One of my favorite parts of watching my children grow is their emergence of language and how they almost magically internalize all of the rules and vocabulary necessary in order to speak English. While they’re learning, little kids all have words they say that aren’t quite right, even though you know what they mean. When my kids misspeak, I often correct them or use the word they’re looking for in a sentence of my own. Before I know it, I’ve forgotten all of the adorable mistakes they used to make daily.

My five-year-old, Olivia, still occasionally says “hims” instead of “his.” As in, “this is hims book.” It’s rare now, but every once in a while she slips back into the pronoun confusion stage. It just sounds so sweet to my ears. Otherwise, Olivia has pretty much mastered the major grammatical rules. However, she still has some vocabulary that she confuses or just fabricates. For example, she calls a sneeze an “ahchoo,” as in “I feel like I have to ahchoo.” Another is she calls the dentist the tooth fairy despite understanding the distinction. But, for whatever reason, she has always called our dentist the tooth fairy. I guess it helps that we have a female dentist. Now, the entire family has taken to calling our dentist the tooth fairy. And we probably always will. Let me explain.

We have some words that we’ve adopted and made part of our family lexicon, i.e. “packaback” for “backpack” and “comfortable” for “comforter.” These are invented words that we use so frequently that they are accepted parts of our conversation. Not only do we retain the words but we also hold onto some memories as each has a cute story behind it. Furthermore, it encourages that sense of team that I try to build into our family unit. It’s similar to having inside jokes. Now, we don’t go around talking baby talk or anything like that. It’s just the occasional word or phrase. I’ll share two of my favorites.

When my oldest daughter, Emily, was about two, she was (still is) a very picky eater. After learning that it wasn’t acceptable to say, “yuck” she cleverly came up with the oft repeated, “it’s not my favorite.” It’s so polite that it’s hard to be offended. We have generalized this expression in our home to refer to not only food but most anything: books, movies, clothes, and even the occasional person. It’s rare for one of my kids to say, “I don’t like whatever.” But, you often hear, “it’s not my favorite.” We all know what it really means.

My second story involves my daughter, Grace. When she was about three, she was leaning over an infant, studying her. The baby reached up, grabbed a hunk of hair, and pulled hard. Grace was in a difficult position. The baby was hurting her, yet she knew she couldn’t just haul off and slug her. So, in a very deep, low, strangely quiet voice she said, “Don’t do that baby.” Like she was in the mafia or something.

So, “don’t do that baby,” is thrown out in conversation frequently. If one of my daughters is about to do something unwise, that’s my comment. Tone and all.

I believe by retaining a few adorable, funny verbal mistakes or cute phrases and turning them into part of your family’s language, it is unifying. It’s like a secret code.

After all, your family is a very exclusive club. By special invitation only.

-Kay