“Two-year-olds are so much fun because they will try to say anything you tell them to say, like alfalfa, Okefenokee, George Washington,” she, who is almost an adult, commented the other day.
She’s partially right.
Everyone - questioner, question and audience - loves it when a very young child, discovering the magic of language, attempts to twist his tongue to pronounce a tongue twister.
But sometimes, even the most cooperative child balks. It always brings a twinge of disappointment to parents when a child won’t perform his latest accomplishments for friends and relatives. Cartoonists have inked books on the subject of the shy kid.
And yet, innocence may bring yet another frustration. Maybe it’s why the soon-to-be an adult loves to talk to babies now. She remembers.
At two, she climbed into her uncle’s lap for him to read to her. She carried her favorite book under her arm. It was big, full of pictures, with very few words. The pictures were of cute, lovable baby animals. Because she talked everyone into reading it to her, she could recognize each picture and had almost memorized the rhymes. But little ones love repetition and she would beg for it to be read again and again.
“Skunk,” her uncle said as he came to picture five. “See the white stripe.”
“Snunk,” she repeated the work after her uncle has she had with each picture.
“No, Honey, it’s skunk.”
“Snunk,” she repeated, nodding her head.
“Sk…sk…skunk,” her uncle stressed the blending consonant sound. She watched him closely.
“Snunk,” she said.
“It’s SKUNK with a K!” he tried again.
She smiled and repeated once again, “SNUNK with a K!”
He turned the page.
Comentários