Summary
At the dinner table, my husband and I regaled each other with wordplay. But now, we sat beside a toddler who knew only a smattering of vocabulary, including the standards "mama" and "dada," along with "cat" and "dog."
Experts tell parents to label everything their children see, so I enunciated nouns as I walked around the center with [Maia]. "Snowy owl," I said outside the white bird's cage. "Gyrfalcon," I continued, praying I'd pronounced the name correctly lest my baby embarrass herself at some future avian-themed cocktail party. "Swainson's hawk." I pointed at the dark bird. "William Swainson had a big ego. He also named the Swainson's thrush, the Swainson's warbler, and the Swainson's crow ... which is actually a butterfly.""Daddy's helping to bandage the owl's broken wing," I said. "I'm cutting up chicken to feed a sick screech owl." I pointed to the stunned, sooty bird huddling in a carrier with tiny melted talons. "He got stuck in a chimney," I explained. "The owners heard him hooting and tried to smoke him out."See the full content of this document
Extract
The Vitality of Language
My husband and I have volunteered at a raptor rehabilitation center for years, and when we decided to adopt a toddler, the center's staff threw lis a baby shower on the lawn outside the kestrel's cage. They presented our new daughter, Maia, with b...
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