Chatting with Bea

I was sitting with Bea yesterday, helping her eat her yogurt and we were chatting. Well, not exactly chatting like I do with my almost 3 year old, but having a fun 16 month-old interaction. Bea was saying lots of sounds and words and I was responding with sounds and words. She was making lots of facial expressions and I was changing my face in response. She was using her body to throw spoons, wave hands and grab things from the table and I was reacting as I felt appropriate. As we were sitting together it started to occur to me that she was really watching my responses and I started to think about how much kids her age are learning about culture, gender, and world-view without us even thinking about it.

When she says "ba," I use my context clues and what I know about her to make my best interpretation as to whether she meant banana or ball or whether she was starting to sing "ba, ba, black sheep" or beginning to say "bye bye." In this unique time of lots of half-formed language, I find myself completing a lot of her words and feeding her short sentences that I think she can use instead of grunting and pointing. Most of the time, I think I am simply helping her out as she is searching for the right sounds and words, but I know there is a lot of interpretation involved. I often ask Bea, "Is that what you meant?" and she often nods yes to me. Sometimes the head nodding is enthusiastic and giggly like I just won the charades game, but sometimes it's a serious, slow, maybe slightly confused looking nod as if she's saying... "um, yeah mom, of course I was asking to clean up my toys before we go on a walk (is that what I was supposed to be asking for?)"

My interpreting assistance relies on a lot on my expectations of what I think would be normal for her to be saying in any given situation. Those expectations of what is normal are my culture, gender and world-view that I am teaching my children (whether I realize it or not!). It's what we called the hidden curriculum when I was teaching in the classroom. It's the lessons about who we think we are as people and how we think we should treat each other and how we think the world works and kids learn these things by being with us through all the unintentional, mundane parts of our day. It's not anything we teach directly or in a curriculum, but it's taught daily through the way the teacher or parent speaks, makes decisions, interacts with others... basically, the way we live our lives.

When Bea swipes her arm across the table and sends forks and spoons flying, I could say "No! bad girl," or I could say "Wow! You're strong," or I could say "Uh-oh." Do I give her an identity statement as a bad girl, a powerful girl, or one who just made a mistake? Then, do I say "Okay, you can clean it up" or do I say "Oh no, now I have to clean this up." Am I telling her that in our world kids are active participants in life or am I saying the adults do all the important work, or am I even saying that kids make moms do work they don't like? Yikes, it can get scary to think about all the possible messages I may be communicating.

Fortunately, this hidden curriculum takes many, many events and incidents to be formed (not just one reaction to a flying fork); one incident will probably not shape how my child sees herself, other people and the world. In fact, it's such a complicated set of observations and interactions that we can't even try to control it by simply remembering to say certain words in one particular situation... because the point is, this is the stuff we are almost always unaware of and it happens all the time. Ironically, if I want my children to become great people, I need to tend to my own development as a person. In the end, I have to trust that I can give my children the best of what my culture and gender and worldview have to offer if I'm continually aware of my own process of becoming the person I want to be, discovering the person my own creator made me to be... and that, interestingly enough, I learn by example from the gracious and loving way God interacts with me.