EDUCATING GRACIE

Stranger in a strange land
A couple of weeks ago I noticed Gracie doing a kind of strange thing with her hands. First, she would throw her arms open wide and then she'd bring her index fingers together lightly. Then, she'd turn her hands so her thumbs touched, turn them again so that her fingers touched again and finally, she'd move her arms up over her head in an arc. I watched her for a few days, thinking at least fleetingly that she'd developed some kind of nervous tic and maybe I should ask the doctor about it. Then the light came on, not in my daughter's head, but mine. Gracie knows the hand gestures to Itsy Bitsy Spider. The minute I realized what she was doing, I asked her, "Do you know Itsy Bitsy?" Her face lit up and she started making all kinds of gestures with her hands and started babbling something that may have been words. It was like I was a visitor to her foreign country and I had shown her that I understood something in her language. She took that little bit of understanding to mean that I could understand everything she was trying to tell me. I had the same experience when Steve & I were in Cancun on our honeymoon and I asked the waiter for butter in Spanish. "Montequilla, por favor?" "Si, si, senora, montequilla!" he exclaimed and then proceeded to speak for several seconds in very, very rapid Spanish, not realizing that my Spanish vocabulary is limited to butter, bathroom, and beer. I did the same thing with Gracie that I did with the waiter - I nodded and smiled, never revealing that I had no idea what they were trying to tell me.

When did this “education” stuff start?
Evidently, Gracie learned Itsy Bitsy Spider at daycare, which at our house we call "school". Now, in my mind this has always been kind of a silly thing to call it – I mean she’s 16 months old. I equate school with classrooms and homework and well, teaching. I guess I thought daycare meant exactly what the name implies – Gracie is being cared for during the day. I knew that she would be loved and cuddled by the wonderful women who watch over her. I knew she would play with them and the other kids in her room. I guess what I never realized was that she would be learning so much. Gracie’s daycare providers are more than just caretakers – they are her teachers – her first real teachers. Miss Krystal and Miss Jacque are amazing with Gracie and all of the kids in their class. (See how I fall so easily into the whole “school” lexicon – teacher, class, lessons…). I can only hope that she’s blessed with such caring and interested teachers throughout her school years. She comes home with art projects and explanations of what they’re going to be learning in class during the week so that we can reinforce what she’s doing at school when she’s home with us. I guess I missed the sheet that had Itsy Bitsy Spider on it. I do try and spur Gracie’s education along when we’re together. We talk about colors and letters, although to Gracie, every color is yellow (“ewoo”!) and every letter is M ("mmmmmm"!). I read to her every chance I get and we sing and dance, but mostly our playtime is full of ridiculous little pretend games like playing the piano on the side of the bathtub.

Gracie The Goat
At school, though, Miss Krystal and Miss Jacque are teaching her things that I never would have thought to teach her (and certainly wouldn’t be successful at teaching her if I tried). On top of learning songs and words, she’s also learning more abstract concepts like sharing and how to follow rules. At home, Gracie is kind of a toddler-goat when she eats. She loads her hands up with snacks (usually goldfish and animal crackers or some kind of sticky fruit) and wanders through the house, munching away, inevitably dropping pieces as she goes. But, never fear, she usually retraces her steps and picks up her crumbs and eats them. Once, she spilled her juice on the kitchen floor. My problem-solving goat-child didn’t skip a beat. She got down on hands and knees and started lapping the juice off the floor. Before you call Children’s Services, the floor was clean, and I did stop her immediately (well, almost immediately). I tell you this to show you that short of strapping Gracie into her highchair, keeping her in one place to eat is impossible. At least at home it is. At school, she is only allowed to eat if she’s sitting at the little kid-sized table in one of the little kid-sized chairs. And she does it – all of the little kids (no goat pun intended) do it. I’ve seen her do this when I drop her off in the mornings. She goes and sits in a little blue chair, waits for someone to bring her a plate of pancakes or toast, and then stays there and eats. It may be some kind of kid mob mentality (okay, if all the other little goats are sitting at the table, I’ll do it, too), but whatever it is, it works. I'm pretty sure this skill will be important for her later in life. I mean, how would it look if when she’s a freshman at Duke, she spills her can of Diet Coke on the floor of her 18th Century Literature class and then proceeds to lap it up?

I guess, truth be told, I’m a little reluctant to think about Gracie learning all these new things. Learning to roll over, crawl, walk, and even wave bye-bye were all cool with me. Babies learn to do all of those things. But singing songs with hand motions and listening when people tell you what to do and using words to describe your feelings – babies don’t do that – toddlers and little kids and a few of the adults I know do that. I can hardly convince myself that my child is still an infant if she’s walking around singing Itsy Bitsy Spider! What’s next – a spelling bee, playing the part of Thomas Jefferson in the Independence Day play, studying for her SATs, writing her master’s thesis? Whoa, Nellie, hold back the reigns – I’m just not quite ready!

Parent Teacher Conference
I thought Gracie would be in kindergarten before I would have to have a meeting with her teacher about her education. Little did I know that she’d be less than eighteen months old before I’d ask a teacher about something she was learning. After the Itsy Bitsy Spider incident, Gracie started clasping her hands in front of her and moving them up and down, kind of like she was simulating that Whack The Gopher On The Head game they have at fairs and Chuck E. Cheese. Since she’s never been to either a carnival midway or Chuck E. Cheese and I know they don’t have any animal beating games at school, I decided to go straight to the source and ask her teacher if they were learning any songs that had hand motions like Gracie was making. Miss Krystal smiled, “Oh, yes! We’re learning Bringing Home A Baby Bumblebee. Gracie loves it. We’ll be performing it at graduation.” Graduation? I’m really not ready for that!