“Do you have a favourite toy/movie/hobby/book?”
“Why is that one the best?”
“So, you don’t like (similar but obviously less cool thing)?”
“Does that mean you like (similar and obviously cool thing)?”
“See, I get confused between them, can you tell me which ones are the good ones?”
I’ve had long and involved conversations about why Ben 10 is better than TMNT, why dinosaurs are better than robots, why Woody is better than Buzz and why Disney princesses are better than Bratz.
Kids love to feel like they are telling you something you don’t know, and why their favourite thing is the BEST thing ever.
With littler kids I say something nice about an item of their clothing, and they’ll generally chatter away about whatever that seems to trigger in their stream-of -consciousness.
me:“Wow buddy, you don’t see orange socks everyday! They are super cool!”
toddler:“These are my socks, oranges are yummy, I have toes, mummy puts my shoes on, I wear big boy pants, you have a big chair”.
I don’t know much about talking to children, but I’m totally kidnapping **xoferew **to act as my interpreter should I need to engage any in the future.
We’re back from our trip! It turns out that I had no problem at all talking to the boys, partially I think because they remember my husband fondly from previous trips as “the uncle who lets us walk on the ceiling!” (He likes roughhousing with the boys, you see) and partially because they were entranced by our one-year-old, so half of our conversations revolved around “Do you think E. would like a stuffed caterpillar? What if it were orange?” They also greatly enjoyed showing me their magic tricks and their little snow creations. I wonder how this will change as they approach adolescence.
One thing I found (and have found on previous occasions to be the case) to be very helpful is that they are not used to an adult giving them her full attention. So when one of them was telling me something I would focus on him alone, and tell any other boy who interrupted that he had to wait until boy #1 was finished before I’d listen to him. They thought that was awesome, although it sometimes meant the boy talking would start talking randomly ("…and then… uh… then… yeah… uh… we went out?") to try to retain my attention.
I had a much harder time with the almost-3-year-old niece, but there I was working against some mistrust of anyone who might take her mom’s attention away from her (she’s an only child so far). Though she warmed up a bit once I displayed my willingness to have stuffed frogs be placed on top of my head.
One thing I turn out to be really bad at is asking topical questions. We were scheduling around one of the boys’ basketball games. Did it occur to me to ask him about the game when we saw him afterwards? Noooo. (This is something I’m pretty bad at for adults as well, mind you. My best friends and I have no idea what is currently going on in the others’ lives, although a very good idea as to what we think about various books, movies, and childrearing philosophies.)
lindsaybluth, I must confess we didn’t have time to get them Headbandz on this trip. But their birthdays are coming up, and I feel the need to cement my status as a good aunt, so!