Movie Nights Lead to Increased Vocabulary, Dagnabbit

Saturday evenings are Video Night at our house. Each week, we get a movie from our local public library and watch it together in our family room while eating pizza. Kai especially looks forward to it, but so do my wife and I.

In the past, Kai hasn’t always maintained his interest throughout the entire movie. Lately, though, he seems to hold his attention for longer. Perhaps it’s maturity. Perhaps the recent movie selections are more to his liking.

Some of the ones he’s enjoyed lately include many of the Disney movies including classics like Alice in Wonderland, and more recent films like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Pocahontas, and Tarzan. And this week we got the Dreamworks film Madagascar.

Because English is not my wife’s native language, we always setup the movie with English subtitles. It helps my wife catch some of the words she may otherwise miss.

Lately, we are finding that watching with subtitles is helping our son increase his vocabulary as well.

Kai will grab the remote, pause the video, and ask what a particular word means. “Dad, what does ‘ignite’ mean?”

Usually the words that interest him the most are the ones used in particularly funny scenes. This week, he inquired about Bisquick, Butterball, and dagnabbit, among others.

Sometimes I am challenged to explain the definition in a way that is easy for him to understand.

But I love that he is so motivated to learn. I don’t think he would easily sit through a vocabulary class, so it’s great that we unintentionally found a way to teach him new words.

Plus, he probably won’t be taught some of these words through school, so this way he is introduced to words and phrases that people use.

Now we just have to make sure that he only uses words that appropriate, dagnabbit.

#%*$@# Super Mario

Our son doesn’t play a lot of video games like many kids do. Most of his free time these days is spent on elements. But lately, Kai has been into the Super Mario Bros. game for our Wii. No, he doesn’t play it much. Rather, he either wants to watch us play or he watches YouTube videos of other people playing.

He’s been so into the game this week that he’s even eaten his breakfast quickly every day just so he could watch Mom play for a few minutes before he has to leave for school. Who knew that Luigi and company would be such motivators?

His favorite videos are of three players who are quite good at the game and who get much farther than we ever do. On screen you see the Mario characters, but the audio is of the people talking. The other day I watched these videos with him and I found out that the language these players use is not the kind I want Kai exposed to. There were a few f-bombs, and a lot of b-words.

At first I was hoping that Kai wouldn’t notice them. Language is hard for him and he doesn’t seem to repeat much of the things we say. But then I thought that I better turn the sound down. I don’t want him to start swearing. Once he does, I think it will be hard to get him to stop.

So, I turned down the sound, and, not surprisingly, he didn’t like that at all. He yelled and protested. I explained to him that the people were using some bad words that I did not want him to listen to. I said that he could watch the video, just not listen to the sound. But, that didn’t satisfy him. He actually cried, which is rare for him. Usually he just gets angry, but this indicated that he was sad.

So, he doesn’t seem sad when talking about death, but not getting to listen to the sound of a YouTube video of a Super Mario Bros. game really gets the waterworks going.

To cheer him up, we told him that perhaps his older cousins who live in Virginia might be good at the game. We will see them in August so he can play with them at that time.

Well, two and a half months might as well be an eternity for a child. Kai demanded that we invite them over right now. Right, I’m sure they would drop everything to fly here so they can show Kai how to play Super Mario.

So, for now, he is stuck watching Mom and Dad ineptly play the game.

Now, can anyone give me a few tips before I start swearing?