Nearly-two-year-old Zoe was listening to a book that my mom bought once-upon-a-time for my kids. It's sung to the tune of Jingle Bells, and the last line of each half-verse is "Jesus is with me." I had just sung the book to Alia, and when I paused, she had supplied missing words. As Zoe is just learning to talk in the last few weeks, when she requested a repeat of the book I didn't leave her words like "bus" or "train" or "sled." Instead, I stopped with "Jesus is with ...." I knew she was well-familiar with the word "me" because, when asked to identify people in the family, she would point to everyone else and state their names, but point to herself and state "me."
When faced with "Jesus is with ..." the poor child was stymied. As a couple of seconds passed, I wondered what the delay was. She finally decided. "You," she said.
Wow. That kid understands pronouns much better than she's supposed to at this age!
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I think they DO "get" language earlier than we give them credit for. When Matthew was about 3, I noticed him saying things like, "walk-ed," "runn-ed etc, like he could read the word and see the "ed" on the end of the past tense. It was fascinating and adorable. Sadly, that lasted only about two weeks.
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