American parents are obsessed with animal sounds. Have you noticed this? If your toddler doesn't know 15 animal sounds (preferably used in conjunction with adorable facial expressions and hand jive) then you're A) a bad parent or B) raising an inferior child. There's no middle ground with some people.
Is there no other way for us to measure child development?
"Yes, little Johnny knows the presidents from Washington to Lincoln. We're working feverishly on the next ten."
OR
"Mia recognizes and names every make and model of car made during the 1960s. Isn't that wonderful?"
Perhaps something they'll actually use later in life? I think that's my biggest issue with animal sounds. Who. Cares. Is she really going to find herself facing social ridicule in her mid-20s because her oink isn't quite up to snuff? Do these children spend a lot of time in barnyards communing with nature? I feel about animal sounds the way I do about trigonometry. It's unnecessary for normal people to know either one.
In the case of trig (and analytical geometry, chemistry and calculus for that matter), high school upper classmen had fewer classes than their younger counterparts. So a bunch of nerdy, math-obsessed teachers invented trigonometry, which is nearly impossible to spell, let alone understand. It was created to fill a timeslot, to torture young minds and keep people from flirting and those are it's only purposes. I have never used trig in real life and I don't intend to.
Whew.
Ok, back to horse sounds. I believe we put outrageous pressure on our toddlers to perform like circus acts but for what purpose? After you left pre-school, did you ever, even once, ask a friend, "What does a duck say?" Did you? I think not. We never make these sounds again until we're parents ourselves and then we suddenly become completely absorbed in our child's knowledge of animal language.
Reagan understands (a lot) and speaks (a little) English and that's good enough for me. Later, maybe she'll learn Mandarin or Spanish-- languages she might actually use in the future. If she never speaks sheep, we'll muddle through somehow.
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7 comments:
Lisa, I love reading your blog. You make me laugh. Hope I can visit one day and get to see you again and finally meet your spicy hunan girl!
Sonia
Sonia! It's so good to hear from you! Yes, come see us and meet this crazy girl who's turned my life upside down. She's worth the drive, I promise. :)
trig: your house and almost everything in it, your car, streets & highways, the airplanes and navigation systems that made it possible to go get Reagan, .... you get the idea.
Art History 101, Physcology, Sociology, Poetry: right down there with animal sounds!
love,
Daddy
I knew you'd give me trouble on the trig comment. But what I wrote was most NORMAL people don't use it and I'm one of those people. Sure others use it to design things for me but I don't know how they work (nor do I care even slightly). You're my favorite aeronautical engineer/computer programmer but your people aren't in any way...normal.
Lisa Kai, I say 'Amen!' to your trig comment! You know darn good and well trig made me cry almost everyday. And if I were a betting woman I would wager that Mr. Metcalf was as excited for me to leave trig as I was to go join advanced music appreciation! We learned some very important things in that class- like the merits of music from the 70's, and how Regina should never be put in charge of picking up pizza from Chummy's (or whatever that place was called!) Love you!!!:)
Ang
Okay Ms. Lisa...you don't like Math? That's...well...almost sacrilege in this house! Come on, I know you use Trig everyday...I know you must. ;) At least tell me you use alegebra.
Katie's animal repertoire consists of a roar, only it sounds more like "woah" and it's quite adorable. She does call cats "mmm-ow" which I guess is close enough. ;) LOL
Angie Girl, you've got me craving Chummy's!! Bet they don't use trig to apply all that cheese and pepperoni...
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