Edamommy

Tonight I cooked a side of edamame beans to go with stir-fried noodles and Miles -- wait, I'll back up. This afternoon we had a conference call with Miles' pre-school teacher Rita. We had been concerned for a few weeks because even though when Jason drops Miles off at school he runs off happily without saying goodbye, when I pick him up he is often on the verge of tears when he sees me or is walking around aimlessly with his Doggie. Then in the car when I ask him how his day at school was, Miles answers, "Cry." He is just over two years old and has a large receptive vocabulary, to use the experts' terminology, but doesn't speak very clearly yet. He can put simple sentences together, most of which Jason and I can understand but others can't, and his ability to describe feelings or events is limited. So when he tells me, Cry, I have no idea whether that means he cried all day or because he can't yet say I went down the slide, played the drums in music class, made handprints in art class, he just resorts to the one-word summary.

Anyway, Jason called the school (he actually asked for Teacher Rita, out of habit from talking about her with Miles) and we had our first parent-teacher conference. She thought Miles was doing fine, he's participating in the activities more often (I hadn't been aware that he wasn't sitting down for Circle Time), he's learning to listen to directions, he enjoys playing with the other children, and he's very attached to Rita. He's young and it will take time for him to get completely comfortable with the routine, but we shouldn't worry about it. Once he starts talking more and can communicate with the teachers, it will be much easier. She suggested that we read to him a lot at home (we already do, several times a day) and that when we're reading a book, we not let him interrupt since during Circle Time he tends to jump up and point to a picture in the book she's reading to the entire class. This suggestion goes against all of the advice I've ever read, not to mention common sense. Why would you not make reading an interactive experience with your child? (Test your own knowledge by taking a quick quiz on the basics of reading to your child.) Miles fills in the blanks for almost every line of every book we read together; it's actually been a good way to get him to talk more. Nevertheless, the recognized need here is to encourage him to communicate verbally rather than through gestures and half-articulated syllables.

So tonight, we made a special effort at dinner to get Miles to talk more by asking him to repeat words back to us or prod him to speak rather than interpret his "unn-nnnn" sounds. Jason broke down the word "edamame" for him: "eda" "mommy" Can you say that? "Eda-mommy" repeated Miles. We looked at each other approvingly -- see, we just need to give him the opportunity and break down words into familiar sounds. Miles reached for another bean and said, "Eda-daddy!"