ABSTRACT
The things children say often delight and amaze us. When we analyse carefully the things they say, the meaning-sometimes very complex-becomes clear. You will remember the example of the child exclaiming ‘I seed it and I feeled it and it’s not a dog!’. Here are some other examples which show how children struggle, through spoken language, to express complex ideas and concepts. Two-year-old Andy, taken to see Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’ at the National Gallery looked at it, stepped back and said, ‘He must have used a very long brush!’ A simple enough sentence, but within it a clear understanding of the fact that the painting, made up of tiny brush strokes, could only be seen as ‘meaningful’ when observed from a distance. Hannah, at 22 months, looking at a huge jacaranda tree, said, ‘I can climb up and up and up-and down and down and down’. It was only with the knowledge that Hannah had been listening to the story of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ that the impact of her statement became clear.
