Learning new words
Teaching your children new words can be an interesting experience, especially when they are babies. You are trying to get the baby to say a certain word, say perhaps a relative’s name. What actually happens is that they pick up new words almost at random and sometimes out of context.
On Saturday, we were cleaning up and Nicky was getting into something that I’d rather not have him in. I said, “Dude, that’s not for you.” Nick looks at me and says, “Doooo.” He must have saw the look of amazement on my face and tried again. “Doood.” How about that. Here we’ve been trying to get him to say “Nana” and he says “Dude” with almost the right surfer inflection.
However, there are times when you need to watch what you say. Now I didn’t say any naughty words myself. It was more of a juxtaposition of two other words. Anyway, I was helping Abi get ready for bed and Nick was in the room with us. I told Abi that she couldn’t sleep with the dolls and she said that she wanted to sleep with Polly [Pocket]. Now that’s a fairly small toy so I told her, “No, you can’t sleep with Polly because she’ll fall behind the bed and you’ll lose her.” And then that cute little voice down on the floor chirped out, “Loser!”
Yeah. I couldn’t help myself either.
