Tick-tocks and Mah-mahs

Tom has a New Thing.

We took him to see his grandmother today. While I was carrying him into her kitchen, he looked over my shoulder and waved his head from side to side, going “ttich, ttitch”.

I followed his line of sight and found he was looking at a clock on the kitchen wall. He’s always been fascinated by clocks, particularly the one in his other grandma’s front room. She always holds him up to it to let him see it chime, and makes a “tick tock” sound while waving her head from side to side. Sometimes Tom vaguely mimicked this, but I always assumed he was just copying his grandma. But, amazingly (to me) that’s now embedded in his little synapses: when you see a clock you wobble your head and go “tick tock”.

What’s even more amazing (to me) is that the clock in one grandma’s front room is nothing like the one in his other grandma’s kitchen. The kitchen one is shaped like a fat bird, with large out-of-shape numbers and spindly legs. The other one is an austere wall clock with a plain white face and roman numerals. In the family tree of clockness, they’re occupying opposite corners, and don’t really talk much other than at weddings and funerals.

In Toms head though, they’ve been successfully grouped and classified as “things you go ‘tick tock’ at”.

As if to prove the point today, Tom also added Mah-mahs to his repertoire of classified objects. Mah-mahs are the big birds you get in ponds and feed bread too. They’re called Mah-mahs because that’s the sound they make. You might think they go “quack quack”, but if you listen as Tom has, you’ll realise they really go “mah mah”.

We took him to a duck pond today, and Tom started mimicking the sound they made as the ducks rushed to see us. It was difficult to tell if he was just making the sound because he was hearing it. So, when we got him home I showed him some pictures of ducks, and sure enough, they were Mah-mahs.

And the pictures of clocks were “tick tocks”, together with the essential wobbly head.

This probably sounds like an over-enthusiastic dad marvelling at some tiny thing that every single baby does. In a way, I suppose it is. This isn’t Tom even speaking really, in that he’s not repeating “proper” words or sentences.

But he is moving towards speech, inside his bonce are now cells that can abstractly link “a thing that looks like a clock” with a combination of noise and action.

I am an over-enthusiastic dad marvelling at each new little thing. But if that’s not marvellous, then I don’t know what is.