I Stand Corrected . . . by a 2-Year Old

Child development experts have different theories about the best way to encourage learning in your children. Some believe that you shouldn’t constantly correct children, because that can lower their self-esteem and make them less motivated to learn and explore on their own. Others believe that you must make sure your child understands what is correct – grammatically, phonetically, etc. (By the way, if any of you reading this are child development professionals, I hope I haven’t offended you. But this is what I’ve retained of my reading of “What to Expect in the Toddler Years”, “Playful Parenting” and other such books. I’m no expert – I’m just a Mom.)

I think my approach is somewhere in the middle.

Generally, if Jack (my almost-3-yr-old) labels something incorrectly or mispronounces something, I try to encourage his effort while still making sure he understands the correct name or pronunciation. This means I find myself providing a correction like: “Well, actually, it’s a pink” (not red), followed by an encouragement to keep trying: “What other things can you think of that are pink?”

I didn’t realize how much I must be using the term “Well, actually” until a week or so ago, when we were reading a bedtime story. Our routine getting Jack and Luke to bed takes longer than it should, and sometimes (especially recently) I’m so tired that by the time we are reading books, I am falling asleep myself. It doesn’t help matters that Jack loves to repeat his books in a cycle, so we read 7 nights of “Pearlie the Oyster” and “The Berenstein Bears Go to School” followed by 7 nights of “Ten Apples Up on Top” and “Fox in Sox”, etc.

To fend off boredom after (seemingly) endless nights of the same books, I try to shake things up a bit by taking some artistic license during the reading.

I might start counting the number of ladybugs with Jack, or watching for where a particular side-kick character in the book is going to show up next. The Mercer Mayer books are good for this last game, because there are little side-kick characters throughout the book that do funny things throughout if you’re paying attention.

Our first book this particular night had been the Mercer Mayer book “Bye Bye Mom & Dad”. This one features a mouse and a spider on every page, participating in whatever chaos the Little Critter is doing at that time. We watched them help with the grocery shopping, make lunch, and almost get smashed by a bowling ball. When we moved on to our second book, the Mercer Mayer book “Just Me & My Mom,” a frog is the featured side-kick.

Half-paying attention and half-falling asleep, as we start the book, I ask Jack: “What’s the mouse doing in this picture?”

My husband’s belly laugh jerked me awake, and I laughed, too as Jack replied:

“Well, actually, it’s a frog.”