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Learning the Lingo of Little Ones
When you talk to toddlers, you have to know their secret code, but each code is as unique as the child. Most people don’t realize how much interpretation they do for young kids, because their ears become attuned to that child’s speech.
Once, when my middle son was two, he drove me to despair. He went on and on, demanding baking soda. What on earth could a two-year-old want with baking soda? Our bathtubs are cleaned with baking soda because of my elder son’s eczema. Dufus that I was, I opened the fridge (where my husband requires that I keep a box, if not two or three, of baking soda to ward off the foul odors that emanate from rejected leftovers). As he surveyed the interior, his eyes alighted on a can of Sprite, and he squealed, “Baking soda! Baking soda!” with a zeal that probably rivaled the “Eureka!” of Archimedes running fresh and naked from his overflowing bathtub, through the streets.
To this day, this child has the propensity to extenuate words and all speech, in general. He began early by calling rubber bands “rubber-band-aids” and referred to raw foods as “raw-ten,” which was awkward when we had company. Picture the tot telling people not to worry because Mommy had cooked the “raw-ten” chicken.
Whenever he said, “I need to make twins,” everyone in our house knew we had twenty seconds to get him in front of the potty. During potty training, he decided to imitate his older brother, giving rise to the term “make twins.” Now, don’t be affronted by the image of two small boys simultaneously aiming into the pot. If it weren’t enough that we were flushing less, think of the camaraderie and the fraternal bonding…the supreme hand-eye coordination as each tried to slash the other’s stream.
Similarly, when the elder son was three, for some reason that still eludes me, he renamed his belly area to “throat,” and that was that. No amount of correction or bribery worked. Like parents everywhere, I try to choose my battles wisely. After all, there are other children, your spouse, and your telephone company to war with, so why waste all your emotional ammo on trifling matters? And, in the grand scheme of things, where was the harm in a little belly-throat remapping?
It’s like people who drive a car with some defect they’ve come to accept. They forget that the passenger side window doesn’t go down, or that you must never lock a certain door. They get so accustomed to this flaw that they forget to explain it to a newcomer along for the ride.
My son would tell me he needed to go to the toilet by saying that his throat was hurting. This may seem odd to you, but after a while, I never gave it a second thought. He would say, “My throat is hurting,” and we would bolt to the bathroom. Because my children were rarely in anyone else’s care, I did not foresee any problems.
And then it happened. I left the older three kids (ages 3, 5, and 8) for about a half-hour with a babysitter. My husband was working from home, so he was present, but in body only.
Just ten minutes after I had left, my son looked around at no one in particular and casually announced that his throat was hurting. The babysitter thought I might want to know about this when I got home. A little later he announced with some discomfort that his throat was hurting. Well, if it was that bad, the babysitter thought, Papa should know. Perhaps there might be a cough drop or something else to relieve the pain.
The news didn’t register with my husband either, although we live in the same house. My son was getting desperate now and pleaded that his throat was really, really, hurting. One of my daughters happened by at the time, and she sounded the alarm, “Get him to the bathroom - NOW!”
Mothers are supposed to have great intuition. If this were true, I would have had the sense to stay away from home an extra thirty minutes that day. Without lingering on the sordid details, let’s just say I got home just in time to clean a trail to the bathroom and to calm a hysterical child. (And you thought you had a crappy job.)
The next day, I began the training session by jabbing towards his little belly, “THAT is not your throat, Young Man.” He pointed to his neck, and meekly checked, “This is my throat?” That was it. We never had to review that discussion…not for that word, anyway. And not with that kid.
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