I’m going to leverage one more story about my daughter, because it clearly illustrates a problem my wife and I could have avoided had we not been so intent at placing our own interpretation and ‘knowledge’ on the situation.

She must have been about two when this started.  She’d come to us a little frightened and start to explain what was bothering her.  She kept repeating the word ‘because’ and we naturally asked, ‘Because what?’  The short version is that my wife finally figured out she was saying ‘big claws’ and this was a result of some nightmare.  It wasn’t the two of us who did the deducing … instead my daughter (obviously frustrated with her idiot parents) used a different word.  She said ‘fingernails’ instead … and the barrier was broken. Continue reading →