Mother Tongue

Ring....Ring...Ring....Beep:

"Hey Beckie, it's me. I'm just calling to let you know that...Jeanne put a garment in my trunk... which you'll be needing on the...19th of April. I wanted to call now so that I didn't forget because of it being in my trunk and all. So I'll either get it to you tomorrow, or next week."

Did you get that? Beckie volunteered to dress up as the Easter Bunny for the spring party our moms' group is having. I couldn't very well say on her answering machine that the Easter bunny costume for the party on the 19th is in my trunk because what if her boys heard the message? And basically everything I say in the presence of other parents has to be disguised like that. When they're Sabine's age, anything goes. But then they start to understand English and it puts a real kink in your ability to socialize. At first it's easy, you spell everything. But then they go and learn how to spell, or you over-use some of your favorite words and you have to come up with more creative ways to communicate with each other.

The most amusing technique of late is simply the 'find different words that mean the same thing' method, of which you saw above. This is actually very good for a mother's brain because when you've got small kids it turns to mush, so this is good practice using big vocabulary for when you're back in the professional world.

My mom sometimes employs the foreign language method. She say Pater or Mater (for father or mother) and direct you to follow her line of regard to indicate a certain child when she would normally say the name of that kid's mother.

Sign-language is an oft-used technique, although with some kids, mine included, the children are taught sign language by their parents.

Jacob is starting to spell now so I'm trying to get used to spelling backwards. The advantage of this technique is that you can spell right in front of them and don't even have to leave the room. You can actually indicated to the person, ok, I'm going to spell backwards, and your kid is just left in the dust because their brains aren't that fast enough yet to figure out that B-O-C-A-J is just their letters in a different order. Or maybe you start to spell, P-L-A, spot your kid tuning into what you're saying, shoot your friend a look that says, "hold that thought," pause for a minute, then continue Y-G-R, pause again just long enough for the child to forget the letters that came before, and then finish O-U-N-D-?.

My personal favorite is the first one. It's fun. Like one big game of Taboo. There's certain words you can't use because your kids know 'em. There's other's they don't know yet and that's fair game. It's just a metter of combining them in the right way to form a complete thought. The complete thought thing, well.... I forgot what I was going to say about that.