Episode 9 - "Tense" conversations

My son is learning about tense.  He’s a very bright three year old, and he understands the concept of past, present and future.  Unfortunately, at the moment, everything past is “last night”, whether it happened two months or two minutes ago.  It doesn’t sound like a big deal, does it?  And yet, I find that it keeps leading me into strange conversational corridors…

The concrete slab on our house is leaking, so we’ve had workmen turning up and needing to be let in for the last few days.  They troop in and out, carrying equipment and ladders and buckets, much to my son’s unending delight.  “Men mummy!  Men are here!  Hello man!  What choo doin’?”  Smudge tends to get a little too curious in how things like power drills and concrete glue work, so most of the time, I send him off to his room to keep him out of the road.

That day, my husband had gone straight from work to a mates place to watch the footy, getting in after we had all gone to bed.  So when Smudge finally caught up with him the next morning, the first words out of his mouth were, “Daddy, men came over last night and mummy let them in!  Men came to my house last night and mummy sent me to my room.”

Luckily, my husband does trust my fidelity, so he didn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that I had been hosting a threesome whilst he was out for the evening, but my son’s statement still took a bit of explaining, and me giggling through the whole thing probably didn’t help my case.

Then there was the lengthy explanation required by Smudge’s kindy teacher.  She approached me the other afternoon and gently began touting the dangers of night swimming.  Confused I replied, “I know night swimming is dangerous…  What’s this about?”

Of course, Smudge had been informing her all day that I took him to the beach “last night” and he went swimming.  Kindy immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was letting my three year old paddle in the night sea, when the reality was Smudge went to the rock pools on a Sunday morning and got wet up to his knees.

His other delightful statement for the week was to poke me in the belly and say, “Mummy, your tummy is soft and HUGE!”  What an ego boost.

We spend the first few years with our kids teaching them a language, encouraging them to learn words and form sentences.  Then we spend the next few years wishing we could make them pipe down and not repeat embarrassing phrases.  But having watched one of my close friends deal with her autistic and language delayed children, I know there is nothing sweeter that helping my boys learn to find their way vocally in this world.  Even if that means I have some explaining to do along the way.