Smart Baby, Slow Mama

More fun and games with plastic storage bins:

This morning at Mass, John pointed to another toddler his age in the cry room. I said, "Yes, she's a baby." He replied, "Baby!" (His pronunciation isn't perfect, obviously. Often the second 'b' gets swallowed up.) That makes his order of first words: mama, kitty, daddy, wow, baby.

Poor John has entered a new phase which is frustrating for both him and his parents. I can see an explosion of linguistic understanding in his behavior, but he doesn't have words yet. Because he has strong preferences and ideas he wants to communicate, he says "mmmm! mmmm!" in an extremely whiny, demanding tone while pointing vigorously. It is so frustrating for him to try to communicate to us and we slip into being irritated with him, when really I think we should remember that it would be darn frustrating to be desperately trying to communicate and be unable.

Speaking of irritation, I experienced an I'm-a-horrible-mama moment today. For weeks John has been grabbing my books off of the bedside table. This is not acceptable to me because I worry that he'll tear the pages. So every time he grabs one of my books throughout the day, I yank it out of his hands and say, "No, those are Mama's books." Then I put the book back on the shelf, at which point John bodily falls to the ground in tears. Today a light bulb went off in my head when John took one of my books off the shelf: When John gets one of my books, he brings it to me instead of secreting it away. And when I put it back on the shelf, he almost inevitably grabs another book seconds later and brings it to me. He might do this several times in a row, crying every time I put it back. If John were trying to steal my books to tear the pages, why would he bring them to me? It was then that a hypothesis formed in my head: I realized that John was simply expanding his behavior of asking me to read one of his board books to him to asking me to read one of my mama's books to him. Throughout the day John will grab a board book and bring it to me and I respond by sitting down, putting him on my lap, and reading it to him. When he logically expanded his behavior, I punished him for it. I tested my hypothesis: When John grabbed one of my books a few minutes later and brought it to me, I said, "Do you want to read?" We sat down on a chair, baby in my lap, and "read" my book which, of course, had no interesting pictures. John was happy as a clam and brought me and his daddy more grown-up books to "read." You can understand why my realization of what my poor, smart son has been doing for weeks made me feel like a wretched mother! How many times have I made my boy cry over this?

An aside: I'd like to recommend a wonderful old Christmas story from the late 1800s and which is available in full online: The Birds' Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggan. It is inspirational, funny, touching, and contains a beautiful example of Christian virtues. My only criticism is sullying the emphasis on Jesus' birthday with Santa Claus.