Trine’s asleep but I have to get this anecdote off my chest before I spontaneously combust.
At vuggestue this morning Molli was in a very good mood and I no sooner got her out of her outerwear and sneakers and into her slippers than she went bounding toward the little child-sized table and snatched up a little plastic dog-shaped toy and making barking sounds, smiling back at me for approval. Very cute, but not unusual.
She was enjoying herself so much she navigated her butt onto the little kiddie chair that’s scaled perfectly to the little kiddie table and smiled blissfully while banging the poor dog repeatedly against the table top. What fun!
Most of the other kids had been in the other room, but now came pouring into The Toads room, and a few of them swarmed around the kiddie table. Molli didn’t pay them any notice until she slid off her chair, at one point, to reach for a toy that one of the little boys was playing with farther along the table.
The moment she slid off the chair, one of the little Julies sidled up to it and begin trying to hoist herself onto it. Molli spun instantly and roared at her with savage ferocity: Down!
The chastised little girl backed down very nervously and Molli resumed her place on the chair. She scowled at the frightened and bewildered girl and said, "Mih! Mih! Mih!"
I’m not sure how to categorize this behavior in social terms. I’d probably file it under "bad" in terms of social development (not sharing), but "good" in terms of learning how to assert her authority among peers. And the use of an M-word in this context is interesting, because "me," "my," and "mine" begin with M in both English and Danish. She hasn’t previously exhibited any familiarity with any of those words or the concepts they represent.
But in terms of her use of "Down!" the episode suggests that Molli has completely hoodwinked her parents. Opposite girl, my ass!
She clearly understands what the imperative "Down!" means. At home we’ve seen her shout it at the cats, but we thought that was mere parroting: when Ollie or Clara leap onto Trine’s desk, we’re quick to order them down. Molli sees that all the time, so she could conceivably have been mimicking us without yet understanding that we weren’t just declaring where the cats were.
But this episode this morning makes it absolutely crystal clear that Molli knows damn well what a sternly issued "down!" really means. She gets it, context and all. It’s nice to know this, because our little monkey-bean has begun pushing chairs and things around as step-stools to things at the next horizontal level of our apartment: several times in recent days we’ve stepped out of the living room for a moment to come back and find Molli crawling around the dining room table, or sitting happily on Trine’s keyboard and poking her monitor.
If she tries giggling adorably and parroting "down" the next time we issue that command, though, she won’t be fooling anybody.
(And for the sake of perfect accuracy, she doesn’t actually say "down." She says "dow!")
We will see how she responds to an American ‘down’. Actually it is probably more the tone of voice than the actual utterance. I am looking forward to the visit.