My adorable 16 and 1/2 month old Simon has developed a bit of an annoying quirk of late. He’s on the cusp of being verbal, but doesn’t have access to enough words to clearly communicate his desires. And the boy has a lot of desires, which he feels passionately about.
For a while, when he saw something he wanted, like a banana, his soother or my hairbrush, he’d grunt meaningfully and reach toward the object of his attention. Then he realized if he screeched while gesturing significantly toward something, we were much more highly motivated to satiate his needs. At first it was grunt-gesture-pause-screech, then he dropped the time-consuming and generally unsuccessful grunt-gesture-pause and instead jumped straight to the eardrum-splitting screech.
Apparently, we were very accomodating in responding to his glass-shattering screech, because he began to employ it as a regular communication tool. Tristan took my toy – SCREECH! Please pass me that sippy cup – SCREECH! Look, the dog has a tail – SCREECH! I’m sitting in my highchair and there’s no food in front of me – SCREECH! I’ve just stuffed the last scrap of food into my face and I’m still hungry oh my god will there never be food in my life again if only I could reach that plate full of food right there in front of mommy before I starve – SCREECH!!
You get the picture.
It was getting a little tiresome, I am not afraid to admit. I explained to Beloved that it was just a phase, that as soon as he had words he would use those to communicate. We just had to put up with it for a little while. Beloved regarded me suspiciously and asked if I had somehow mated with an eagle, since Simon’s screeches sound remarkably like the starving baby eaglets on the National Geographic channel.
But this weekend, my incredibly brilliant mother changed all that. She taught Simon to say “Please.” Every time he screeched for something, she would pick it up, show it to him and say, “Please.” Within minutes, Simon was saying the most adorable version of “Pless” to ever grace the English language.
Damn, mothers really are smart. Even when you’re a mother, you realize that there is a hierarchy of mothers, and you might as well not even try because you’ll never be as clever as your mother.
So now, Simon walks around the house gesculating and hollering “PLESS” at the top of his lungs. You’ve never heard the word please imbued with so much emotion. My favourite was Simon in his highchair yesterday at lunchtime, waiting impatiently for another serving of apples pieces to be cut up. He balled up his little fists and bellowed “PLESS!” so loud his eyeballs bulged.
Who knew please could be a four letter word?
who knew….LOL! Who knew that MOMMY! could be a swear word too. Mommy Come Downstairs….Mommy I want milk…Mommy I want that Tractor NOW! Mommy…Mommy
MOMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!
Ok breath in breath out.
Glad he learned please and You Mom is one smart cookie. Now if we could just teach my FIL that he has NO CLUE how to raise kids. I think I might survie. BUT that’s a story for another day.
🙂
LOL
Sharon
wait until MIIINNNNEEEEE becomes that four letter word.
Josephine has learned to call things $#!%. When changed her diaper, I used to make an “uckghagh” sound at the poop. By seven months, she was making that noise right along with me too, and now makes it when she is pooping, when Steve is in the bathroom with the door closed, and when she sees Beauty doing the crab dance in the backyard or at the park. Lately, when touching her food with her forefinger in order to decide whether or not she is or is not going to eat it, and it doesn’t pass the test, she makes the “uckghagh” noise, therefore essentially calling the food I lovingly prepared for her “doody”.
My point is, based on your wonderful post, that I will probably have my mom to thank for eventually teaching her the actual word that she’ll use to dis my cooking. Great.
Funny stuff, Marla. My three year old exclained “That’s poopy!” when presented with his lovingly prepared dinner just yesterday. Good times indeed.
xo Danigirl
P.S. “Crab dance” — hahaha!
Too cute! Nothing like a good bellow to get the point accross. And nothing like Mom stepping in to lend a hand. We had please going here for a bit, but somehow it got replaced with a newer much more fun word.. I think it was “hockey”. But, Jonathan is now bellowing “Anna” from everywhere 🙁 I keep pretending I don’t know what he is tryhing to say, but truth be told he is just hollering for his Mommy.
Anna
I remember the first time Youngest Daughter swore. She was about three, and she was sitting in front of her dollhouse with a family of plastic people balancing on the roof when she accidentally bumped them and they all toppled off the other side.
As casually as you can possibly imagine, she just looked up at me, sighed, and muttered, “Shit.”
I was more than a bit aghast, but didn’t freak out (didn’t want to reward the word with an interesting overreaction or anything). I’ve never said anything to her about it, but amazingly to my knowledge she’s never said it again (she’s seven now). Weird.
Don’t know where on earth she could have heard the word in the first place. Maybe she was randomly reading people’s blogs when I wasn’t looking.
Trying not to laugh while sitting on conference call. Curse you!
I love that sentence “there is a hierarchy of mothers”. Now I know why I struggle so much!
Too funny! Some moms go for the sign-language dealy, and you got a kid under 2 with manners. Fantastic deal.
We were out at a pool yesterday when an “altercation” ahem happened between two of the mothers there. One mother loudly called the other one a B-I-T-C-H. Then my two year old began the sing song of the word. We just ignored it and glared at the outspoken mother…