She peed her pants but it's not like it sounds. For it's the funniest story and we both laughed about it for hours.
Plus Kaitlyn's day at the beach, life as a mermaid and some pics of her in her bikini.
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Kaitlyn's Language Skills Grow....OR Not
If it wasn't the peeing in the pants incident then it was the misbehaving child in church who would get no Icee. And if wasn't these things then for sure it was an angry Mom-Mom who scolded Kaitlyn just a little too loudlyfor not going to sleep . And if wasn't any of these things, it was the very tragic episode of Kaitlyn's deceased father. For one, several or all of these things taught this grandmother just how complicated and nuanced the learning of the language can be. Human beings are the only animals on God's earth that speak such a complicated language. Sure other animals "speak" though sounds and other noise but the human beings of creation must conjugate verbs and learn past, present and future tense. Each time Kaitlyn visits I am amazed at how well she can talk and the amazing increase in her linguistic skills.
It began with Mom-Mom's scolding of the recalcitrant child who refused to go to sleep. It was well near ten pm and all across the fruited plains children of Kaitlyn's age were either sound asleep or well onto their way to dreamland. Kaitlyn, however, perhaps due to the excitement of visiting Grandmother, was jumping all around and in general refusing to sleep. "Sleep is NOT the enemy," I scolded Kaitlyn Mae.
Yes Kaitlyn Mae views sleep as something to abhor. Sleep is something human beings do when they have nothing else to do. Kaitlyn Mae, on the first night of her visit to Grandmother's, had better things to do than sleep.
"But sleep IS the enemy," the hyper-active child informed me. a)I was surprised Kaitlyn even knew what an "enemy" was and b)why on earth would she view sleep as the enemy?
Finally, in frustration I stoop up to my tallest of 5'4" and shouted, rather loudly, "LAY DOWN IN THAT BED!" My sudden yelling startled Kaitlyn so that she began crying, real heart-wrenching sobs. I immediately regretted scaring the child so. I felt the need to explain some things to her.
"Haven't I been nice to you, Kaitlyn?" I asked the sobbing child, who had, in reaction to my scream, jumped onto the bed and laid her head down on the pillow. Something, heh, she should have done well before I resorted to screaming but there you have it. In an attempt to calm the sobbing child I kissed her forehead.
"Well," Kaitlyn said between sobs, "you just yelled at me and that's not very nice."
Wow. I considered her complete and accurate sentence as typed above. First, she used the word "well" in a nuanced manner. Then she knew when "JUST" was and she knew it was a few moments ago. She also used the contraction for "THAT IS", ie "THAT'S", something unique to the English language. Besides the proper use of English, her sentiment was right on. I DID ask her if I hadn't been nice (I MEANT to say...heh, BEYOND the yelling) and she told me I hadn't and properly explained just why. Kaitlyn then went on to explain that I had "upset" her and had hurt her feelings.
Well I felt about two inches tall.
A few kisses and hugs later and all was well. Right before her heavy eyes finally closed for a long night's sleep was when Kaitlyn informed me that sleep WAS the enemy. I'm still not sure why but I know Kaitlyn understands what she means.
The following day was my community's annual flea market day and I'd been planning for Kaitlyn and I to take a stroll around the neighborhood, to visit the many yard sales and buy whatever a few bucks would purchase. For reasons I could not ascertain, Kaitlyn suddenly had to pee, this ten minutes after we'd left the house. Well our entire neighborhood isn't more than four blocks long if one goes around the circle. So I told Kaitlyn to just hold it in, that soon enough we'd be back at Mom-Mom's house.
Kaitlyn does have a strange fixation on the act of urination which I've often commented on in prior posts. The child will not, I once posted, even pee in the ocean. Goodness, fish and whales pee in the ocean but no, not Kaitlyn. If the child has to pee while enjoying the ocean then her adult caretaker has to walk clear across the beach to find a rest room for it won't do for Kaitlyn's sensibilities to be peeing in the same water in which she swims.
So as we walked around Mom-Mom's neighborhood Kaitlyn continued to complain that she had to pee and demanded that I ask complete strangers if she could use their bathroom. Something I refused to do, heh. Suddenly she shouts that she has to pee, now, quickly, hurry, hurry. Goodness this scared me to death the way she carried on. I told Kaitlyn she had two choices: either she holds it in or we go over to the copse of woods and she pees on the ground.
Kaitlyn wanted nothing to do with peeing on the ground when I first suggested it but with this sudden urgency upon her and Mom-Mom's stern tone of voice, she agreed to squat and pee on the ground. It was very obvious that Kaitlyn had no experience with such things and her parents had often told me this. For they'd often had occasion when she had to pee with the countryside the only toilet in the surround. Every time she refused to even consider such a thing. THIS time Kaitlyn agreed to pee on the ground so when I got her near a tree and in private, Kaitlyn promptly squatted down and began to pee. Only she did NOT pull down her pants.
Well I couldn't believe my eyes and my sudden shout caused Kaitlyn to stop peeing in mid-stream. "You need to pull down your pants," I told Kaitlyn, a notion that she hadn't even considered. I pondered if this wasn't why Kaitlyn refused to pee in the ocean or alongside the road like so many little children have since the beginning of time. I don't think the concept of pulling down her pants occurred to her and of course she didn't want to walk around with a wet crotch all day, goodness Kaitlyn is way too finicky for that. Of course peeing in the ocean would not require pulling down her bathing suit bottom so who knows how the child preceived the act of urinating by a private tree but I'm fairly sure she didn't know she'd should pull down her pants.
Later that same day we were cleaned up and in church. After church, IF Kaitlyn behaved, I promised I would buy her an Icee. During the services KAitlyn was very well-behaved but another child, around her age, was so bad to the point of distraction. Children are children and such as solemn masses are sometimes lost on them. For KAitlyn a promise of a beloved Icee kept her still and quiet but that other child, well let's just say his parents should have had enough sense to take him out of the church. Later, on the way out of the church, I complimented KAitlyn on how well-behaved she was and the difference between her and the other child.
"He was really bad, wasn't he?" I asked Kaitlyn Mae.
"Yes," she said very seriously, "he's sure not going to get an Icee."
Heh.
Thus the verbal exchanges between grandchild and grandmother were sometimes exasperating, often poignant, even funny, but it was KAitlyn's misinterpretation about the death of her father that effectively encapsulates the mind of a child struggling to grasp a language and all of its nuances. It began so innocently.
"Your Mommy's Daddy died when she was only your age," I explained to Kaitlyn after a question about the various and sundry people in the surround, including my own husband, who is NOT Kaitlyn's grandfather. Well I thought my sentence explained it well enough and besides a noise of sentiment, KAitlyn seemed to understand that while I was her Mommy's Mommy, that her Mommy's Daddy had died when her Mommy was young.
Indeed over the next day or so Kaitlyn would continue to ask odd questions. "My Daddy's Mommy is Mee-Maw?" she would ask. "And my Mommy's Daddy is my Daddy?" she asked and of course I explained again that her Daddy is her Mommy's husband. At the time I had no idea what her point was but she did keep asking for a more detailed explanation of who, exactly, was who.
On our way to church Kaitlyn suddenly blurted out "My Daddy didn't keep his promise." Well I didn't know what promise her Daddy made her but parents do make promises from time to time that they don't keep. And kids don't forget this. So I asked KAitlyn what was the promise her Daddy made but did not keep.
"He promised he wouldn't stop eating only he did stop eating."
Now you've got to know that this sentence made no sense at all to me. It would make sense had she said he promised to stop drinking but I heard correctly. Kaitlyn said her father promised he would NOT stop eating. Although Kaitlyn's father does not especially have a problem with drinking, allow me to state here. Still fathers promise to stop drinking all the time and this was what I thought was what she was trying to say.
It was when I pulled into the driveway of KAitlyn's house and her father came out to the car to help unload that it all made sense. For just as soon as Kaitlyn saw her father she looked at me very pointedly and said "He's not dead!"
"Well of course your father's not dead," I said, very surprised that she even thought such a thing.
"You lied to me," Kaitlyn said as her father lifted her from her car seat, "you told me that Mommy's Daddy was dead."
Kaitlyn's father then explained that her Mommy's Daddy was, indeed, passed on but the whole truth and realization came crushing down in my brain. Kaitlyn thought, for whatever reason and through faulty interpretation of my words, that her "Mommy's Daddy" was the same as her Daddy and the poor child had spent almost 24 hours thinking her own father had died! I recalled the few times she pressed me to explain who was her Daddy's Mommy and that vein of thought and now I knew why she kept pressing for an explanation.
As for her comment about her Daddy breaking a promise about not stopping eating, I recalled that it was just a few days before her visit that the beloved dog of her paternal grandparents had to be put to sleep. The dog was old and had, indeed, stopped eating, something that pets do all the time when they are very ill. Kaitlyn's only exposure to death in her three and a half years of life was by this dog and somehow Kaitlyn got all confused in her mind, thinking her father had died because he had stopped eating. Like her grandparent's dog.
At any rate KAitlyn was very happy that her father was still alive but I now cringe at the thought of this child fretting because she thought her father had stopped eating and had to be put to sleep.
Thus and so this is how language is learned. Sometimes the youngsters pick it up right away, often they have to search their limited memory banks to make sense of words, phrases and expressions that confuse them.
I'll still never quite get over that poor child thinking that her father had died. The poor thing.
More Kaitlyn Posts HERE
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