Pick your poison

“You drink potty water! You drink potty water! You drink potty water!” he giggles. I am uncertain what developmental stage this signifies? I do know that the difference between his chronological age and developmental age is narrowing. I should be celebrating this breakthrough, I think?

Everyone is at home as it is the weekend. The child lacking volume control skips and spins around the room working himself up into a frenzy. I down a bottle of ensure as I don’t have the time to create a more interesting liquid. I dither, what should I be doing with whom? He is happy and vaguely foul mouthed. He does have some wiggles to wear off. Which is more important? I tune him out, whilst I listen to the exchange between the other two.

I have no idea how many hundreds of beastly little Pokemons there are in existence, but I know that there are far too many, a bit like dinosaurs, or Thomas and is ever burgeoning army of ‘friends.’ Pokemons are vile little creatures, most of them sexless. They start life as one thing, say’Pidgey,’ and then ‘evolve’ into a Pidgeotto,’ to finally reach the pinnacle of developmental prowess, in the form of ‘Pidgeot.’ It’s enough to drive a mother well away from the nest towards the supermarket to buy more ear plugs.

His sister holds the contraption, the Gameboy. She manipulates it such that each character makes it signature tune. Each Popkemon has their own annoying little ditty. They all sound more or less the same, that would be to say, very annoying, not to over stress the point. They are electronic sound bites, less than a second. She hides the screen from him, “guess it?” she commands.
“Slowking!”
“Right. You’ll know this one too!” I listen.
“Marshstomp!” he snaps back.
“Hey! You won’t know this one!” We listen.
“Moltres!”

They trot through the sounds and matching names for a good 17 minutes. Ordinarily, this would be an example of terminal boredom, perseveration and heaven knows what else.

But of course there is also a flip side, the good stuff, the reciprocal exchange and that truly astonishing auditory memory and processing, from a child that cannot remember the name of the colour ‘green.’ When he does remember and retrieves the word ‘green,’ he alters it to a more accurate shade, such as Chartreuse. The fact that he knows them all, can read and pronounce them, has learned their ‘qualities and abilites,’ with staggering exactitude, leaves me quite breathless.

I won’t rush to stock up on ear plugs then.