(Original Post - August 2011)
“Hey Daddy! I need to sizz!!”
I stop what I’m doing and slowly turn to look at Norah, who is fidgeting in her chair. My head is tilted, my eyebrows raised. I look from her to the bathroom door, and back again, uncertain as to whether I’ve heard her correctly. Is she really telling me she needs to pee? Like that? At the time Norah was two, and though she had a good grasp of the English language, she made the occasional mistake, experimenting with a word she hadn’t mastered or trying out a new one she’d heard.
Mistakes are cool. Some would say that they are actually the best way to learn. So I encourage Norah to take risks, to make mistakes and learn from them. I appreciate mistakes. God knows, I've made enough.
What I can’t appreciate is the fact that it sounds like my daughter has begun using slang at age two, and not only slang, but urination slang.
“You need to what?!”
I sit next to her. She’s working away at her art table, drawing amazing pictures of things that no one but her could ever identify. She looks at me again.
“I need to sizz.”
“Sizz, Norah?”
She nods. “Can you help me, Daddy?”
“Norah, what are you talking about?”
“Come on, follow me.”
I stand and let her lead me. She stands up, takes her drawing from the table, and then leads me by the hand through the kitchen. She turns sharply as we pass the island, and reaching out, she pulls the center drawer open. She extracts something, so slowly, cautiously and carefully that you’d swear she was holding a rattle snake. But she isn’t.
She’s holding scissors.
Of course. Mixers mix. Mowers mow. Scissors sizz.
I use this example to try to illustrate a point. When little kids make mistakes with language, it is easy to see that they are still learning, still trying valiantly to absorb the incredible amount of information and vocabulary that bombards them daily. However, now that Norah is almost four, I sometimes catch myself making assumptions about her knowledge and vocabulary, and subsequently I don’t explain things as I might have a couple of years ago.
We were in the backyard one morning last week. As we were playing, I noticed that there were grass and weeds coming up through the crushed stone path which leads to the shed. It’s irritating because I’d gone through the trouble of covering the path with rolls of weed barrier before laying the crushed stone. I starting digging around the weed, found even more weeds, and so I dug down deeper to see how it was getting through. Sure enough, the weeds were actually penetrating the barrier. I had an old bottle of Weed-B-Gon, or some such product tucked away in the shed, and being a little lazy that morning, I decided to forego ripping out the root and used the spray bottle. I dug up a few spots in the stone and gave the weeds a good squirt. (Note: the kids play in the backyard as often as our Newfoundland weather allows, and I only used the weed killer because I could immediately bury it under 6 inches of stone). At one point, James came over, intrigued by the squirting noise. When he reached for the bottle, I stopped and shook my head.
“No, buddy. Can’t have that. It’s poison.”
Norah, being her brother’s perpetual protector, rushes over.
“What did you say, Daddy?”
“I told James that this was poison.”
“Poison?”
“Yeah Norah, that means it’s really bad.”
Three hours later, we’re getting James up from his nap. Norah leads the way. She rushes into his room, notes his sour face, his scowl and his Mick Jagger pout. I’m waiting for him to start wailing about how he can’t get no satisfaction when Norah pipes up.
“Buddy, did you have a poison nap?”
“A what, Norah?”
So she explains. I had told her earlier that day that poison meant ‘really bad’. It was obvious that James had not slept well, so the nap was a poison one. Obviously. And, it seems, she’d been waiting three hours for the opportunity to use the word in a sentence.
I realized in that moment that my three year old had questioned me on the meaning of poison, and I’d completely passed over the opportunity to explain it. I just assumed she knew. We’ve always pointed out that cleaning supplies and such are “dangerous, and could make her really, really sick.” She understands dangerous. Apparently, she didn’t fully understand poison.
The lesson was pretty important. Assumptions are a dangerous thing, especially when we’re talking about the things kids should really be aware of. Sometimes, we need to stop and remind ourselves that opportunities to help our kids better understand this world will pop up regularly, like perpetual weeds, and we need to make the most of these teachable moments.
And sometimes, we need to take the time to dig a little deeper, because it really is necessary to see what’s getting through.
Just a thought – I was talking to Norah just two days ago, pretty firmly, because she was coming up with any and every excuse not to pick up her stickers that were strewn across the living room. After 10 minutes, I’d had enough.
“Norah, this is ridiculous!!”
“It’s not funny, Daddy!”
“I didn’t say it was funny, I said it was ridiculous.”
“Yeah, but ridiculous means foolish, and foolish means funny, and this is not funny.”
After that comment, it actually was.
I think we need to give kids credit for mastering this English language of ours, because whether we notice it or not, they work damn hard to figure it out.
“Vocabulary needs constant fertilizing, or it will die.” – Evelyn Waugh
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