The Chart Number

"Chart number?"

The question was an expected segment of our usual conversation, but it still managed to elicit in me the same internal groan.

Shortly after Ella was born, the secretary of her pediatrician shoved a little blue index card with a scrawled series of integers into my hand. "You'll need this chart number every time you phone," she said in a stern voice that seemed strangely incongruent with her short stature and grandmotherly appearance.

Like most important scraps of paper, the little blue card ended up in a forgotten fold of my wallet. Since I don't usually carry my wallet around with me unless I'm going out, and since it has always been my lifelong dream to one day attain the memory level of a goldfish, I never have it on hand when I call for Ella's doctor appointments.

In the meantime, we've established an uncomfortable dance, she and I. I call for an appointment, and she grumbles a bit and asks when I'd like to come in. I name a few dates and times that would be convenient to me, and she rejects each one of them instantly. I ask her what times she has available, and she growls a bit more and finally asks if I want to come in at a time that is typically far too early for me to manage. I decline, and suggest a slightly later time of day, and we haggle around a bit before finally reaching a mutually acceptable ten-minute time slot. Then comes the dreaded question: "Chart number?" I usually respond to this by saying, "I'm sorry, I don't have it in front of me." She snarls a bit more and hangs up the phone, and our dance is complete.

This time was different, though. In an effort to speed our scheduling salsa up a bit, I abbreviated my usual comment somewhat, saying, "I'm sorry, I don't have it."

The usual snarl changed instantly into full-blown bark. I imagined angry storm clouds building around her head, and her yes flashing like lightning. She took on the tone of an angry mother berating a small child, and if she could've reached through the phone I'm sure she would have grabbed me by the ear and shook me. "Oh, yes you dooo. I gave you a little blue caaard, you're supposed to have it by the phooone whenever you caaall."

I stammered an apology and she hung up on me.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm willing to lend a helping hand wherever and whenever possible. But what I don't understand is why I must participate in her filing process. If I don't have the chart number, will she be unable to locate my child's medical file? And if she can find it on her own, then why am I wasting precious brain wattage keeping up with a mostly useless piece of paper?

Oh, well. I guess I'll try and remember the card from now on. After all, I wouldn't want her to give herself a heart attack or pop a vein or something on my account.

The Big Comfy Cou--er--Brother

That Was Supposed to Happen

Even before babies learn to talk, they begin imitating their parents' speech. There may not be any words, but the stream of gibberish is richly imbued with emotional meaning. They also learn to imitate the nuance of pauses and intonation found in adult speech patterns. Add in extra "communication channels" like gestures, body language, and facial expression, and Baby is actually conveying an astonishing amount of incredibly meaningful information. Of course, all of this potent communication ability is eventually augmented one step further with the addition of a linguistic punch, the use of words and language, to add yet another layer of meaning. (Here's a funny example of what this looks like in an advanced stage.)

Over the last year or so, Shiloh and I have been working on developing these communication channels (also called "modes" in development jargon), and Shiloh's gotten very good with body language and facial expression. He's even fairly good at simple gestures, and can communicate very strong emotions in his inflection. But so far we haven't witnessed an attempt to mimic the nuance of adult speech patterns -- until last Friday.

I was getting Shiloh to practice making very specific sounds by asking him to tell me what kind of animal we should look up by imitating their sounds. After going down a short list, I threw in the catchphrase of a character on his favorite TV show (Widget from Wubbzy). At around the 37-second mark, he responds to my prompt by imitating her phrase exactly. He doesn't say the words, of course, but he does imitate the tone and intonation exactly. Which means that the imitation of adult speech patterns is finally beginning to emerge. We don't expect him to be hosting his own talk show by tomorrow morning, of course, but we're one definite step closer to the goal.

The Artist

When Shiloh and I draw together, we both have paper and pencils and draw the same thing at the same time. This is an example of a parallel activity, and is meant to underscore imitation and also to spark initiative.

On Wednesday, we were both drawing whales. Up to this point, Shiloh hasn't known exactly how to go about drawing things he's thinking of (self-expression isn't exactly his forte), so he usually just scribbles.

I didn't expect this day to be much different, so I was drawing and commenting aloud about what I was drawing and not paying a whole lot of attention to what Shiloh was doing. "Now I'm drawing the nose like this," I said, "And now the flippers and oh! He needs a tail."

When I was finished I looked over at his drawing and was delighted to see this:

Note the obvious nose (up-and-down strokes on the left), flippers (v-shaped lines on the bottom) and tail (the long streak going up and off to the right). The scribbles closer to the middle are probably his attempt to make an eye (he's not so good at making dots). I added an eye there, and a mouth, but the rest is entirely his. Interestingly, his whale was positioned almost identically on the page to mine.