By Elizabeth S.
My mom always smiled when I said I couldn't wait for my baby to talk. A mother of three, she knew that once begun, the talking never stops… whether or not you're on the phone, trying to talk to your husband or simply just wanting to give your much-maligned eardrums a break.
But as with most things, the good comes with the bad. Now your child can charm you with his stories (inevitably featuring some sort of bear, dragon, dinosaur or princess) but he or she can also talk back. "NO! I don't want to go to my room!"
Sometimes, they make up their own words for things, and you can go for quite a while without knowing what they mean. Other grown-ups will look at you with tilted head and raised brow, waiting for you to translate and you'll stand there with your mouth flapping. Your kid will get mad at you for being so utterly stupid, and the day you figure it out you'll be unreasonably happy about it.
My son, for example, kept talking about "huffers" and the "BIG huffer" and I had no clue what he was on about. Every time he said it, I would scan the horizon looking for something that could adequately be described as a "huffer" but I was pretty sure he wasn't talking about Walgreen's. Until one day, driving down University Avenue, the huffer-speak began in earnest. Lo and behold… the UW chimneys. Of course! Why hadn't I thought of it? A huffer is clearly a chimney! In fact, I think it's a better word for it. Chimney tells me nothing, but huffer captures the essence of the thing beautifully (yes, I know I didn't know what it meant at first… let's just skip past that, shall we?).
But the funniest thing about language and preschoolers is that they have the words but don't always grasp the concept behind them. My son has been testing me in recent months, and he's been chastised and time-outed and sent to his room more times than I can recall.
Fearing that our life together centered soley around discipline and correction, I sought to soften things with this explanation. "I always love you, I love you even when you're being naughty and need a time-out." He seemed to understand this, but to be sure, he kept repeating it back to me. So we had reached a consensus. All was good.
Then one day, he turned the tables on me. "Mommy,” he said, "I love you all the time, but sometimes I don't love you." I was speechless.
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