velvetpage (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
velvetpage) wrote2006-04-21 03:11 pm
velvetpage) wrote2006-04-21 03:11 pm
Entry tags:
Elizabeth at Three
It just occurred to me that I haven't written much about Elizabeth lately. It's time to rectify that - while she's painting and occupied.
Language development: At some point in the last month or so, she started picking up very heavily on the catch phrases and turns-of-phrase of those around her. She doesn't always use them correctly, but more often than not her usage is pretty close to the norm. Some examples: "Okay, enough!" "Once in a while. . ." "I guess it's okay." "Actually. . ." There are plenty of others, but I can't recall any at the moment. This trend is part of a larger trend towards more complex thought. She hasn't mastered gender differentiation in language yet - she will refer to a woman as "he" or a man as "she" - but she usually gets the correct possessives to match the pronoun she chose. She's also much more aware of time frames, though again, her usage is inconsistent. She starts a lot of sentences with, "When I was little" and usually follows them with past-tense constructions and thoughts about what babies are like. Sometimes she'll refer to something that is clearly past tense (like, when Mommy or Daddy were babies) but she'll use future forms of the verbs. When we correct her usage gently (mostly by simply repeating what she said with the verb forms changed) she will sometimes pick up on the changes and proceed correctly from there. Sometimes she'll continue in the tense she'd been using before. She has started taking the present forms of verbs and adding "ed" to form the past tense, consistently, even when the past tense isn't formed that way - for example, "comed, goed, seed (instead of "saw".) She doesn't usually correct these when we correct her.
Many of her sentences contain a dependent clause, and the accuracy of these is increasing daily. Following the perambulations of her brain is a never-ending source of mental exercise. She tells long stories as she flips through books, stories which generally have recognizable patterns and three or four characters, though their coherency beyond that point is somewhat suspect. When explaining herself, she uses "because" and "why" fairly well but ignores most of the other question words. She can take simple songs or rhymes and change a few words into them to "trick" people. She can tell jokes, though she doesn't usually understand them - which of course makes them more funny rather than less. She can answer a question by using the exact wordage that the questioner used - "Do you want to try one of those?" "Yes, I do want to try one of those." I have heard her start a question, stop, rearrange the words in it, and come out with a better question. She's able to count to seven or eight fairly consistently, actually pointing to one object for each number; beyond that she generally needs help. She knows five or six letters and a dozen or so songs and nursery rhymes very well, plus several dozen not-so-well. Just today, she's started to really grasp rhyming words, though she still makes mistakes.
Other cognitive development: she loves to play with little people and figurines, making up grand stories that always seem to centre around mommies, daddies, and babies finding each other or losing each other. Practically anything can become a figurine in her imagination. She loves dress-up, preferring girly dress-up items like fairy princesses. I need to expand her horizons a bit when it comes to dress-up - I'm picturing a doctor set, for example. She draws, and explains her drawings; most people can start to see what it is she says she drew. She also paints, and actually enjoys it more. Her manual dexterity continues to amaze me, as it always has; this kid was holding a pencil correctly at the age of eight months. She has a very good memory, recalling events from last summer with a clarity astonishing for a kid who was only 28 months old at the time. She uses "and then" to tell what happened next - a trick not yet mastered by many four-year-olds I've known. When she sees an episode on tv or reads a book that she's seen before, she'll ask predicting questions about it and often answers them correctly. She knows shapes, colours, and some letters and numbers when written down. She can match these with some accuracy in a computer game. Yes, she knows how to work the mouse. :) She recognizes common destinations in the community - she can figure out when we're driving to Oma's house, knows which street is Granddad's street, and asks to go to the pet store when we pull into the parking lot of the strip mall where it is located (long before we've seen any sign of pets.) She also knows the way to the Tim Horton's and the Library.
Physcial development: she's growing out of size-three clothes at an alarming rate. Her t-shirts for this summer will all be size fours, though her size 3 shorts should fit for a while. She's fairly slender and just active enough. She's co-ordinated enough for a tricycle or a bicycle with training wheels, and continues to master steering these.
Behavioural: she's learned that when Mommy says no, that's her cue to cry and see if she can get what she wants. She also knows that it rarely works, and she usually stops crying in a few minutes. She throws the occasional temper tantrum, usually when Mommy has told her no about something. She often doesn't go to sleep when we put her to bed. Her stalling tactics include different toys in bed, asking to go peepee again (a good one, since it's always difficult to tell if it's real and the consequences of saying no are potentially severe) saying she does or doesn't need a blanket, and complaining that there are shadows or monsters. Every few weeks she'll come up with a new excuse. It's not unusual for her to still be awake when we go to bed, an hour or more after she does. This is rather frustrating for us. She dawdles when she doesn't want to do what we expect, until we start to raise voices (usually just to teaching-voice level) at which point she'll do what we want with big sighs over the necessity, or get mad at us for "yelling" at her. I'm finding this stage far more challenging than the terrible two's ever were, behaviourally.
That's it for now. For those of you who are wondering, everything I've described is appropriate for a three-year-old, though some of it is at the far end of advancement for someone just barely three. As far as I can tell, she's not behind in any area - she's meeting the medium standard at least in every developmental area I can think of, and in many cases she's ahead.
Language development: At some point in the last month or so, she started picking up very heavily on the catch phrases and turns-of-phrase of those around her. She doesn't always use them correctly, but more often than not her usage is pretty close to the norm. Some examples: "Okay, enough!" "Once in a while. . ." "I guess it's okay." "Actually. . ." There are plenty of others, but I can't recall any at the moment. This trend is part of a larger trend towards more complex thought. She hasn't mastered gender differentiation in language yet - she will refer to a woman as "he" or a man as "she" - but she usually gets the correct possessives to match the pronoun she chose. She's also much more aware of time frames, though again, her usage is inconsistent. She starts a lot of sentences with, "When I was little" and usually follows them with past-tense constructions and thoughts about what babies are like. Sometimes she'll refer to something that is clearly past tense (like, when Mommy or Daddy were babies) but she'll use future forms of the verbs. When we correct her usage gently (mostly by simply repeating what she said with the verb forms changed) she will sometimes pick up on the changes and proceed correctly from there. Sometimes she'll continue in the tense she'd been using before. She has started taking the present forms of verbs and adding "ed" to form the past tense, consistently, even when the past tense isn't formed that way - for example, "comed, goed, seed (instead of "saw".) She doesn't usually correct these when we correct her.
Many of her sentences contain a dependent clause, and the accuracy of these is increasing daily. Following the perambulations of her brain is a never-ending source of mental exercise. She tells long stories as she flips through books, stories which generally have recognizable patterns and three or four characters, though their coherency beyond that point is somewhat suspect. When explaining herself, she uses "because" and "why" fairly well but ignores most of the other question words. She can take simple songs or rhymes and change a few words into them to "trick" people. She can tell jokes, though she doesn't usually understand them - which of course makes them more funny rather than less. She can answer a question by using the exact wordage that the questioner used - "Do you want to try one of those?" "Yes, I do want to try one of those." I have heard her start a question, stop, rearrange the words in it, and come out with a better question. She's able to count to seven or eight fairly consistently, actually pointing to one object for each number; beyond that she generally needs help. She knows five or six letters and a dozen or so songs and nursery rhymes very well, plus several dozen not-so-well. Just today, she's started to really grasp rhyming words, though she still makes mistakes.
Other cognitive development: she loves to play with little people and figurines, making up grand stories that always seem to centre around mommies, daddies, and babies finding each other or losing each other. Practically anything can become a figurine in her imagination. She loves dress-up, preferring girly dress-up items like fairy princesses. I need to expand her horizons a bit when it comes to dress-up - I'm picturing a doctor set, for example. She draws, and explains her drawings; most people can start to see what it is she says she drew. She also paints, and actually enjoys it more. Her manual dexterity continues to amaze me, as it always has; this kid was holding a pencil correctly at the age of eight months. She has a very good memory, recalling events from last summer with a clarity astonishing for a kid who was only 28 months old at the time. She uses "and then" to tell what happened next - a trick not yet mastered by many four-year-olds I've known. When she sees an episode on tv or reads a book that she's seen before, she'll ask predicting questions about it and often answers them correctly. She knows shapes, colours, and some letters and numbers when written down. She can match these with some accuracy in a computer game. Yes, she knows how to work the mouse. :) She recognizes common destinations in the community - she can figure out when we're driving to Oma's house, knows which street is Granddad's street, and asks to go to the pet store when we pull into the parking lot of the strip mall where it is located (long before we've seen any sign of pets.) She also knows the way to the Tim Horton's and the Library.
Physcial development: she's growing out of size-three clothes at an alarming rate. Her t-shirts for this summer will all be size fours, though her size 3 shorts should fit for a while. She's fairly slender and just active enough. She's co-ordinated enough for a tricycle or a bicycle with training wheels, and continues to master steering these.
Behavioural: she's learned that when Mommy says no, that's her cue to cry and see if she can get what she wants. She also knows that it rarely works, and she usually stops crying in a few minutes. She throws the occasional temper tantrum, usually when Mommy has told her no about something. She often doesn't go to sleep when we put her to bed. Her stalling tactics include different toys in bed, asking to go peepee again (a good one, since it's always difficult to tell if it's real and the consequences of saying no are potentially severe) saying she does or doesn't need a blanket, and complaining that there are shadows or monsters. Every few weeks she'll come up with a new excuse. It's not unusual for her to still be awake when we go to bed, an hour or more after she does. This is rather frustrating for us. She dawdles when she doesn't want to do what we expect, until we start to raise voices (usually just to teaching-voice level) at which point she'll do what we want with big sighs over the necessity, or get mad at us for "yelling" at her. I'm finding this stage far more challenging than the terrible two's ever were, behaviourally.
That's it for now. For those of you who are wondering, everything I've described is appropriate for a three-year-old, though some of it is at the far end of advancement for someone just barely three. As far as I can tell, she's not behind in any area - she's meeting the medium standard at least in every developmental area I can think of, and in many cases she's ahead.
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She sounds adorable. Sigh. Hope I get a girl one of these days. (Though I know Max will be just as wonderful, don't get me wrong).
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