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speaking in code
May. 24th, 2011 11:20 pmC made me cry tonight by telling me that our son said, "I don't want mommy to go. I want the two of us to stick like glue!"
C was really impressed that Bonzo had used a simile. I cried because that's the phrase I use to reassure him that I'm not going anywhere, that we will be spending the whole day with one another. (Sometimes I sneak off during naptime for groceries or the gym. I still cheat him, even on this.) I've been incredibly distracted with work over the last few months, and often when I tell him I'm paying attention or I'll be right back he looks at me and calls bravo sierra in his little four-year-old way.
It's not easy to communicate with someone that age; they do not understand abstract concepts, they make up arbitrary rules (because they see us doing it, and are building heuristics by the minute) and they can always totally spot when someone is not telling them the whole unvarnished truth. Bonzo is even able to call me out on it, and honesty has never really been one of my virtues as a parent.
Repetition works well; he's comforted to hear that we will "stick like glue" and he will often settle, just a little, at night when I tell him the poem shred about "I love you top to bottom, inside and outside, happy and sad, awake and asleep, day and night, sleep tight, good night". When he was just a few months old and I was saying goodbye to him at baby school, I would sing him a made-up song about me wanting to stay with him and flying a kite out to see him. I still pull out our song every once in a while for a difficult goodbye.
I know I'm rearing a geek, and that soon my "inside jokes" will be replaced with quotes from Star Trek or The Princess Bride or whatever the kids will be watching in 2019. I'm already beginning to feel like we understand each other slightly less as he gets older, and wonder if we'll always have the ability to speak in code, or if someday we will only talk that way.
C was really impressed that Bonzo had used a simile. I cried because that's the phrase I use to reassure him that I'm not going anywhere, that we will be spending the whole day with one another. (Sometimes I sneak off during naptime for groceries or the gym. I still cheat him, even on this.) I've been incredibly distracted with work over the last few months, and often when I tell him I'm paying attention or I'll be right back he looks at me and calls bravo sierra in his little four-year-old way.
It's not easy to communicate with someone that age; they do not understand abstract concepts, they make up arbitrary rules (because they see us doing it, and are building heuristics by the minute) and they can always totally spot when someone is not telling them the whole unvarnished truth. Bonzo is even able to call me out on it, and honesty has never really been one of my virtues as a parent.
Repetition works well; he's comforted to hear that we will "stick like glue" and he will often settle, just a little, at night when I tell him the poem shred about "I love you top to bottom, inside and outside, happy and sad, awake and asleep, day and night, sleep tight, good night". When he was just a few months old and I was saying goodbye to him at baby school, I would sing him a made-up song about me wanting to stay with him and flying a kite out to see him. I still pull out our song every once in a while for a difficult goodbye.
I know I'm rearing a geek, and that soon my "inside jokes" will be replaced with quotes from Star Trek or The Princess Bride or whatever the kids will be watching in 2019. I'm already beginning to feel like we understand each other slightly less as he gets older, and wonder if we'll always have the ability to speak in code, or if someday we will only talk that way.
