Maya and Shanthala Reading Itsy Bitsy Spider
For the past month and a half or two, Maya has been pointing at things, wanting to know their names. Around the same time, she started bringing books to us, asking us to read them to her. At first, she’d want to turn pages, staring at the pictures. Soon after, we started naming the things she pointed at and thus she began the naming of the world.
Shanthala and I had told each other that we wouldn’t hurry Maya’s development along, trying to get her to reach her developmental milestones any faster than she wanted to. We didn’t try reading to her or encouraging her to learn the alphabet or pick up anything. Let her enjoy her childhood, we said.
Watching Shanthala and me curl up with a book made her want to get a book too, I suppose. Pretty soon, she was picking up a book and forcing her way onto our laps. Soon, she was demanding a book even on the potty, as she tried to poop.
The nursery rhymes itsy-bitsy-spider, wheels on the bus go round and round, and twinkle, twinkle, little star were the first books that she enjoyed. We read them to her in our best sing-song voice and she demanded that we repeat them over and over again. Shanthala demonstrated far more patience than I in this part and soon, Shanthala had to only sit down and Maya would be hoisting herself onto Shanthala’s lap with one of these books.
A little later, we progressed onto books with animal pictures in them, naming each of the animals and trying to imitate their sounds. After agua (water in Spanish), her first word was probably bow-wow. From bow-wow to a cow’s moo took her a little longer, but the sounds started coming faster and faster. Her current attempt is to imitate a clock (with tick tock) and an owl (whoo, whoo). She hasn’t succeeded in imitating a cat’s meow. Every time she sees Kitty’s picture, the best she manages for a meow is a whimper.
Shanthala encouraged the nanny to borrow books in Spanish from the library and spend some time reading to Maya everyday. Shanthala and I named the beasts and the belfries in Kannada and English. Today, Maya can point to many an animal or object correctly when asked in either Kannada, English or Spanish.
Maya is usually the first to wake up, if Shanthala isn’t working. She holds my head as I struggle to wake up. She talks to herself as she holds me. Then as my eyes stay open a little longer than a flicker, she points to Kitty’s picture on our bedroom wall and looks at me eagerly. I say “Kitty” and she then points to a mask hanging on the opposite side of the wall and I say “mask”. Happily, she points to Kitty’s picture again and we repeat this till I’m awake. Maya fetches me my glasses and off we go.
In the movie, “Duma”, the narrator says that in Africa, if you name something, you must take responsibility for it. With naming the world, I hope Maya has started on a journey to be responsible for it, to be its caretaker, to live with an eye to protecting it for her children.
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