sep-nov update: cognition & speech

backseat driver (advanced)
earlier in the week of 3 nov, while we were on the road one morning, we became stuck behind a bus in a bus bay. i didn't know whether the bus was going to move off soon or to overtake it, so in the moments of deliberation i muttered, "stupid bus! are you going to move?"

only to hear from my backseat driver, "mummy, don't be rude to the bus. it is not rude to you. it is stopped because of the red light. so don't be angry at the bus, ok?"

i was kind of pleased that she's able to reason it so logically, but also a little miffed as it is a bit rich, coming from a kid who would sing, "the monkey on the road wouldn't drive properly, drive properly, drive properly" to the tune of 'the wheels on the bus'. ok, so daddy taught her this rather rude song, but still...chagrin...

one of the activities we do to deflect her from potential tantrums, is to ask her to spot street signs. "can you see any roundabout signs? or give way signs?" or we count bottlebrush trees* or look for palm/pine/gum trees. or we look for trucks/diggers/concrete mixers. sometimes, when i remember, i would get her to call them out in mandarin...but this isn't as often as it should be.

jiang hua yu
i have enrolled the bean in both a mandarin playgroup and a zhuyin fuhao class - they're run by 2 different organisations. the latter class is to (hopefully) ground her in chinese phonics and to familiarise her with traditional characters.

she still resists going to both sessions, yet once there she doesn't want to leave! but i guess our efforts are paying dividends...some.

at home, she does sing some of the mandarin children's songs that they use in the playgroup, even though she would just rather spin round and round (that's her signature dance, and she usually ends her twirling with a little bow) than sing along with the jie jie and other kids in class.

we have a simple bopomofo** table at home and she likes to point at the characters and spout its pronounciation.

it's rare, but she does use mandarin phrases or words. like, "bu yao" (don't want) and "bu zhi dao" (don't know).

20 questions - the why phase
folks have written or whined about the onset of the age of "whys", and i had always thought it cute but exaggerated. well, now that the bean's started, those parents have my utmost sympathies.

she doesn't use "why" yet, but the phrase "what's the meaning" and variations there of: "what's the meaning of saturday, mum?", "what's the meaning of parrot?", "what's olives mean?", "what's eggplant mean?" ad nausem...

off pronounciation
at this age the bean obviously still can't get her tongue around some consonant blends, most notably "sp" ("pooky poon" is spooky spoon, a villianous character from the tv show numberjacks) and "st" ("we topping now").

anything!
when the bean is asked if she would like something and she's not interested, she now says, "anything!". after a while we worked it out that 'anything' actually means 'nothing'. but we didn't 'get it' until we've had much tears over crossed messages.

e.g., i might ask, "would you like to wear this outfit or this one?" the bean would look at them and then turn away, "anything! anything!" and then when i pick one outfit for her and try to get her to wear it, she'd protest, "no! no! anything!" only after a couple of these exchanges did i realise that she meant she didn't like any of the outfits.


* bottlebrush tree: shrubs and trees belonging to the genus Callistemon. we have one which i think is a weeping bottlebrush in our backyard. it is very popular with rainbow lorikeets and indian mynahs. around our neighbourhood, this is a popular roadside shrub, but i have no idea which specific ones they are. for more info - http://www.anbg.gov.au/callistemon/index.html

** zhuyinfuhao is aka bopomofo colloquially.