"Don't provoke your brother!"
"Why do you have to antagonize each other?"
"Will you please stop taunting him?"
"Wipe that sulk off your face."
"Don't pout."
"You guys are really aggravating me."
These phrases wore grooves in my brain over the course of my childhood. Clearly, I was not an easy child.
Now, as an ISEE and SAT tutor, I invoke these sorts of phrases when I try to see if students know words like provoke, provocation, antagonize, antagonistic, taunt, sulking, and pouty. They usually don't. When I ask students, especially students with siblings, if their parents implore them not to antagonize each other, they typically shrug, "They just tell us not to bug each other."
I don't know if this is true. I also don't know if I know these words because my mother used them, or because I have always liked words (I should ask my brother if these words also strike strong memories for him). My mother is not an intellectual type. The first in her family to go to college, she dropped out halfway through to become a flight attendant. She only finished when she learned she was not tall enough to meet those willowy 1960's stewardess requirements. But she had a wide and varied vocabulary for scolding us and that vocabulary sticks with me.
And the strategy haunts me when I talk with my 4 year old. Daily, I pause for split seconds when I talk to her. There's always an easier word that I can use. An easier word that will mean I don't have to answer 52 follow-up questions and she will actually totally understand what I'm talking about the first time around. But should I be using the harder word? Is that my job? Is that how I improve her vocabulary naturally?
The scenario that convinced me that I'm doing it wrong was a simple one:
We were on the freeway. One of those big trucks that carries a dozen new cars drove past us on the northbound side.
"Mama, is that a tow truck that carries your car when it doesn't work any more?"
"That's what a tow truck does, but that truck had a lot of cars. It's probably taking new cars to the..." ...and here a pause. If I were talking to an adult I would call it a dealership. But, for my girl, for a second I thought about calling it a car store.... "dealership."
"What's a dealership?"
(Of course.)
"It's like a car store. It's a place where you go to buy a car."
"Mama! Look, there's a carousel at that dealership!"
She was pointing out the window, at, sure enough, a car dealership, looking at one of the big striped tents the dealership was using to shade some cars.
That was the moment when I thought, "Yes, that's it. I'm supposed to use the real words."
I know this from working with our EdBoost kids. They love to pick up on the words we use. Our homework helpers love to call me "persnickety" and they come in from school to tell us that their teacher used one of the big words that we like to use (procrastination, diligence, efficient, etc). I know, from my job, that we have an obligation to use good vocabulary with kids.
And, I am also convinced that we have an obligation to use those big words with little kids - even if makes our lives just a little big harder right now. If we do, maybe some SAT tutor sometime in the future won't have to work so hard.
P.S. This morning she told me I was "aggravating her"... I'm both proud and.. and that other feeling you get when your pre-schooler tells you that you aggravate her.
