My 4 1/2 year old son, Jonah is exploring the wonders of language. He knows a lot of numbers and letters. And he’s started experimenting with rhyming as in: “‘beach’ rhymes with ‘peach’ but ‘wind’ doesn’t rhyme with flower.” At which he’ll start laughing at his odd juxtaposition of non-rhymes. This morning, Jonah’s nanny tells me he said: “Puck rhymes with —-…” She practically fell down laughing at which point Jonah said: “Why are you laughing?” How would you explain it? I guess candor is the best policy.
The babies continue to be wonderful. Miriam’s nanny has taught her to “paddycake.” When you sing the song and clap your hands, she doesn’t quite get the connection and doesn’t yet play along. But she spontaneously erupts into clapping with an adorable grin and those two big front teeth gleaming. Adin can now move into a sitting position and stand up in his crib. Janis and I think we have a physical maniac baby in the making who will ruin us with exertion and worry. But what a joy our ‘misery’ will be running after the merry prankster to prevent him from falling down stairs, etc.
Well, you gotta admit, it rhymes with a lot of words; your son is figuring that out. With any luck, I’ll bet a buck that he’ll be reading Huck Finn before long. However, if he does say f— again, I think you have every right to see that his mind doesn’t get stuck in the muck. You might go so far as to throw a Nerf hockey puck, in which case, he should duck. Yuck! 🙂