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My Granddaughter's Speech
My Granddaughter's Speech
From the moment my first grandchild was born recently, I have found myself obsessing over her speech or, more exactly, the prospect of her future speech. It is important to me that she grow up learning how to manipulate the English language properly and expertly, that she not inject the word “like†into every pause, and that she completely understand the social imperative of well-wrought words.
Babyologists tell us there are various and distinct periods of oral progress in a baby’s life, aside from sucking on their toes, I mean. The First Preverbal Period is in the womb, of course, a time the pro-choice people more pointedly prefer to call the Gestation Period. Once they enter the world, the Second Preverbal Period ensues. Speaking over the phone to my daughter the other day, I could clearly hear my granddaughter in the background speaking to me. “Can you hear her?†my excited daughter asked. “Say hello to Grandpa.†The baby responded appropriately: “Gah, gah.â€
Once I hung up, I decided that at my next opportunity I would have to speak to my daughter and her husband about the daily importance of the word choices that they are going to be making in the presence of my granddaughter. It is, after all, from them that she will be learning to talk. “Wha’s that?†my granddaughter will say, pointing at something that has caught her eye. The response here is crucial, irrespective of the object of her attention, for it will set in motion a lifetime reference, an indelible impression to which she will continually return as she grows older.
Back when my daughter was born, everyone feared that my annoying habit of using profanity around the house would have this terrible impact on our child. I dutifully promised friends and family alike that I would make an effort to stop. Then, with our toddler daughter standing nearby as my wife cooked breakfast, a raw egg fell, cracking open upon my wife’s bare foot. “Shit,†she thoughtlessly exclaimed. “Shit,†mimicked our daughter. I know that I should never have laughed, but I just couldn’t help it. My daughter spent the remainder of the morning, her ear now attuned to a new word and the fact that it had obviously pleased her father, running around the house in her loose diaper saying “Shit, shit†and laughing hilariously. She had no earthly idea what the word meant, of course, but it was easy to say and had made daddy laugh.
My daughter, now the Mom herself, has to take serious stock in the significance, for my granddaughter, of dropping such verbal eggs. The child’s verbal skills are at stake, after all. There will be instances when exactitude will be demonstrably necessary so that “stuff†and “things†do not creep insidiously into my granddaughter’s speaking world. Once the Second Preverbal Period has ended and the Preschool Verbal Period has commenced, my daughter is going to realize that she is having difficulty keeping up with the constant and sometimes interruptive need my granddaughter will have to increase her nascent vocabulary. But this challenge will be nothing compared to what will happen in the Elementary Education Period. The pediatrician may be able to inoculate her against various common childhood diseases, but what does one do about infectious poor speech? “Where did you learn that word, Sweetie?†“That’s what Meagan always says.†Oh, that’s just great!
It will be providing a pattern of thoughtful attention to my granddaughter’s emergent verbal requirements that will set the precedent for her future acceptance of this critical aspect of her life, not to mention establishing the verbal skills foundation for her eventual run for the presidency in 2064.
posted on Oct 4, 2012 1:42 PM ()
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