A new kid after every sleep

Do you feel the same way when you look at your kid(s), that they seem to grow more mature after they have just woken up from a nap or a night's sleep? For us, that maturity shines through in the way Kai looks at us, in the way he smiles or makes a funny face, and in the way he moves. There seem to be more thoughts and feelings behind the things he does; he seems to be able to understand and interpret the world around him a little better.

I studied how the brain works in young children during early childhood as a part of my training to be a speech pathologist, but now that I think about it, I never fully understood the magnitude of the rapid development and the extent of wonder and amazement parents experience until I witnessed (and still witnessing) is firsthand with my own son. To me, the information we collected from lab tests (hooking up babies and toddlers to machines in order to record brain activities while the kids were exposed to languages) was nothing more than fascinating data that supported/disputed theories and valuable materials I could use for my own essays/lab reports.

I interpreted the data strictly from a scientific point of view back then, and now I sometimes feel like my brain is going to explode while watching what I learned come to life right in front of me!

It makes me want to go back to learning about it again! I wish I had kept the textbooks, instead of selling them for some quick cash for Happy Hours at the grad pub (although it WAS time well spent...).

So I've been reviewing the fundamentals and catching up with the latest research in language acquisition in early childhood online with the iPhone while Kai's asleep (come to think of it, it's quite fitting considering that's when his brain is doing all the categorizing and organizing). I've been devouring all the scientific findings and expert suggestions on how to foster a child's language development, but nothing can prepare me for the sheer joy, pride, and amazement when Kai repeats a word in Chinese perfectly or when he attempts to utter a 3-syllable word in English.

It's been at least ten years since I worked in the language acquisition lab, and I now understand why so many of those moms got misty-eyed when they learnt from our findings how much their children actually understood.