Words Have Meanings

Well, it’s been a great vacation. As evidenced by my lack of blogging.  

But photos were taken, and we will find a way to get them online soon. 

Until then:  For the past few weeks he’s been saying “outside” a lot more.   Whenever he wants to go outside, he says it.  So he’s using it correctly.  But yesterday we were on the porch at the Tahoe cabin, and he pointed at the glass door and said “outside”. 

“No, silly, we already are outside.” 

He paused.  “Outside,” he said again, pointing.

“You mean inside?  You want to go inside?”

He paused  and gave me a quizzical look.  Then he nodded yes (another of his favorite motions). 

I realized that although Elliot had been using the word outside correctly so far, he actually didn’t understand what it meant.  He was using it to mean “let’s transition from indoors to outdoors.” 

I assumed that Elliot understood that the word outside referred to the world outside our house. But in his mind, outside referred to the transition between inside and outside.  So when he wanted to go back inside (i.e. transition) the logical word to use was “outside”.