As kids grow up, you realize that you cannot really talk anything with them around. They listen and observe and understand much more than we tend to give them credit for. So it’s always a problem if we need to quickly discuss something but don’t want the kid to know.
Earlier we could speak in English – but once my daughter started playschool she began to understand all our conversations in English. So much to her annoyance we switched to Hindi when we did not want her to know something. This went on until we had our one-year stint at Gurgaon. After that she was speaking Hindi like a Punjaban!
For a while we were perplexed on how to communicate in front of her – without her comprehending it.
Then we started spelling out words. So conversations would go like this: “Let’s buy CHOCOLATES for Kannan’s kid. We can’t visit their home empty handed.” And so on it went…
A few weeks ago, on a lazy Sunday we spent the evening at the beach. As we headed back to the car we debated on whether to eat out or to head home for dinner. This is my daughter’s favourite discussion. When we eat out there are only two things she wants – it has to be either Pasta or Noodles. Then our choice of restaurants gets really limited. By default she decides where we would go and dictated what we would eat! This time round we wanted to land up at a restaurant of our choice. So we tried to discuss it without her knowledge. There’s a place in Chennai – run by an Italian - that serves excellent wood fire pizzas. It also has pasta and other delectable stuff.
So I was like “What say we go to BELLA CIAO. I can have PIZZA, she can have PASTA and you can have BURGER. This way all of us will be happy.”
My husband wanted Chinese. He was like “No let’s go to MAINLAND CHINA. I feel like some TANGY SOUP AND NOODLES.”
A heated discussion happened and my daughter watched us both.
Finally she said “Let’s go with what amma says – Bella Ciao is good. I will have pasta, you can have burger and amma can have Pizza.”
We stopped and gaped at her. She had of course got everything we’d said so far. Which means we can no longer use spellings as our code. Sigh! We’ve got to figure out a new language now…
