Grandparenting again: words and silences

The grandkids have been back. And with plenty of progress with which to dazzle their grandparents, not least this one. Above all because most of it was in the area of language, and I’m particularly keen on how we use words.

Matilda and Elliott enjoying a picnic in the woods

Let’s start with Elliott, who reached eighteen months while he was with us. I once had to contend with the mockery of a couple of sceptics, whose blushes I’ll spare by not naming them here, though his grandmother and mother know who I mean. They used to laugh when I suggested that Elliott had the makings of a strong silent type.

“What do you mean?” they scoffed, “can’t you hear the noise he makes?”

Well, that was true enough. He certainly wasn’t backward in making his voice heard. And it’s equally true that our family has been notably short of strong silent types in the past: my stepson, who shares my forename, David, but not my inability to stop talking, is the only one I can think of. But that only means it’s time for another.

Elliott’s behaviour this time fully vindicated me. Strong he certainly was. Bravely he kept pushing his balance bike along (they are without pedals, which help kids learn how to move around on a bike, and how to keep their balance, in the hope that they can skip the training-wheel stage later). Despite pushing himself along so far and so long, he didn’t lack energy and strength to go clambering up and down things in the playground where we eventually turned up.

The indefatigable cyclist
Elliott on his bike in the woods

And with strength came silence. In fact, at first he barely said anything. That may have been in part because he was sucking on a dummy (US trans: pacifier) which does rather limit speech (it would certainly limit mine), but even after he’d taken it out, he kept his verbal communication to the necessary minimum. Little cries of interest or annoyance, depending on whether he approved or disapproved of what I was doing, but interspersed with the occasional word – his vocabulary’s growing, though the word I remember him using most was ‘car’. He likes cars and has a generous disposition to share the pleasure with me, so he likes to point to any that go past, or indeed that we go past when they’re parked, in case I missed them.

But there was never a wasted word. Classic behaviour of the strong silent type. He’d demonstrated both strength and silence.

Things were different with Matilda, now well into her fourth year. She’s really getting places now with language. Two of them, what’s more. Good, fluent sentences too. She will, like most kids, refer to herself in the third person – “Tilly wants….”, “Tilly is…”, but that’s rare. Mostly she’s mastered the vertical pronoun. “I want…,” she’ll say, and quite often, “I don’t want…”

She’s also reached a stage I remember from my own childhood. This is the discovery of the word “why?”. What I like about her use of it is that she seems to be earnestly trying to learn from the reply, which she often repeats in part (the key part).

“Don’t put the chair there,” I might say.

“Why?” she might ask, a perfectly reasonable request, in my view.

“Because it might fall over.”

“It might fall over,” she’ll repeat. Apparently absorbing the lesson. And not just in appearance, I hope, but in reality, too.

As I said, she’s progressing in two languages. Her Spanish has been coming along a treat since she started ‘big school’ – kindergarten – having left behind the nursery school Elliott still attends. Her mastery of the language only became apparent to me when I took her to the same playground I’d visited before with Elliott. There, a big girl – Sofía, who was five and told me so, even using the English word, since she’d heard Matilda and me talking – decided she wanted to play with Matilda. That led to a conversation at length and at speed in Spanish.

I was most impressed. Especially when Matilda responded to my suggestion that we head home. Usually she’s very good at deciding which language to use with which adult, and she clearly has me categorised under ‘Anglo’, but on this occasion, her firm and unambiguous response to my gentle English suggestion, came out in Spanish (maybe because of the conversation with Sofía):

“No quiero ir a casa.”

I was impressed by the use of “quiero”, the right form of the verb to want, in the first person of the present tense – so correctly meaning “I want” or, in this case, “I don’t want”. And “ir a casa” is precisely “to go home”, so she’d heard the words in English but had no trouble responding in Spanish.

Of course, the mere fact that she could make her wishes so clearly known was no surprise. That had been the case long before she used much language, just as it is with strong, silent Elliott, words or no words. 

Incidentally, only minutes afterwards – it may have been no coincidence that we heard a bell ring in the meantime – Matilda announced to me, in English, “it’s late”. It turned out that this meant that we were, after all, going home, as became clear by her picking up her bike and clearing off while I tore around at speed picking up the other belongings and racing after her before she could put herself in harm’s way, on a cycle track separated only by a kerb from the road (fortunately, nothing had appeared that would have had Elliott calling out ‘car’).

The trouble with mastering language is that words can also be used to slander or denounce. And, I’m sorry to have to announce, Matilda has learned both. 

One of my favourite actions with the grandkids is to attack them with loud roaring noises and pretend to bite them. They both seem to enjoy this and react with gales of laughter. 

Now I know that seems silly, but it’s hurtful to say so. Matilda, however, does.

“Granddad’s silly,” she says. Sometimes she goes so far as to say “very silly”.

I like the use of the word ‘granddad’ by the way, though I do slightly miss her earlier name for me, ‘Dad-dad’. But ‘silly’? It’s odd that I don’t find it offensive. Possibly because it’s true. More likely because it’s Matilda saying it.  

The charm of Matilda
Offering her silly granddad a flower

Even worse was the moment when I gave her two little chocolate buttons.

She knows that’s not allowed, and I hoped it would be our little secret. But she immediately, with her most charming style, told her mother and grandmother.

“Granddad gave me chocolates.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. Two pieces.”

Language is great. But, boy, it marks the end of keeping things quiet, doesn’t it? 

Ah, well, I suppose the just confirms that nothing in life is an unmixed blessing. That’s just as true of the kids’ communication skills as it is of anything else. But at least those developing skills provide a lot of fun.