Be careful. Be very careful. The little people are everywhere, watching you, listening to you and they remember everything.
Little pitchers do have big ears. Very big ears.
At dinner, the 3-year-old sat between his dad and grandfather who talked about adult things ignoring the little guy.
He was not ignoring them. Totally cued into their every word, he compulsively repeated everything his father said.
“The quarterback ran a 50 yard touchdown.”
“. . . ran a 50-yard touchdown,” he said looking at them.
“The president’s decision came down to the wire.”
“The president’s decision came down to the wire,” he chirped.
“You can get that much with interest.”
“You can get that much with interest,” he echoed.
Hearing the overlay of conversation, his mother and I stopped talking to listen in amazement as him copied even words he did not know or understand — but would very soon.
He is listening, watching, touching, absorbing everything around him.
His mother knows that and uses every day to teach him, especially in speech.
Words beginning with the difficult letter ‘S’, such as ‘Stop’ earn him an on-the-spot lesson, “Say SSSSS.”
“SSSSS,” he echoes
“Top!”
“Top.”
“SSSSS-top.”
“SSSSs — top.”
“Right.”
Hundreds of times she correctly pronounced the word ‘pumpkin’ before he stopped using his made-up word, “psstt.” It takes time to develop the physical skills to pronounce words let alone understand them. At three, his mind sponges up every word he hears.
And, he is not fussy where he gets a new word. A recent ride with older pre-school boys included the naughty thrill of shouting out all the bathroom words each knew.
One little guy also kept repeating, “OMG! OMG!”
Within minutes grandson joined in the bathroom words cheer and quickly added, “MMG! MMG!”
Quickly, my daughter had had enough. “That is not something we allow at our house. That is not appropriate,” my daughter said. She determined that her son, if not the others, would practice polite, acceptable conversations, even if he does know and hear much more than that.
“He is tuned into sounds, including his sister,” my daughter said. “I was in his bedroom as he played with his cars the other day. Moving the cars, he said, “The man is going to the store. He stops at the sign. Baby Caroline is crying. She is awake. The man drives down to the store.’ “I had not even heard the baby, but he had heard the first squeaks of her waking up,” she said.
One evening as she tucked him into bed, he exhibited his first fear of night time monsters. His mother assured him, “if that monster comes, you just say, ‘Go away monster. God is here. He will keep me safe.”
The child practiced the command and went to sleep. He did not forget what she said. Last week as he and his dad played with the MatchBox Cars Haunted House, my daughter overheard the following conversation.
“You can’t come up here. This is my house. You can just go down there,” Eli said.
His dad veered his car away.
“But if you say ‘please,’ you can come up here,” the lad immediately amended his prohibition.
“Please, can I come?”
“Yes.”
Daddy started to move his car up into the haunted house saying, “but it’s scary up there.”
“It will be okay. God will protect you. It will be safe,” Eli reassured him from experience.
He also knows it is safe to talk with his parents – to even interrupt as he insistently did the other day, “Mom! Mom! Mommy! Dad. Daddy! Mom.”
They stopped and looked down at him
“I’m not gonna talk. I’m just gonna listen to you talk,” he said settling down to absorb every word they said.
He said so much in those two sentences. Every little person listens to the big folks around them. They may not say anything, but they hear everything you say and remember everything they see what you do.
So be careful. Be very careful. The little people are everywhere and they are watching you.