my dilemma

Aaron’s a year old now, and he’s picking up words of his own.  He’s learned “nana” for banana, “nai nai” for milk (in Chinese baby talk), “dada” of course, and a few others.

Lillian and I have been making every effort to speak clearly and correctly when in front of the children.  There’s no way to avoid some exposure to poor or sloppy language, because when we take the kids out in public, well, you gets what you gets.

Imagine our disappointment when it seemed that Maddie had begun to pick up a little ghetto speak.  (Or maybe it was just lazy speech.  We didn’t know what to think, because she never heard these words from us.)  She would grab a toy out of Aaron’s hands, and exclaim “Hey!  That’s mines!”  Or she’d be looking for something, and when she found it, she’d say, “I finded it!”

We listened to this poor speech for a few days before we realized what was really going on.  We knew she didn’t hear those words from us, we’d only assumed she’d heard them on the street.  But that’s not the case either.  She was figuring out grammar and simple, regular verb conjugation!

She wasn’t saying, “That’s mines.”  She was saying, “That is mine’s.”  She knew that for most the other words, you make them possessive by appending the apostrophe s.  Daddy’s, Mommy’s, Baby’s, Mine’s.

It was a similar thing for finded.  For regular verbs, you can make a past tense by appending “ed.”  Walk, walked.  Play, played.  Therefore:  Find, finded.

English is going to be one heck of a language to learn after all.

During this first year of Aaron’s life, we’ve been learning little snippets of his language.  We’re better at this with Aaron than we were with Maddie simply because he came second.  (Sorry Maddie!)  It’s easy enough to distinguish between certain cries and happy sounds, but we’re proud that we can tell when Aaron wants to play a certain game, and request certain particular things.

Here’s an incomplete catalogue of some of Aaron’s vocabulary (ignoring a couple of different cries I won’t try and commit to letters):

Recently something’s been happening that we thought was cute but pointless.  Until today.  Aaron was crying, and when Lillian discovered that his diaper overflowed, we both realized that we’d assumed the other one had been doing the changing.  I dash him to the changing table and free his little privates from their damp and suffocating prison.  Aaron smiles at me and holds one hand steady as he beats it with the other.  Sorta clapping.

No, not sorta clapping.  Clapping.  Aaron was expressing gratitude that I’m fixing the problem.  He had learned how Maddie, Mommy and I all clap when we congratulate each other.  Then I realized where we’d seen this before, sometimes when we’re doing it and he’s joining in, but also when he gets Cheerios.

Oh!  So, I was wrong in my last post.  He doesn’t like any baby food anymore.  He’s grown out of that.  And he’s been trying to tell us — in our own language — that he’s been wanting Cheerios instead of baby food.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Maddie!

It’s difficult to adequately describe to childfree people certain patterns of behavior of babies.  It’s not that what they do is so adorable, or so annoying, but sometimes what they do is so nonsensical as to be unbelievable.

Consider the way my babies eat.

Maddie did this to some degree when she wasn’t quite one year old.  But Aaron’s got this behavior down pat.  He won’t consciously eat.  That bears repeating with emphasis.

He won’t consciously eat.

What the hey, kiddo?  Don’t you get hungry?  Ever?  Well, we’ve never been able to starve the kid for long enough to really see him actively eat.  We always break first.  We refuse to cause our kid to be malnourished.

Here’s how feeding time plays out:

1. Offer Aaron food we know he enjoys.  Watch him turn away, or maybe swat at the food like it’s poison.  Chase his mouth with the spoon as he twists and turns his head.
2. Try to settle the kid.  Get his attention.  Make the spoon fly around in a fun manner.  Pretend it’s some vehicle delivering cargo.  Watch him turn away at the slightest indication the cargo’s destination might be his mouth.
3. Eat some baby food, pretend it’s good.  Watch him be unaffected by the display.
4. Find a toy or other bright or noise distraction.  Get him interested in it.  Pretend feeding time is over, and give him a few seconds with the distraction to ensure he’s really into the thing.  Scoop some baby food, and deliver the baby food directly to his mouth.  He’ll be engrossed in whatever he’s doing, but somehow, his peripheral senses indicate food is coming, and he’ll open his mouth to accept it, and gladly eat it.  He’ll take his whole meal easily as long as he’s totally engrossed in something.  As soon as the distraction loses effectiveness, and he becomes cognizant that he’s being fed, we’re back at step one.

Addendum:  There’s precious little that can hold an 11-month-old baby’s attention for more than a minute.

Today we had leftovers for dinner.  I was trying to feed Aaron some baby food, which he refused whole heartedly, while Lillian intermittently hand fed him tender pieces of chicken, which he gobbled up.  It seems Aaron’s decided there’s no reason he should be eating different food from us, now that he’s got two whole teeth.

Lillian, Aaron and I finished eating, but Maddie was still playing with the vermicelli on her plate.  She’d pick up one strand at a time, and make a big production out of eating it.  I took Aaron out of his chair and placed him on the ground and told Maddie, “You can use your fork to eat the noodles.”

She actually liked that idea, and took to it nicely.  I went into the kitchen to help Lillian with the dishes.  We were enjoying talking about videos and piracy when we both realized there was a problem: We didn’t have to speak above the din of the children.

“Why’s it so quiet over there?”  “I was just thinking the same thing!”

I dash to the dining room to find Aaron standing next to Maddie’s high chair, with his head tilted back and a big smile on his face with vermicelli cascading out of his mouth.  Maddie’s got just as big a smile going as she gleefully scoops the vermicelli off her plate and into his eager mouth.

Lillian grabs the camera and grabs this one shot three seconds before Aaron’s stomach realizes that this is a bit too much adult food, and half his dinner comes back up.

So, indeed there was trouble.  But it wasn’t because the boy conspired with the girl to thwart our potty-training efforts.  It was because I took some bad advise.

I’d been told by one individual how hard potty training had been going for her, because she was such a softie with her child.  And I’d been told by another individual that the best way to potty train was in a full on all-or-nothing commitment, with rewards and negative reinforcement.

We’d decided to try out the all-or-nothing tactic, complete with negative reinforcement for mistakes.  I’d scheduled some time off from work, and watched Maddie with an eagle eye.  We asked her if she wanted to go potty every 20 minutes or so, and praised her when she did, but when she had an accident, she was given a firm reprimand, even a swat or two on the bottom.

She did indeed pick up on potty training quickly.  But even if the negative reinforcement helped in that regard, it wasn’t worth it, and we’re not going to use it on our next child.  There was a short period where Maddie really withdrew from her normal fun-loving self.  She stopped eating, drinking and playing like she used to.  And I’m talking about a couple of days.  It’s hard for me to write objectively about this.  Maddie’s change in behavior freaked us out, and I felt awful.  I spent the next few days trying to undo the damage I’d done.  And although she’s now a wonderful, happy little potty-trained girl, I still regret the path we took to get her here.

Here’s the best advise we got, regarding potty training:  Create a chart with a few rows of 10 spaces or so.  Get some stickers your child likes, and each time they successfully use the potty, allow them to put a sticker on a space in the chart.  When a row is filled with stickers, the child gets a modest but special reward.

Our hands have been forced by the Day Care.  We have to try and potty train Maddie so we can get her into the classroom we prefer.  I’ve taken next Monday and Tuesday off work, and today, Saturday, we begin potty training in earnest.  We’re going to give it everything we’ve got.

Maddie is being monitored around the clock.  But so far, the potty trainers are meeting utter defeat.  Progress is non-existent.  That’s not so bad.  I’ve given myself four days of around-the-clock Maddie watch.  We will win, or die trying.

But then…

Today, the boy, Aaron, made an advancement.  Yesterday, the best he could do was this “paraplegic crawl.”  He’d use his arms to drag his limp body and legs around.  His arms were getting pretty strong, by the way.  Sure he was getting around, but it was relatively slow, and we could hide dangerous items at waist height.

Today, he’s mastered the opposing hand-knee crawl that normal babies do.  We knew that was coming soon, so it’s no big deal.  But then he lifts himself up to his feet at the couch, and starts pulling down remotes and things he’s not supposed to be getting into.  The sucker learned to crawl efficiently and to cruise on his feet in one day.  Tomorrow, he turns nine months old.

This gives him the mobility and agility to force us to take our eyes off Maddie for a few precious seconds where she can run away do her business away from the toilet.  It’s like a secret alliance between those two.