My sister, Jeanne, enjoys my blog and recently shared with me her own experience with how a four year old takes language literally. This is her story in her own words:
Years ago, I worked at the Vallejo Home in Sonoma State Historic Park in California. One of my favorite groups to visit was a preschool group. I looked forward to their annual visit. The children would walk the 1/4 mile from the town square. I could see them coming, two-by-two, on the paved path across the field in front of Vallejo Home. I would be wearing the big hoop-skirted blue dress waiting to greet them to give them a tour of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo’s home.
In the courtyard before going inside, I loved to say we would be going through a time tunnel when we stepped through the front door. We would finish the tour going out and up to the reservoir built just above the home to capture the spring water as the water source. The General named his home in Latin “Lachyrma Montis,” meaning “tears of the mountain.”
As we ended the tour coming down the stone stairs, I saw a teacher trying to comfort a child who had started crying. The teacher came over to me with the child. I got down to the child’s height and asked, “What’s happened?”
The child’s teacher said the child missed going through “the tunnel!” That day I learned that every word said to the preschool children was taken literally!
How did we stop the child’s crying? Thinking quickly, I gathered up the children and said we were going back up the stairs to the reservoir to see the tunnel in case they missed it. Fortunately, the old vining roses growing along the walkway made an arch over it. The teachers and I made sure all the children looked up as they walked through this “tunnel!” No more tears. And a very humble tour guide who learned a valuable lesson about communicating with four year olds!
Theresa’s note: I love how Jeanne thought on her feet and made her mind think literally like a four year old does! Her quick thinking changed the abstract “time tunnel” into a literal physical “tunnel” for the children to observe and remember.
So often in my preschool class, I find myself changing my language to speak literally with images that children can clearly understand.
Theresa Young, Lenape KIddie Kollege, Medford, NJ