My Small Boy is now very much in favour of words. He understands the power of them. In fact, he believes in the power of them a little too much. So we get conversations like:
"Can't go to the playground. It's wet and raining."
"No. Is actually not wet playground. Is wet inna house. Playground is dry."
There is a little corner of his mind that is telling him that if he insists hard enough that the playground is dry, the playground will in fact become dry. And the house - which he can see clear enough is not, in fact, wet at this point - will become wet in its place. Basically, he believes in primitive nature magic. Sadly, it's not quite working out for him. He needs to work on his incantations a little.
His belief in the power of [em]my[/em] speech is a little closer to the mark. After all, if he can induce me to say important words like (not-so-random example) "Time to play Minecraft* now" then it's true, this will actually turn it into Minecraft playing time.
It does not, however, follow that taking my lower jaw and moving it up and down will cause me to say the magic words. Apparently worth trying as an experiment though.
The biggest roadblock for the Small Boy at the moment, is the problem of conflicting labels. See that cat in front of you? It's also an animal. And a pet. That roast potato? That's food. Also dinner. Trying to keep things simple, he has an intense aversion to this concept. No! Is NOT dinner! Issa tater! This is probably what's behind the whole "Yourcraft" confusion too. How can "mine" be a word for a hole in the ground? It's already the word for something that belongs to me.
Learning about grouping things - people, animals, foods, clothes - is an important abstract task. Important for being able to sort out and categorise and organise your world too.
Ah! Organisation! That sounds like a whole blog post in itself...
* Logically enough, Minecraft is only Minecraft to the Small Boy when he's playing it. When somebody else is playing, it's "YourCraft". Or "Rachel's Craft" or "Daddy's Craft". After a fair amount of time spent laboriously pointing out the difference between mine, yours, his and hers, I can hardly complain!
I marvel at how far the small boy has gotten in his vocabulary and in his understanding of concepts. He is a truly delightful and awesome child.
ReplyDeleteHere's hoping that Christmas is also delightful and awesome. :)
I'm thinking it will be. There are going to be COUSINS! Everywhere! And a million tons of guff to bring back, of course. And organize... ;)
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