Onomatopoeia

The other day while traveling in the car, we were enjoying the dance party remix of "The Ants Go Marching." (If you don't have kids, you are thinking, "Never never will I listen to that" and if you do have kids, you are probably thinking, "Oh yes! I know that one!"). In this version, the song revs up for each new verse with the words "crash-boom-bang!" Pax thinks this is very funny and kept asking "what that mean?" after that part of the song. Apparently, my initial answers were insufficient for our inquisitive child. He kept asking me about it over and over, so with a bit of sarcasm, I finally switched my answer and explained that those words were onomatopoeias and gave a brief explanation of other words that qualified as onomatopoeias (e.g., Moo, Pow!, etc.) as well as other words that don't really qualify (e.g., floor, tree, mailbox). I thought this might at least distract him and we could move on.

Well...Paxon LOVED the word "onomatopoeia" and talked about it the rest of the way home. I didn't think he really got the concept, just a fun new word to say. Besides, teaching metalinguistics to our two-year-old is not really on the priority list no matter how precocious he is. A few days later, we were walking out the garage door and as I pulled it shut quickly, I said, "BANG!" Pax promptly turned around to me and said, "Mommy, that an onomatopoeia!" He then went on to name several others: crash! Oink oink! Pop!

And it occurred to me again it has so frequently lately... he is such the little sponge right now and is absorbing so much of what we say (and do) lately...SLURP!