my daughter the genius, redux
My almost-20-month-old daughter can read.
Okay, okay, so not technically, but c’mon! After a few days of playful bedtime drilling by la dra., which has turned the the nightly reading of her favorite book into a game of “name that letter on the cover,” The Pumpkin tonight grabbed “Charlie Parker Played Be Bop,” pointed to the fourth letter of the second word of the title, on it spare yellow field, and said, “K.” Then she proceeded to correctly identify the letters “D,” “R, “Y,” “O,” and “B.” She really loves “K,” though, kept coming back to that one. And “B” would often morph into the entirely understandable “Be Bop,” which is absolutely adorable coming out of her mouth. She really pronounces the stop on that ending “P,” man.
Oh, and did I mention that she also, almost casually,” would modify the name of the letter with the color of its background square? “Green Y, daddy.” Yes, baby, that most definitely is a green Y.
See? Told you—genius.
She’s been naming the colors of everything—her Colorwonder markers (which, by the way, are awesome, as they only write on their special paper and not on, say, your table, floor, brand new white cabinets, or pants), the plastic balls in the ball pit at the kiddie gym, and now, the tiny background squares behind the capital letters spelling out the name of her favorite book. Apparently, according to my beautiful, smart doctor wife, who does her share of well-child checks, they don’t start asking kids if they know their colors ‘til their four-year check-up!
See? Told you—genius.
She’s stringing words together to describe things (adjective and noun) and even make 2- or 3-word sentences to describe or ask for something. She points at Dora and Boots holding hands in her book, and knowing that I make her hold my hand to walk places [she even will ask for me to go somewhere with her by hold up her hand and saying, “Daddy, hand”], she says “Dora Boots hand.” Fine, there’s no active verb in there, but you know what she’s saying. And more important, so does she.
And she’s even got the whole “using language to manipulate” thing down already, too. The other night at a Chinese restaurant, she was blocked in my me in our booth and couldn’t get behind me. So, after getting frustrated for a second trying to push past me, she changed tactics. She came up to me, leaned her whole body into my back, and said, in her sweetest “lovey” voice, “Daddy, hug,” all the while trying to still get past me.
Yeah, I’m in trouble.
So, I really don’t remember a thing from all that language acquisition crap we had to take in ed school, but all this, and especially the letter recognition, seems really advanced for not even 2. [See, I told you it was okay to watch “Sesame Street” at an early age. Yeah, toddlers automatically fall under the thrall of that annoying little red thing, but there are benefits, yeah? Tradeoffs, dude—the house is covered in Elmo, but hey, my kid can read!]
See? She is a genius.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006