More. Water. Yeah.

04:24:2004
Who is the wise man, and who is the fool? you decide...
--m's about 2.5 and his verbal development grinds on. I tried to teach him the word 'water' yesterday. I was supposed to be working but had bunked off because it was friday and one of the warmest and sunniest days we'd had all year. Water is a very important noun for a kid to learn. Water heralds a very important place in a kid's daily life. They drink it, they are given baths in it, they play with it, they are warned away from it, they are scolded when they spill a load of it on your trousers, particularly in the gusset area.

It's quite easy to program a noun into a 2.5 year old child's head. It's usually an object, like a bannana (which --m picked up quite fast) or a knife (I think --m got the general idea). You put the object in front of the child and get their attention. You show the child the object, and if appropriate you let the child touch it or even eat it. While doing this you say the word clearly and distinctly and encourage the child to say the word as well, the noun they are repeating reinforcing the experience of seeing or touching the object. Thus the effective 'programming' is achieved.

--m was playing with a watering can in the garden, which was perfect. Here was the opportunity of introducing 'water' in a safe environment. Usually we don't fill the child's watering can with water due to the mess and chaos that frequently ensues. However on this occasion I filled the can with water when he asked and let him take it outside (it was a warm day, after all.).

Anyone familiar with the life story of American Helen Keller will be aware of the pivotal point in her life: when this blind-deaf from birth girl learned to connect patterns of fingertips made on one palm by her sister with water flowing over the other hand. --m, thank God, is neither blind nor deaf and loves to play with water. He is attracted to in on a base level, something primeval which is in all of us and particularly prevalent in late toddlers. I remember seeing ---y hunched over a packet of chips in the Prater in Vienna at an advanced state of tiredness. She looked up as she was feeding and I swear I saw the jungle in her eyes. This was a long time ago. Now she's becoming quite the social girl. She's already got more friends than I have. In fact I'm jealous. But I digress.

--m played with the water as I poured it out of the watering can.

"Water." I said.
"Yeah" said --m.
"Water. Say it. Water."
"More." he said.

I looked down. The water had run out.

"More."
"Yes, I'll get some more. Just say it. Water. Wa-ter."
"More."
"Water."
"Yeah."
"Water."
"Yeah, more."
"More what?"
"More."

I suddenly realised that he must have thought he was talking to an idiot man-child who couldn't understand a simple request to fill a watering can with water. I also realised I had been out-argued by someone using only the words 'more' and 'yeah'. In fact reading this back it sounds like we were on some kind of Abott and Costello routine. A 'Who's on first' for toddlers.
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In conclusion. The above events have been explained by the occasion when --m had just finished a glass of water when I, ever the attentent father, held up a bottle and asked him if he wanted 'Any more?' Thus he had seen the water and heard the word 'more' and had been programmed some months previously. The transparent wet stuff was called 'more' and that was it for now.
Another explanation is that he had known precisely what 'more' and 'water' had meant all along and it is I, not him, who is in need of a lesson.

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