It seems like it’s all of a sudden that at eighteen months my granddaughter has radically increased her vocabulary. She calls a horse a ‘neigh-neigh’, a pig an ‘iggy’, and a turtle is a turtle. She asks for ‘more’ and clearly says when she’s ‘all done’. She has a new found passion for ‘oh-nits’ which, considering the shape, may make more sense than ‘do-nut.’ But we’ve had a sense that she understands far more than she says for a few weeks.
Well over a month ago my granddaughter was on the floor paging through a book while her mother and I talked. I noticed a picture on the page she was looking at and on a whim said, “Honey, can you show your mom where the basketball is?” Without hesitation, she put her finger on the basketball that the boy in the drawing was holding. Several weeks ago, before a walk, I said, “Honey, could you go in my bedroom and get the umbrella?” After hearing that, my granddaughter seemed to perk up and toddled through the apartment and into my darkened bedroom. She came out hugging the large umbrella, one a few inches taller than she is. We put a small hairclip in her hair to help hold the hair out of her eyes. It gets pulled out pretty regularly and if I see a clip on the floor I pick it up and clip it to my shirt pocket or lapel till I get a chance to use it again. Last week she was sitting on my lap letting me brush her hair back. I held her hair with one hand and looked down at my shirt pocket. There was no clip. I looked on the end table and my desk without getting up and didn’t see a clip anywhere. I half muttered, “Where is that hair clip?” and my granddaughter turned her head toward me grunted as she stabbed a finger up at my shirt pocket. I hadn’t been able to see it because my pocket had flaps covering the clip. My granddaughter understood what was going on, and helped.
So I’m thinking she understands far more than I had been giving her credit for. That makes so much sense; haven’t I always thought that my clearest thinking came without words? Haven’t I solved the toughest problems without an inner conversation? And hasn’t my granddaughter learned to spend most of the day with someone who doesn’t really talk that much?