The Extraordinary Conversationalist

Ant has gone through a recent growth spurt when it comes to his vocabulary.

Most kids grow and develop slowly, moving solidly and smoothly through stages. My kid stays put in any one stage for a long stretch of time, and then makes a huge leap forward—astounding us all. That’s what we got on our hands right now.

Some of the new words in his expanding repertoire: extraordinary, outstanding, impressive, unbelievable. Notice a theme here?

The second thing to note is that Ant is testing out his new vocabulary by being chattier than normal. That’s saying something, too.  I love talking to my kids—to any kids, really. Children are often so animated and involved in their discussions—it makes for good conversation. Ant happens to be a morning person, however, and wishes to do a lot of his chatting right at the start of the day.

I am not a morning person. There is not enough coffee in the world to make me an early morning conversationalist. I spend my mornings grunting in response to Ant’s banter (hopefully I am grunting in the right places) and praying silently for the mind-numbing chatter to cease.

So, I thought, hey—I’ll make the kid write in the morning. Chattiness will be replaced by pencil scratches, volume will be decreased, and he will practice his new vocabulary AND writing. His teacher will love me.

Except Ant thinks writing is, “boring.” He’s, “too lazy” to write every day. This, my friends, goes right into the MIGHT NOT BE MY CHILD column tally, right beside ‘morning person’ and ‘loves green beans’.

So I did what any self-respecting parent would do.  I bribed him with a locking secret spy journal. That was a good start, but Ant needs more. He wants his writing to be seen by others. He wants to write a post on my blog.

Okay… maybe he is my child, after all.

So be forewarned: Boys will be present on this blog soon. Ant and I plan to work on a post this week. I am his editor—making sure that his post does, in fact, involve words and the only the bare minimum of fart jokes.

We’ll see if this cuts down on the morning chatter, but I am not holding my breath.