"When parents talk spontaneously to their children about what they are doing at the moment, the words they use vary with the subtle demands of the circumstances of speaking. The different words they use reflect the variety of experiences they provide their children and the aspects of those experiences they consider important for the children to notice, name, and remember."
As I was reading some of this stuff this morning, I was thinking about Ivy's hunger for verbal descriptions of everything since she turned two. "Daddy, tell me a story" -- I hear that request many times each day. At first we tried to oblige her with clever tales made up on the fly, and it got tiring (who can consistently come up with good stories 17 times a day?). Later we realized that she wanted "stories" about what we were doing and seeing. Her requests got more refined: "Tell me a story about Ivy and Mommy and Daddy going to the playground." It seems like a boring request, but she wants to hear us talk about what's happening -- she's constructing meaning and context from the descriptions.
