My Baby is Growing Up

By Tracie Wagman

It hit me the other day when my son corrected himself that he is now officially a “big boy”. I was crushed. We all love when kids make those first word mistakes and every parent has their favourite. 

My son used to say “lasterday” instead of yesterday. My husband and I actually thought my son’s word made more sense! He used to call hand cuffs “hand cuffles” and he combined skating and skiing into one generic word: “skeeting”. He disliked his lessons in both skating and skiing so much that it didn’t matter which one he was talking about: “I don’t want to go skeeting!” Once again, he seemed to make more sense when it comes to the English language.

However, the days of his word errors seem to be slowly disappearing and now his older sister makes fun of him when he makes these mistakes and in his fervor of wanting to be a “big boy” he now ensures that he is saying the correct word.

Kids hate when anyone laughs at them – heck we all do! But now that my baby is growing up, I find myself nostalgic for the “olden days” when he used to mess up his words and make up new words to describe things. I hope he can continue to find creative and new ways to express himself that we adults won’t make fun of because I don’t want his growing up to mean conforming 100% to what the adults deem is proper. Sometimes we make mistakes too.  

Tracie Wagman is the owner/publisher of Help We've Got Kids. Tracie works on a number of non-profit companies as well as raising her 2 kids. She is on a never ending quest to find the right balance between work and family.