Léon hører normalt godt efter, så hvis man læser en bog om “et egern” eller “et får”, er der en god chance for, at han vil gentage artiklen korrekt, hvis man taler med ham om historien eller billederne.

Men det gik op for mig i forgårs, at hvis man stiller ham spørgsmål om ting, man ikke lige har talt om, og hvor det oplagte svar er “et”, siger han altid “en”:
– Hvor mange borde er der på billedet?
– Én.

Så jeg har nu brugt et del tid på at stille pædagogiske spørgsmål, så han kan få lært at bruge køn korrekt. Han er trods alt næsten 4½ år gammel og skal starte i skolen efter sommerferien.

Han skal nok blive glad for det i længden. Jeg har i hvert fald ofte ærgret mig over, at jeg kun fik lært tysk køn og kasus i det omfang, det var nødvendigt for at forstå talt tysk.

Det er jo forbandelsen ved at være tosproget i en situation, hvor man næsten aldrig har brug for at tale sprog nummer to: Man lærer at forstå det som en indfødt, og ens udtale er stort set perfekt, men man laver stadigvæk dumme fejl, der straks afslører en som ikke-indfødt.

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I’ve got sore eyes
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Sutter er ikke nær så udbredte i Skotland som i Danmark. (De har en idé om, at man ikke kan kombinere amning med sutter, så det er kun de babyer, der får flaske fra begyndelsen, der får sutter.)

Men Amaia har (som Anna før hende) et meget stort suttebehov, så når der ikke lige er et bryst i nærheden, er den eneste måde at tilfredsstille hende på ofte at stikke en finger i munden på hende.

Hvis hun slægter Anna på, går der nu nok ikke ret lang tid, før hun opdager, at der ingen mælk kommer ud af fars finger, og så er det slut med den fornøjelse.

Men det er nu ret sødt, så længe det varer.

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Forleden råbte jeg til Léon, der stod i badeværelset: “Husk at skylle ud!”

Han svarede: “I did skyl ud!”

Dette svar overraskede mig, da jeg havde forventet “I did skylle ud!”

Ved nærmere eftertanke er det nu ikke så underligt.

Selvom vi på dansk skriver “husk at skylle ud”, plejer vi at udtale det som “husk og skyl ud” (hvilket jo er grunden til, at DSB kunne kalde deres blad “Ud & Se” og ikke “Ud At Se”).

Man lærer meget om sit eget sprog ved at lære det til et barn!

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Conservative politicians often claim that kids are happier when they grow up in strong families with both parents, but they often conveniently forget that for many parents, the alternative to a divorce is staying in an unhappy, rowing relationship, and is that really better for the kids?

Finally a study on this topic has been released.

The results are very clear:

Young people who reported that their family “gets along well together” are on average 20 per cent happier than those who do not, regardless of whether they live with a single parent, a step-parent or both their birth parents, the study found.

The impact of family conflict on children’s happiness far outstripped family structure, with a child in a lone parent household just 2 per cent unhappier than one living with both birth parents. Children were on average 10 per cent more unhappy in the immediate aftermath of a family break-up or another change in family structure such as gaining a step-parent.

But after a year happiness levels then recovered to almost the same levels as for children who had experienced no family problems.

Hopefully studies like this will eventually make the Tories realise that giving tax-breaks to married couples is probably not the best way to increase child happiness.

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I had dropped off Léon at nursery yesterday and was about to have breakfast with my beloved wife when we unexpectedly heard Marcel’s voice, asking us where he could find the toast.

When we expressed surprise that he wasn’t at school, he said that Charlotte had left us a note.

This turned out to be true – there was a tiny note on the fridge, amongst all the other papers there, saying “Marcel feels Sick”.

I guess it was quite considerate of Charlotte not to wake us, but it was perhaps not too clever given that we’re supposed to call his school early if he’s ill, and we don’t normally scan the fridge door as soon as we get out of bed.

I guess it’s hard to please parents, though. If the kids ask us questions when we’d rather be asleep, they’re damned, and if they don’t, they’re still damned…

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It’s always a bit sad when kids drop their homemade words in favour of the real ones.

For instance, Anna’s love of ɬa (“meat, sausage”) meant that she had a whole list of words for types of meat, including ˈmuːɬa “beef”, ˈmɛːɬa “lamb” and ˈbuɬa “sausage”.

However, the latter word (which sounded like a hypothetical Welsh word “bwlla” or Zulu “buhla”) has now been replaced by ˈsɔsɪs.

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The family has been told, so I can now finally announce Baked’s real name: Amaia Pernilla Buchanan-Widmann.

Amaia is a Basque name (‘the end’), which is often spelt Amaya in Spanish (some name books claim it’s Japanese, but I’ve never met a Japanese person with this name).

Pernilla is a Swedish female form of Peter (which happens to be my dad’s first name).

And Buchanan-Widmann is of course Anna Bridget’s surname, too.

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Baked (real name to be announced soon) finally turned up today, at 9.12am.

Weighing slightly more than 4300g (9 pounds 10) (length still unknown), she’s a big baby, but a tiny bit smaller than they predicted.

The birth was fairly quick – Phyllis woke up with contractions at 4am, and we went into hospital around 6.30am.

Everything went fine, though, and mother and daughter are now resting in Queen Mum.

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We gave Anna a pair of twin baby dolls for Christmas. One is dressed in pink, and the other one in yellow.

Anna calls them Baby Purple and Baby Green.

Although she has words for other colours, she seems to regards purple and green as the primary colours, so the other colours are most frequently mapped to the two basic terms.

This seems to contradict Berlin and Kay’s 1969 study that concluded that the most basic colour terms were black, white and red, followed by yellow and green (in no particular order), followed by blue, then brown, and finally other colours such as purple.

Of course, their study was about languages spoken by adults, so perhaps very different rules apply to child language development.

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The kids got a shared Wii Fit Plus for Christmas, and I have been using it too, mostly once they’re finally in bed.

I’m OK at many things and quite bad at others, as could be expected.

In general, I seem to be better at yoga than at the supposedly fun games (perhaps harking back to all the yoga I did during PE at high school).

However, I’ve now found my true vocation in life!

Whereas all the others struggle to sit still for more than a minute in the “Zazen” exercise, I managed to get the maximum points (180 seconds without moving at all) after just a couple of attempts.

And it wasn’t just a fluke. Marcel asked how I had done it, so I showed him.

I really don’t understand why they haven’t added an expert setting – three minutes is far too short a time for true Zazen masters like me!

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