Shimony Shu

My three-year-old has created her own language.

She and her sister (4) like to sit on my lap and, as they call it, mess up my hair.  They mess it up and then try to fix it with brushes and curlers and the like.  As they do so, they act as if they are working in some salon.  They are constantly telling me to relax and close my eyes and they will fix my hair.

During one of these sessions, my three-year-old started jabbering some gibberish.  “Close your eyes and relax and shimony shu flabytre honnto goshey.” Holy crap.  I hadn’t heard anything like this since I saw a bunch of strangers in a generic born again church in Philly break into what they claimed to be the Speaking of Tongues. 

(That incident scared the crap out of me.  I ran from that building, completely ooked out, with one the members following me asking what I thought about the whole deal.  Freaky, that’s what I thought of it.)

Anyway, my daughter’s gibberish isn’t freaky like their gibberish was.  It’s become quite humorous.  When she is lost in her own little world, she will hold full on conversations with her dolls and toys in this made up shimony shu.  Watching her, it’s obvious she knows what she is saying.  And so do her dolls.  Okay, maybe it is a little creepy.

This daughter has much more of an internal imagination than my other kids have had.  They all have great imaginations which I try to encourage, but my three-year-old’s imagination is much more in her head, if that makes sense.  She could sit alone for hours entertaining herself by producing worlds and characters galore.  My other daughter has a good imagination, but she needs other people to play off of.

I only mention this because it so reminds me of myself when I was a kid.  Sure, some of my other kids show interest in things that I have interest in now, like acting.  But this is the best example from all of my kids that I can point to and say, “That was me at that age.” It’s kind of cool to see myself in one of my children.

What traits of yours do you see in your kids?