Tuesday, June 6, 2017

No big deal, Mom


This kid. Y'all. I have to take a moment to brag on him.  Every time I get to hear him speak German, I'm impressed. But this morning was exceptional.

Back story: several weeks ago, he lost his keys to his bike lock.  I have the spare key on my keyring, so, while inconvenient, the loss wasn't the end of the world. (However, at least once, Matthew showed up at school to pick Jackson up, realized that he had taken the wrong keys, and had to come all the way home to get my keys in order for Jackson to unlock his bike. Really inconvenient.) 

Jackson knew he had lost the keys while riding his bike, but we had no idea where. After looking for a few weeks, we chalked them up to lost forever.

Fast forward to this morning as we are dropping Brandtley off for his first day of kindergarten.  While I am helping Brandtley to put away all of his new kindergarten gear (lunch, water bottle, backpack, shoes, house shoes, rain boots, rain pants, sport clothes, and jacket), I'm vaguely aware of Jackson having a conversation in German with one of Brandtley's teachers.  The teacher turns to me and asks me something about keys in German.  I nod, but am only half focusing...not paying attention enough to catch the full translation and meaning.  A minute later, Jackson & the teacher walk down the hall and return with his lost keys!! 

Jackson very simply and quickly made small talk which led him to a conversation that expressed his loss of keys and then discovered that the kindergarten had found his keys outside on the sidewalk after we last visited!  To me, this entire conversation is huge. So much information. Shared so naturally. So easily. To him, it was nothing. 

I recently made a phone call to the US and purchased (in English!!) a gift using my credit card. The whole call took maybe 3 minutes, but I hung up amazed at the ease of the sheer volume of data I had successfully conveyed so quickly, accomplishing a very simple task that would have been so complex and taken so much longer in German.  My mind was overwhelmed at how effortless life in my native language can be and how accustomed I've grown to the daily effort of trying to communicate (or trying to avoid communication) otherwise.

I love that Jackson has no idea why I was so impressed this morning. I love that he is already internalizing a second language. As the frustration is about to start fresh for Brandtley as he enters daily German kindergarten, it is so encouraging and rewarding to see the fruits of Jackson's effort and the skills he is already gaining.  I am so appreciative of the little moments of success that show us the progress we've made.  

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