"Use Your Words!"
Our youngest grand daughter, Klaire, is quite precocious! You would expect a "doting grandfather" to say this about any of his grandchildren! She is admittedly pretty smart and aware of things in her 2 1/2 year-old world. By comparison to the eight grandsons, to me, she seems to be ahead in her verbal skills. Now, it was not always that way! She used to squeal when she was frustrated and couldn't make her family understand what it was that she wanted. I distinctly remember hearing her mother repeatedly say something rather adult to her, "Klaire, use your words!" When our middle son, Marc was a little guy, his brother, Matt, did a lot of the speaking for him. Marc had chronic ear infections that left him unable to hear what was being said and this impacted his ability to speak with clarity. So, he learned the "point and grunt" technique of communicating. For example, in the mornings for breakfast we would open the pantry and ask the boys what cereal t...