language

in the book i am currently reading : Learning All the Time by John Holt, he says

"The trouble with telling children what words mean, or asking them to ask the dictionary to tell them, is that they don't get a chance to figure out the meaning of the word. Figuring out what you don't know or aren't sure of is the greatest intellectual skill of all."

this is brilliant and very interesting to me because Mayden is on a "what does ____ mean?" kick. even simple words that i know she knows, she wants a more detailed definition of the meaning. i've noticed her progression of language throughout the years. first was the "what's that?" phase which was really easy to answer with words like "bird" and "light" but then we moved onto the "why?" where the answers needed to be much more wordy and thoughtful such as "well, the sun is going down because the earth is rotating and we need to share the sun with the other side of the earth" my favorite is when there is a "why?" after i answered the first "why?". i thought those "why?" questions would be the hardest but now like i said we're onto "what does because mean?" questions. what does because mean? "what does except mean?" i really have to stop and think about these things. BUT this book is giving me the freedom to say "what do you think because means?" to her and I LOVE IT!


i try not to compare the kids, as they are individuals however it's obvious that Camo is not as verbally advanced as his sister was at his age. she recognized many colors and some letters of the alphabet at 18 months. Cameron has a few select words he loves such as "no", "whoo da" (what's that) & "maamaa" (May-May... nope not, mama). he also has a word "nahh nahh" that he uses for at least 3 things. for weeks it meant "water" as in he wanted his drink. now it means "water" "food" and "all done". he does his "all done... nahh nahh" with a variation of the sign (ASL) which is raising both hands in the air so that one is easy to spot. but we're back to guessing what he wants with food & water. i think he thought that "nahh nahh" gets me water so it must be able to get me other things too. his frustration w/ communication is growing and i can see where the 'terrible two tantrums' could come into play. we never had to deal with that with Mayden because she could speak so well very early on. this kid needs to learn to speak ASAP!