There's something I've never quite understood about the way we talk about language development. I wonder if we've overcomplicated something that was always quite simple, through our need for a methodology, a right way of doing things.
I've always spoken to my son like he's an adult who's still learning. And sometimes I don't even talk to him at all. I'll just be doing something, and if he points to something or wants to know what it is, I'll tell him.
Because he can see what I'm doing. He can make the connections himself. He might not understand my words yet but he can sense my tone, he can sense what's happening, and through the repetition of real life he'll start to understand.
Which makes me wonder, from an evolutionary point of view, what we actually did for language development before anyone thought to turn it into a technique?
I see advice shared on social media and I find myself genuinely curious about it. Are we teaching words without meaning, without the context of everyday life? When you narrate everything you do, how does a child learn which things matter? How do they understand context if language is just a constant stream of description? And if you're talking all the time, how can they learn to listen when something is actually important?
I don't think anyone in a village was crouching beside a child saying, mummy is stirring the pot, stir, stir, stir. Children just wandered between groups of adults. They watched. They asked. They were curious. They listened to the conversation that was happening between the adults. And when something was said, it meant something. It didn't just become noise.
Then I think about big, loud ethnic families, like my mum's side, where everyone is talking above each other and it sounds like yelling even when it's just conversation. Children grew up inside that, absorbing language from the texture of it, not from being taught it. And then I think about something quieter, a hunter gatherer community maybe, where the pressures of life were completely different and silence probably had its own meaning too. None of those children was being narrated at.
Our house is quiet and calm, most of the time. And I've never felt natural talking constantly, explaining everything I'm doing, or repeating a word multiple times. There's something important about having space in your own thoughts. About letting their curiosity develop without filling every gap. And who knows maybe in filling in every gap we are inserting our own thoughts and patterns before they even get to develop their own?
I always found other ways to talk to my son that made more sense to me. Every night since he was born we would talk before bed and I remember when he started babbling lots he would just coo, babble and “talk” for hours before we went to sleep, often I'd have to turn all the lights off and tell it it's time to be quiet. It was our time together to reflect on the day and share what we did.
I tell him about all the things we did that day and how much fun we had, what made him happy or sad or scared, or maybe I'd tell him I got upset today and I didn't like that. Eventually it's taken its own life, I ask him if he remembers what we did today and we talk about it and now he will request stories about things we have done. First it was talking about something that he loved like mowers or frogs and I would tell him about all the different colours of frogs, the sounds they make, where they live.Then he started to zoom in on particular things that happened during the day and really wanted to hear those stories night after night. The frog that jumped out of grandpas umbrella and landed right next to him. Seeing motorbikes at the cafe, going to my friend's house and seeing the chickens, going swimming. It's been amazing to see how his memory has developed, maybe the story slightly changes as he processes what happened and tells me what he wanted to do, like hug the frog, or he was upset because the dog jumped on him and scratched him but we put his jumper on so it didn't hurt anymore. But I get to hear the parts that stood out to him, what he really loved, or what he was afraid of. At the moment he really doesn't like mannequins, especially really big ones or ones without heads and feet. And we talk about it, I ask him why he doesn't like it, what makes it scary, I try to give him words to describe it. And make it a bit fun like talking about how silly it is that the mannequins don't have a head and feet, how do they walk and wear shoes?
He's also started telling me stories and can anticipate what comes next in a story. He's always been good at that though. We would read books and he would finish off the sentences.
I feel like really loving something with him, being curious about what going on in his mind and what is interesting and exciting for him is helping him to build out not only his vocabulary but also what everything means, the context of the story. What other people did, how he reacted and his relationship with the world.
Sometimes I get caught up in all these different methodologies which look so beautiful and attractive on Instagram or Pinterest, but they aren't really me and they aren't really what he is interested in. I tried setting up beautiful sensory bins but he didn't really care, and I realised it was more for me than it was for him. I love the beauty I love the aesthetic but is it for me or for him? It's something that I'm always coming back to. The balance between telling a story because I'm interested in it and making it all about me.
And that's the truth of it really sometimes isn't it, how do you walk that fine line between maintaining your own boundaries, loves and wishes and also respecting theirs? How do you balance your desire for them to experience and learn as much as possible without making it about your own childhood? How do you help them to integrate their experiences and make sense of the world through their own lense rather than telling them the meaning behind it?