The other day, I was driving in the car with my wife and my two daughters. The older one, recently turned four years old, began telling us a story about... well, I'm sure it was about something, but I had a lot of trouble following her.
As both a parent and an early elementary school teacher, I've learned to focus on tone of voice, hand gestures, and other cues to help fill in the spaces left blank by children's various speech impediments. If you're just listening to the words and sounds coming from their mouths, you're probably not getting the right story.
So older daughter was talking, and suddenly her tone became very serious, almost cautionary, and she began talking about crossing the street. "And, you know, cuz when you cross the street, you always look both ways, otherwise the bus can drive and the trucks or cars and you always look this way and that way and both ways when you cross the street, right Daddy?"
"Right, hon," I agreed, happy that she had internalized the repeated lessons regarding safety while crossing the street.
"Yeah," concurred my three-year-old, nodding her head up and down wisely, "Cuz else you get hit by a car and your head hurts and you die."
Wow, I thought to myself. That got really serious really quickly.
No comments:
Post a Comment