We sit at the dinner table, Adam, Nathan, and I. The conversation drifts through topics through which our 3 and 5 year olds tend to revolve: the babysitter and when she’s coming back, dinosaurs, a favorite book, dinosaurs, when Papi is coming home, dinosaurs…
“Look! It’s moving!” Adam says, pointing to the new(ish) clock on the wall. I nod in his direction, raising my eyebrows, to let him know I heard him through Nathan’s oration on the intricacies of albertosaurus existing in the same time and place as the tyrannosaurus rex. “It’s moving. The red one. It’s moooo-ving!” Adam persists. “You’re right, Bud, it is,” I interrupt Nathan’s lecture, which suddenly stops. “Why does that one move so fast?” Nathan inquires. “It measures the seconds.” The pause that follows begs to be filled. “It’s the second hand. Not all clocks have them.” Nathan mulls this over. Adam surveys the options on his plate, electing to go with another frozen green bean (the current, if not uncommon, favorite). “Mmhmm,” he mumbles through his frozen chewing. “And it’s moving.” “You’re right. You can see the second hand moving.” “The third hand,” Nathan adds. I glance at Nathan, thinking he misheard me. “No, Honey, that’s the second hand.” “You mean the third hand,” he insists. “One, two, three.” I try to keep up with the current logic my kindergartener is using. Third hand… I draw a blank. I choose to let it go, because… who really cares? “The third hand is moving way faster than the rest. I wonder why all clocks don’t have a third hand?” Nathan ponders. And the teacher in me can’t let it go. “Honey, it’s not a third hand. It’s the second hand.” He stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind. His chin just out; his eyes darken; he could not be more sure of himself. “One, two, three. It’s the third hand, Mommy.” “And it’s moving!” Adam chimes in again. And me? I smile, because finally I get it. “You’re right,” I concede. “The clock has three hands. So I suppose you could say this is the third hand.” He nods triumphantly. I continue. “But it’s also called the second hand.” His eyes cloud over again. “This hand measures the seconds. As in, one second, two seconds, three seconds, fours seconds.” I snap as I count. “You already know the other hands measure the minutes and the hours in the day. So they’re called the minute hand and the hour hand. This one is called the second hand, because it measures how many seconds are passing by. It’s the third hand on the clock, but in English we call it the second hand.” “Well then,” Nathan responds, “I wonder why all clocks don’t have a second hand. Anyways, they know that T-rexes ganged up on Albertosauruses because they have found teeth marks…” Nathan’s speech resumes. Adam continues carefully inspecting the options on his plate, chiming his two cents in where appropriate. Once again, I am left in awe of how language is acquired, how connections are made, and how my first-born continues to chase down the ‘whys’ of the world.
1 Comment
Lisa Goldman
3/3/2021 06:25:48 pm
Great slice! My children always seem to amaze me with their logic. Isn't it nice to see things from their perspective?!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorHeidi. Archives
March 2022
Categories |