Language Post

If I had to do it all over, I would probably keep my job as it is.  But if someone said I had to get a new job, I would get a job where I spend the bulk of my day outdoors.  If I had to stay in the realm of speech and langauge, maybe I would go all in on the linguistics front and studied normal child language and phonology acquistition and be an academic.  I love my job but even at the middle and high school level I don't really get to work with language as much as I want to, so much as fix language skills that aren't there, or teach kids how to work around the missing skills.  I do a hell of a lot more than that, but in terms of language that is what I do.  It's a totally different experience than watching a kid's language organically and uniquely evolve.  Not better or worse, just different.

So with Charlotte I am taking extra pleasure in watching her language develop and trying to find the deeper meaning to the simple things she says.  Since the toddlers I worked with had no language, all of this is extra fun.  One of my favorites is when she is ready to go home after an outing.  Her eyes show fatigue but her spirits are still up.  She doesn't use "I want" yet and she doesn't use the word "home."  What she will do instead is just rattle off what she wants (i.e. "hot cereral, blueberry, squash?").  And what she wants in this case is the quiet comfort of our home.  So to express that she will just rattle off the names of all of our pets.  "Nacho Pancho Toonces."  She says it as sweetly as possible but it is clear that more than anything else on earth she just wants to be chilling at home.

The other thing that is interesting is her understanding of my mom's visit here.  I think she understands it is a temporary visist.  I have no way of knowing this, but it is a hunch.  What is kind of cool is a week before Suze came, I said to Charlotte "Your Suze is coming" and mentioned that she would be coming in on an airplane.  Outside of a 100 First Words book and the Richard Scarry books, Charlotte has no exposure to airplanes.  The day before Suze's arrival (six days after I mentioned the plane) I told Charlotte Suze would be here the next day.  And she said, "Suze coming plane."  And then she did it again two days ago when we said Suze would be leaving in a few days.

Crazy.  What I really want to know is what in the hell does the word plane mean to her?  There is no way she understands what an airplane is, geography is, flight.... yet she has attached this word to the comings and goings of a very important visitor.  Who knows?  My best guess is she is attaching a person who is not permanant to her daily routine.  I have no clue other than it has some meaning of some sort.