I Saw the Sign

Lately, we’ve been working with G on saying “please” and “thank you”.

Because, you know, raising a kid who has basic manners helps in one’s quest to appear to be an adequate parent.  I mean, I realize that at 17 months we’re far away from her using them & using them correctly but if we can add those two magic words to her vocab list I figure it can’t hurt.

Anyway.

The number one thing she wants in the world right now is food.  Before she had her adenoids removed she was pretty meh on food – but now she wants ALL THE FOOD ALL THE TIME.

So naturally, we’re asking for some pleases and thank yous surrounding meal time.  The thank yous are coming easily and adorably ‘Tank too’.  I may or may not be caught asking her to say thank you for no reason other than I want to hear her sweet little voice say that those words – it is the most precious thing of all time ever. 

And greedy momma that I am, I’ve been dying to hear a “peeease?” come out of that little girl’s mouth.

Alas – no dice.  No please. No peas. no peeze. Nada. Zlich. Zippo.

This is surprising – because we’ve moved so far from the days when she would only say “dat”.  She’s repeating everything (heaven help us) and it’s fun to hear her mimic real words.

But please? Puh-lease. Girlfriend is having none of that.

Let me set the scene:

G sees her cup on the counter. She points to it and says “eh eh eh” while doing the ‘more’ sign.  I say “G, do you want your cup? Can you say please?” G then rubs her chest and does the ‘more’ sign and then points to the cup some more.

Rinse and repeat times a million and apply to a hundred different scenarios.

Every time I asked her to say please she just rubbed her chest and did the more sign. Every. Single. Time. 

And since we did this around food/dinner time I just assumed that she was saying she was hungry, what with the chest/tummy rubbing and all.

But then Friday evening I finally realized that she might be using sign language.

And you’ll never guess what sign language for please is.

Oh you know. JUST YOUR STANDARD CHEST RUB.

So G, I owe you an apology, I have been working hard to get you to say please and here you’ve been saying it all along.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to catch up with my sign language basics so my house doesn’t go full-on lost in translation.

P.S. If you don’t have Ace of Base stuck in your head by now then I’ve completely failed. 

Posted by Kelly & filed under Motherhood, The Girl. This post has 7 comments.