The ability to communicate is, fundamentally, a two way street—you may, for example, speak impeccable English, but if you fail to get your point across to your fellow human, or to your dog, than you have failed at communication. Thus it is with the 19 month old.
“Lauren,” I said the other day as I was strapping her into her car seat, “you’ve scratched your face again.”
“Cut!” she said, holding out her finger to be inspected. For this particular child, “cut” doesn’t mean “I cut my finger” or “I cut my face with my finger.” It means “you need to cut my fingernails.”
“Okay,” I said, “I can cut your nails when we get home. But why did you scratch your face?”
“Bunny!” she said. Sometimes it is entirely unclear what your toddler is talking about.
“Bunny?” I asked. “Where is the bunny?”
“Face!” she said. When confronted with absolute non sequiturs, close the car door and keep going. It will all become clear in time. And it did.
A little while later when we got home, I mentioned to my husband that Lauren had managed to scratch her face again. I didn’t know she was within earshot, but from the living room I heard her exclaim, once again, “bunny!”
This time I can’t ignore it, so I go into the living room and I say, “What is bunny? You said that before. What do you mean by bunny?”
Ever the helpful little child, she runs past me, goes into the bathroom, points upwards towards the shelf at a box and says clearly, “bunny!”
She’s pointing at bandaids. She wants a bandaid for the scratch on her face and her nails cut so she doesn’t do it again. Obviously.
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