Month 27: The wonder of Verbal Communication

Babies communicated with us by crying with various tones during their first 18 months. As parents, we could pretty much tell from the moment Bing Bing was born why she was crying based on her tones. I would say we got it right 98% of the time. After Bing Bing turned two, she managed to communicate in three languages – i.e. English, Vietnamese and Binglish (I haven’t been able to fully understand the last one of course), and this made our daily interaction much more fun and effective.

Her sentences in Vietnamese were fairly short with the subjects and verbs mixed up sometimes but I believed that she understood every single word we said. This morning, Bing Bing rode her bicycle (bikie in her dictionary) in the backyard and told Alex "Train sợ lắm Bing Bing" as she heard the train from a far or "Bỏ mẹ váy ra Bing Bing" when she meant "Mẹ bỏ váy ra cho Bing Bing ". Before lunch, Bing Bing kept telling us “Đi ăn đi thôi” because she was hungry. The longest sentence in Vietnamese that I heard so far in June had seven words - “Bing Bing mặc váy màu xanh lá”.

It is said that by the age of two, a child will have a vocabulary of about two hundred words. Bing Bing surprised us all the time with her English vocabulary (to be honest, I cannot tell how many words she actually knows now as she keeps enriching her vocabulary on a daily basis). Some of the examples in which she either suggested or initiated things to do with Mommy:

“BB: Do you want painting Mommy?

Alex: Yes, honey

BB: (loudly and clearly) Daddy, Mommy wants painting too. Let’s go”

Or similarly:

“BB: Mommy, do you want nước dừa?

Alex: Yes

BB: Daddy, Mommy wants nước dừa, too.

Alan: You think so?

BB: Yes, I think so”

Or with Jordan, her unisex doll (sometimes she referred to Jordan as a boy, some other times as a girl): 

"BB: Jordan, do you want to read a book yeah yeah?

Jordan (acts cool)...

BB: Oh Jordan, put your shoes on. Lạnh lắm. Your feet are cold"

Jordan obviously didn't have much say in this situation as Bing Bing was already on her mission with his shoes. 

BB: Jordan, sit here. I am reading a book."

Bing Bing had a particular interest in "opposites". We were queuing at the counter to check out our shopping basket. Out of nowhere Bing Bing pointed to a person queuing in front us who was smiling warmly at her and said "This is an OLD MAN! Bing Bing is a young girl." Of course she told the truth. That old man she referred to just had to pretend that nobody heard her.

She would say this type of sentences on a very regular basis.

"It's hot Mommy. It's not cold.

This is big Mommy. This is small.

Daddy cao. Bing Bing lùn.

Nặng quá! Too light"

Bing Bing is a kind of child who knows exactly what she wants. Hence, being able to have verbal conversations with her means less guesswork for us. Bing Bing had an unexplained high fever last night and when I was holding her, she whispered "Daddy, I am really thirsty. I want nước dừa". I didn't realize that she knew such words "really thirsty". Anyway, we quickly went downstairs for two cups of "nước dừa" to cool her down (plus a bonus spoon of pamol from Daddy). 

There was another conversation with Alex before bedtime when Alex was trying to trim Bing Bing's nails. As Bing Bing always wanted to have the final say and final "do" (which I will talk about later), Alex often gave Bing Bing an opportunity to pull her nearly-trimmed-off nails out. One day, a toe nail got rather stubborn and Alex said:

"- It's not coming out honey, let me help...

- No Mommy, it is coming out. It IS coming out. See, it's coming Mommy. Look, it's coming out.It's coming Mommy" Bing Bing said so while she was eagerly pulling out that toe nail with her tiny hands. Each sentence had a completely different tone to it but lining upwards like a staircase to show her determination to pull it out.

What's best about verbal communication was that Bing Bing could express herself easily, emotionally in particular. It just showed us how much she cared and how beautiful her emotions were.

After reading way too many books as usual, Bing Bing said:
"Daddy, I am tired. I don't want to sleep now. I want painting. Do you like painting too Mommy?" 

Or when Alex was laminating pictures, Bing Bing said 
"It is really hot Mommy, are you alright?"

Bing Bing was doing a puzzle on her table when she heard Alex chopping chicken loudly in the kitchen:
"Be careful Mommy, are you alright?"

What's really interesting to us was that while her English often outperformed her Vietnamese in most vocabs, only one topic that seemed to be different. Bing Bing was about 19 months when she said:

"Bing Bing yêu mẹ lắm lắm. Bing Bing yêu ba lắm lắm." 

while she made no attempts to say the same word in English. 

By about 25 months Bing had learned to say "I love you Mommy" when Alex was saying good night and "I love you Daddy" when I was preparing her a sweet potato for breakfast. But she said this in Vietnamese to Alex every morning before we dropped her off at school:

"Bing Bing yêu mẹ lắm lắm, nhiều như trời cao biển cả."

That suggests the word love/ yêu and this topic in particular is not so popular at school like "crackers", it is only heard at home and said by parents. 

Learning a single language is hard. Learning two is even crazier. We adults just simply expect the child to automatically develop her language skills as she grows up. However, it takes a million neurons to be able to understand and speak a word, and that connection is what wires their brains permanently. It has been a long way for Bing Bing from non-verbal communication to all-verbal communication. It has been a great journey for Alex and I to experience what a difficult path that a child must take when they first come to the world. Now that most people can understand Bing Bing's verbal languages, Alex and I do sometimes miss the hardship but pride when we were the only people who understood Bing Bing's non-verbal communications. We have great confidence that she will be fluent in at least two - three languages in no time. 

Alan