“Should We Go, Mom?”—Talking with our Children

My nephew must have been between two and three years old when he went through this phase: whenever he was in the car, and the car came to a stoplight, he would raise his little voice from the backseat and ask, "Mom! Should we go?" over and over, until the light changed and they went. And then the next time they stopped, sure enough, from the backseat, "Mom, should we go?" My sister—the most angel-like person in the world—would always answer with the utmost patience, "Yes, sweetie, as soon as the light changes."

I thought this was a curious thing to be asking and a curious way to phrase it. So I thought about it and realized that my nephew wasn’t actually asking a question; his tone of voice when he said this sounded more like a statement than a question. And then I realized that he was mimicking his mother. "Should we go?" was the exact phrase she would use every time it was time to go, every time she could have said, "Let’s go." Whenever the car came to a stop he was thinking, "Let’s go!" but phrased it, "Should we go?" because that’s what he had heard.

This got me to thinking about how we talk to our kids, especially now that I have my own and find myself doing the exact same thing. Almost everything I say to my daughter is a question, even if there isn’t really a question in my mind: "Should we change your diaper now?" (of course we should, it smells!) "Should we take a bath?" (absolutely, it’s almost bedtime) "Who’s cute" (when I’m thinking, man! you’re cute!) "Who’s a good girl?" (when she’s just endured something difficult like sacrament meeting without fussing). I know I’m not the only one who does this; obviously my sister does it too. So does my mom. But is this a family thing or do any of you speak to your children like this?

And if so, why do we do it? My daughter is seven months old, so obviously at this point, I’m not getting any responses to my questions—which, in essence, aren’t really questions; at least, I don’t really need an answer to them. So why don’t I just say, "Let’s change your diaper now," or "Time for a bath"? Obviously, we could the ask the question, why do we talk to our children at all when they can’t talk back, but the answers to that seem fairly obvious (if nothing else, so they learn to talk, right?). So why am I phrasing everything as a question?

Probably for the same reason I’m posing my thoughts on this issue as questions in this post: because questions provoke some kind of response; they assume interaction between people. And nothing is more valuable to me than genuine interaction with my daughter. Her first real smiles were life altering, because they were real responses to me—something I was aching for in those first weeks when she only pooped, peed, slept, and cried. Her laughter in response to something I do is sublime, because it means she sees me, knows me, likes me. And now that she’s able to control her body and movements more, her reaching for my face or sucking on my chin or putting her arms on my chest or neck sends me to heaven, because she’s communicating with me in the ways that are available to her now.

So perhaps my questions antcipate later communication. Perhaps they are my subconscious desire to be talking with, not just to my daughter, my looking forward to a future of conversations. Granted, the questions I’m posing now will only elicit one-word responses when she starts talking. But it’s a start and it is communication.

So how do you talk to your children?

Another thing I’ve noticed is that I refer to almost everyone in the third person, including myself and her: "Here’s Mommy," "Where’s Story?" Any thoughts on why I might do this?