I received a letter today with a check enclosed, and as I was reading the letter, I dropped the check. I asked my daughter (3 years old next month) to pick it up for me. She did, and as she handed it to me, she said “Oh, it’s Chase.” I looked at the check, and sure enough, it was from Chase Bank. Well, I know she can’t READ the word “Chase,” so I said, “What is Chase?” She pointed to the logo printed in the middle of the check and said, “that is Chase.” :eek:
I asked her where she had seen that before, and she said “on TV.” :eek: :eek: Apparently, she has seen ads for Chase (which I don’t remember ever seeing, myself). I guess I should watch less TV when she is around! And to think I was avoiding kids programming, because I didn’t want her to be bombarded with ads!
Yes, they do notice a lot, their minds absorb so much when they’re little.
My stepson has custody of his daughter, but every week-end he takes her to visit her mother. He’s always had trouble with scheduling, and he often misses the bus by very little and has to wait quite a while for the next one (because of the week-end).
When this had happened quite a few times, he had muttered “fuck”-- as to himself. One Saturday, he ran for the bus with Gabrielle in his arms, and as he missed it again, he said nothing, but the 18-month old let out a clear and ringing “FUCK”.
An ex-girlfriend of mine told me when she was 3-4 her family was coming home from a day at the beach and she was dead tired and very cranky. They stopped at a fast food joint and as they were waiting in line, an elderly lady takes an interest in the cute kid and starts baby-talking to her. My GF’s response? “Go away, Bitch.”
Reminds me of the story of (possibly Australian folk tale) where dad has won a few quid on a horse during the depression. He goes home (now, that I think of it, must be a tale, as a dad in the depression with money would have been at the pub) and says to his wife “ahh, I’ve had a good run, perhaps I’d best put it all on number 3 in the 5th race” and she says “If you want to put your money down the drain, I won’t help you” and they turn to see the stash of bills gone. They find their 3 year old sitting in the gutter outside their home, posting the bills one by one down the storm drain. “What are you doing?” they cry. The child turns and says sagely “Mummy, if you won’t help Daddy, then I will!”
Toddlers lack the ability to figure out what to forget. My parents came over for dinner unexpectedly so I put a crumble in the oven my Mum had brought over six weeks before. My two-year-old saw me get it out the freezer and said “apricot pie”. I had no recollection of any flavour being mentioned. My mother didn’t either, although she must have done at some stage. If we had had the information, we’d discarded it. The little one was right, of course. Clearly she has too much time on her hands.
When my son was a toddler we used to let him sit up with us and watch, well, um, how do I put this - The Sopranos. We did, that is, until an episode the featured Tony’s Dad and Uncle in flashback kicking some guy’s ass, prompting our two year old to ask, “Why is Uncle Junior being so fresh?”
The Nephew doesn’t talk much; he points at stuff when he wants to learn the name and he watches kids about 6 months older very carefully, he’s already figured out that what they do is something he should be able to learn next.
One day, SiL and SiL Mom took him for a stroll and he was pointing at clothing; being the first warm day of spring, there was a lot of kinds of clothing he hadn’t seen before. He’d point at someone and his women would say “girl” or “woman”, and he’d shake his head no and point again until they understood he meant a specific piece of clothing. He didn’t accept “clothes” either - he wanted to hear “shirt” or “top” or “skirt”. When they told Mom about this, she said “aaah yes, I’ve been naming every piece of clothing as I dressed him. He knows what the things I wear are called, too.”
She’d been doing it for less than a month. Kid’s still surrounded by grown-ups who are well-trained enough to understand when he points (so he doesn’t need to talk, I imagine that will change in K), but he’s got quite a vocabulary. He just doesn’t use it, the lazy li’l…
When my son was about 3-1/2 or 4 and was going to a Montessori preschool, as we watched the Winter Olympics and the teams would march in preceded by their flags, he would name each team’s country by recognizing the flags. It was so cute we wanted it to go on all night!
Unfortunately, by the time he was in middle school, he’d competely forgotten all his preschool geography lessons, and managed to select Paraguay for a country report when he meant Panama because “it has the canal.” :smack: We’ve been teasing him mercilessly about the Paraguay Canal ever since.
When my brother was barely a year old, he informed my mother that “Sesame Street was brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.” That was quite a mouthful for such a little guy! I guess when kids are that age, almost all information has equal weight and importance, so they absorb it all and don’t know that logos, pie flavors, and random comments aren’t all necessary to know for your survival.
Little children are watching and learning all the time, that is basically their sole function in life at that point.
My favorite story along those lines is about my daughter from when she was 1-1/2, and had begun carrying on nonsense conversations with an imaginary friend over a toy telephone. One day she “answered” her toy phone as she was walking through the room, said, “Hello? No. Sorry. No. OK. OK, bye!”, hung up and kept on walking to the next room.
Puzzled, I asked her who she’d been talking to on her “phone”.
“Oh, it was a wrong number!”
On the other hand, I wonder if my boy is really as verbally literally minded as he has exhibited on a few occasions, or if he is already showing a sarcastic sense of humor. Once when he was 2-1/2, he was playing with his cousin, who is a few months younger than him, when she gave him a little kiss on the cheek. Their grandpa (my wife’s father) saw this and told him “you should kiss her back”. My son gave him a very odd look, cocking his head and narrowing his eyes. “Go on,” repeated Grandpa, “Kiss her back!”
So he gave a little shrug (where did he pick that up?), and proceeded to kiss his cousin. On her back.
Another time, he was told to “walk around” a puddle of spilled soda on the floor that he was about to step into at a friend’s birthday party. Again he gave his crafty, puzzled look and a little shrug, followed by him walking around the puddle: a full 360 degree perambulation, followed by another 180 degrees to end up on the other side to keep going to where he wanted.
Sometimes it never fully disappears. I find myself remembering seemingly useless stuff all the time like logo details, pie flavors, and random comments that are not pertinent to my own life. Then again, it’s come in handy on occasion; I pick up languages a little faster than I should at this age.
When kids are at that age, they’re little sponges, especially for verbal and non-verbal expressions. It’s only natural that they’re going to pick up on just about anything they’re exposed to.
Nah…I look at the Chase logo too, and the alternate view where they rotate the pieces; it’s a potential quilt pattern. Everything is a potential quilt pattern. For example, I am using the Hyperion logo in a quilt right now.
