tickles, me though, how eager she always is to appropriate new words. She can hear a word just once and, sure as anything, she will make a POINT of using that word in the course of her own conversing later that day. Almost always, she has totally missed the actual meaning of the word. So, she comes up with some very interesting sentences!
Which, reminds me of a time when DARCY was just a little thing. She wasn't even quite two yet when we went on a roadtrip. As always, we stopped along the way to pick up snacks at a gas convenience store. I was craving bubble gum for some reason. (I hadn't chewed any around Darcy up to that point, nor had her father.) I tried to be discreet with my purchase because I didn't want my toddler daughter asking for some. Kids have that built-in radar thing, though! And Darcy instinctively KNEW I was trying to keep something from her. I saw her zero in on that pink wrapper as the cashier rang up our purchases. On the way to the car, I discreetly removed the gum from the sack and slipped it into my pocket. Once in the car, Darcy began asking for the pink thing. I played dumb. She dug all through the sack of snacks, determined to make me understand what it was she was talking about. But, it was no where to be found (hidden safely in my pocket!). I thought I was a pretty slick parent. A bit later, I carefully slipped a piece into my mouth. All was fine for about fifteen minutes. Then, I slipped and blew a tiny little bubble that I quickly sucked back into my mouth. Being in the front seat, I didn't think Darcy could see that from the back seat...but, she did! She didn't KNOW the word for "gum", much less "bubble gum" and I wasn't about to TEACH her that word, because THEN she would be asking for gum. It was easier just to play dumb. Ever DETERMINED to make herself understood, she tried yet again, this time calling out, "Mom," (she always called me "Mom"...never "Mommy", from the moment she began speaking),"I want a BALLOON TO CHEW!" With that one phrase, my toddler found my achilles heel! She didn't know the word "gum", so she made up her own name for it..."balloon to chew"! I was just so delighted with her creativity and perserverance that I gave the child a piece of bubble gum right then and there. She IMMEDIATELY logged the word "BUBBLE GUM" into her very large vocabulary...realizing at once what a USEFUL word it was! She wound up being one of the few two year olds in the world who could actually BLOW bubbles. But, then she had LOTS of opportunity to PRACTICE now that she knew the magic name of that substance that so tantalized her. There was POWER in words...she instinctively grasped that from a very, very early age! ¶ 9/21/2006 03:22:00 PM
