Why Not You ....??"

Lucas has very few little-kidisms left in his speech but one hanger-on is the phrase "Why not we ..." or "Why not you ....?". He might say to Mya "Why not we play in your room now?" or "Mom, why not you come sit by me?".

I usually just repeat back the phrase to him using the correct "Why don't you...?" or "Why don't we...?" and he restates it correctly.

All through this language acquisition stage my kids have just gone through, I marveled and marveled again at how complex a thing it is. We say "Why not?" so Lucas takes that and uses it in what could be a very valid way were it not for some arbitrary rule someone decided once upon a time.

Mya has taken to blending "good idea" together and saying "I have a gdea" and I quite like that. Lucas was talking about his nightmare the other day and said "I know what I could do to make it a goodmare!". Why isn't goodmare the opposite of nightmare - it sounds so friendly.

I don't spend a lot of time saying "you're wrong" with the kid's language because very often they are doing an excellent job of putting it all together. "Upside up" is the logical opposite of "upside down" so why the heck do we say "Right side up"?

Obviously, both Lucas and Mya are well on their way to talking correctly and understanding the thousands of crazy rules that govern our language. In fact, I'm a little melancholy that there are so few cute mix ups in Lucas' language these days. We are leaving behind the funny phrases and logical leaps that lead to language mixups. Why not he stay little just a while longer? Sigh...