DADWAGON

Sasha has entered that wonderful phase where she’s learning new words at an impressive rate. Over the weekend, she started saying “Please!” and accompanying the word with the ASL sign as well. She knows where her head, eyes, nose, mouth, feet and belly are—in both English and Chinese. She can tell apples from oranges, most of the time.

But in the last few days I’ve been trying to teach her some of the less-important body parts, like the knees, elbows and butt. And I’ve been failing. Granted, I haven’t made a very concerted effort here, but when I see how quickly she picks up other things (she learned “Please!” from the Baby Signing Time videos), it drives home the failure that much harder.

Plus, I realized, a lot of the words she already knows she learned from other people, and not just my wife and our former nannies. She’s learning things … at school! Which is supposed to be good, right? And it is good, but it’s hard to let go of being her prime source of knowledge about the world.

That said, I know there are things I’m teaching her, whether intentionally or by accident, that she definitely won’t get in school. If she thinks of her toes as “piggies,” it’s because of me. If her idea of comedy is to put unusual objects on her head, I’m responsible.

But of course, I can’t just let this all happen naturally. I want to game the system, and focus my efforts on teaching her things the schools never will. Like science, and history, and math. Okay, that’ll come later, but right now there have got to be words and concepts she’ll never be exposed to at the bilingual Preschool of America. But what the hell are they?