Raising Children, Raising Adults: Mouth to Mouth Resurrection

Even a very well read 10 year old slips up on language.

When my 4 year old mispronounces or uses words incorrectly because he is trying to learn how to use language, I smile. I am in the presence of childhood freedom. A place to test, explore, and learn all about the way language works in our lives.

Language is fascinating. It is a key that opens the heart. Opening the door to communication, understanding, to dreaming, to compassion, words teach us to listen, to know, to connect. Language is at the heart of life; words shape meaning.

So when my 10 year old slips up, I pause and think. He is still exploring language like his little brother, but he knows more how language works and how the way it sounds makes a difference. He is learning how slippery words can be.

"We can go in when they learn mouth to mouth resurrection," he said to his younger sister, as he was trying to explain why he did not want to go back into the room he had just exited, the room where there were other home-educated kids learning about life-saving skills like mouth to mouth resuscitation. An innocent little slip from a child who was emotionally stressed by the videos that dramatized emergencies. Little children, younger than he, were acting out what to do when a parent passes out, falls off a bike, or cuts a hand. He knew it was not real, but the thought of a real-life emergency was too much for his intensely sensitive mind.

So, instead of resuscitation, he said resurrection. They are similar in meaning, although one roots itself in the language of science and medicine, the other has spiritual connotations. But they both mean to bring back, to revive, to come again. They also sound alike.

I liked his slip. It made sense and it also comforted him and me. He was stressed and worried and wanted to clear his mind of these emergency scenes. Words shape meaning and we needed to create safety.

Language is slippery. The flow lets us slip between worlds easily: between life and death, between reality and fantasy, between metaphor and rationality, and between what we think are opposites but are really not. In language there is no black and white thinking. My son, I think, is learning about grey,and so am I.

Besides, I kind of like the idea of mouth to mouth resurrection. For me it is about how the words we speak, the connections we make, and the stories we tell, give life meaning and shape our reality. One (or maybe two or three or four) out-breath restores and gives life to my in-breath. The cycle continues with my out-breath giving life to another's in-breath. It is a way we are connected to all that surrounds us. We are part of the whole.

My child's innocent and thoughtless slip was perhaps a mistake set in the setting of childhood freedom, but for me I see poetry.