Look! Over There!

Childhood studies always need to be taken with a grain of salt, but this one seems pretty common sense. University of Chicago researchers determined that parents who gesture more have children with bigger vocabularies. As a parent of a 17-month-old toddler, I can attest that figuring out how to communicate with a non-speaker involves hand gestures, exaggeraged facial expressions, even mime and commedia dell'arte. Thank god for my clown training. It's rewarding when you can both agree that "splash splash" involves waving your arms up and down in front of you and refers to any body of water.

That reminds me of a scene on the subway the other day. A Chinese-speaking woman was sitting with her daughter, the same age as mine, on her lap. The little girl pointed suddenly and exclaimed, "Bow! Bow!" I looked to where the girl was pointing, but couldn't figure out what she meant. I figured it must be Chinese. The mother looked around, confused, then looked her daughter in the face. "Bao?" "Boo?"

Oh well. We try.