Princess Movies Are Objective
The Tiny Philosopher in Pajamas
Lately I have stopped trying to save every incredible thing Charlotte says. This is not because she has stopped saying incredible things. It is because she has apparently moved into a daily production schedule.
She is four now, and every day she seems to drop some new phrase, concept, or miniature dissertation into the house and then walk away like nothing happened. Recently she used the word nocturnal. Just tossed it off casually, as if we were discussing bats, owls, and the philosophical structure of bedtime.
Then came the real one.
“Princess movies are objective.”
I still do not know what that means. I am not sure she knows what that means. I am not sure the sentence can survive sustained philosophical review. Yet I am absolutely sure four is early to be declaring anything objective, especially princess movies.
Christa and I do this little look now. It is the look of two parents trying to locate the source material. Did she get that at school? From a book? From one of us? From Curious George, which we watch almost nightly and which is, frankly, doing more educational labor in our home than some accredited institutions? Is there a secret preschool seminar on aesthetics and ontology we forgot to sign a permission slip for?
I know every parent thinks their kid is advanced. I know we are not exactly neutral parties. We are not peer reviewers. We are not a clean data set. Still, come on.
There is advanced in the normal parental-bragging way, and then there is your four-year-old announcing that princess cinema has an objective quality, as if she is about to publish a paper titled Belle, Narrative Value, and the Collapse of Relativism.
The funny thing is, this is also the same child who once hugged Rowan goodnight and said, “I’ll always be by your side.”
That line still stops me. It is simple, but it has weight. It sounds like something earned over decades, not something a three-year-old says while being tucked into bed. It has the strange, clean force children sometimes find by accident. They do not decorate the feeling. They just say the thing itself.
A little while later, at four, Charlotte whispered to Rowan, “You’re the best friend.”
That is the whiplash of living with her right now. One moment she is a tiny film theorist with strong princess opinions. The next she says something so tender it makes the adults in the room feel underqualified.
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association notes that children between four and five are often moving into longer, more complex sentences, storytelling, more elaborate descriptions, and clearer conversational participation. It also emphasizes that children develop uniquely, even within the same family. That seems technically true and emotionally insufficient. Because yes, of course, language develops. Also, sometimes it walks into your living room wearing pajamas and says something that makes you question whether your child has been secretly reading footnotes.
The Bridge Before the Sentence
Then there is Rowan.
Rowan cannot articulate many words yet, at least not in the neat adult sense of clear speech landing exactly where everyone expects it to land. Yet it would be ridiculous to confuse that with not understanding language.
She understands plenty.
She chooses between foods. She follows what is happening. She makes her preferences known. She listens. She watches. She decides. She has opinions, and she has ways of making those opinions everyone else’s immediate logistical concern.
She also signs. More. Eat. Help. Mom. A bunch of others.
Recently she signed mom to Christa, and it felt enormous.
Not enormous in the way a headline is enormous. Enormous in the way a small hinge can change the whole movement of a door. The idea was already there. The bond was already there. The wanting was already there. The sign simply let us see the bridge.
This is the thing that gets missed when people talk about speech as if it is the whole kingdom. Speech matters, obviously. Words matter. Being understood matters. Yet language is larger than pronunciation. It is the reach toward another person. It is the effort to make the inside visible.
Research on children with Down syndrome has long noted that receptive understanding can be stronger than expressive speech, and that combining signs with spoken language can support early communication. Signing is not some magic cure-all. That feels right to me: not magic, exactly, but a tool; not a replacement for speech, but a bridge toward being known.
Rowan also points to something or someone and says, “this.”
I love this.
It is funny, partly because it is so direct. No preamble. No softening. No elaborate case-building. Just this.
This cup. This toy. This food. This person. This situation needs my attention and, by extension, yours.
There is a blunt poetry to it. Adults spend whole paragraphs getting less clear than Rowan gets with one finger and one word.
Watching her has changed how I think about progress. Progress is not always a new word appearing fully formed. Sometimes it is a sign. Sometimes it is a choice between snacks. Sometimes it is a point across the room. Sometimes it is the look on her face when she knows exactly what she means and is waiting for the rest of us to catch up.
The Baby Tuning Up
Then there is Wyatt, who is still mostly operating in baby noises.
This is its own genre.
He is not saying nocturnal. He has not yet entered the princess movies debate. He is not signing mom to Christa or pointing at a preferred object with the moral authority of a tiny emperor.
For now, he is in the cooing, squeaking, grunting, pre-language orchestra pit. He makes sounds that are not words yet but still feel directed at the world. There is effort in them. There is contact. There is a person warming up behind the curtain.
He does have a lot to live up to.
I say that mostly as a joke. Mostly.
Because really, he is already doing what babies do. He is beginning. He is making noise in the direction of love and waiting to see what comes back. Long before language becomes vocabulary, it is turn-taking. It is call and answer. It is someone making a sound and someone else saying, in some form, I heard you.
Wyatt is still at that first edge. Charlotte is throwing vocabulary like confetti. Rowan is building bridges through signs, points, choices, and that perfect little this.
Three kids. Three kinds of language. One house where meaning keeps arriving in different costumes.
The House Where Meaning Keeps Arriving
I do not want to make this too tidy. Parenting is not tidy. Language is not tidy. Children are not tidy. Our house is certainly not tidy.
A lot of this is loud. A lot of it is repetitive. A lot of it involves snacks, bedtime negotiations, and questions no adult is prepared to answer with dignity. Why is George doing that? Why is that princess sad? Why can’t I have the thing I just invented wanting three seconds ago?
Yet underneath the comedy, something real keeps happening.
Charlotte keeps showing us the explosive joy of words. She is discovering that language can name the world, bend the world, argue with the world, and occasionally make her parents laugh so hard they forget what they were supposed to be doing.
Rowan keeps showing us that understanding does not wait for perfect speech. Meaning can move through hands, eyes, choices, gestures, and one beautifully efficient word.
Wyatt keeps reminding me that every voice begins before translation. Before sentences. Before stories. Before anyone can say what the sound means, someone is already trying to be heard.
That is what inspires me.
Not in the flattened, motivational-poster version of that word. I mean it more literally. They put breath back into things. They make the ordinary mechanisms of being human feel strange again. Speech. Gesture. Attention. Recognition. The small daily miracle of one person reaching toward another and being met.
I know parents are supposed to be impressed by their kids. That is part of the job. Still, there are moments when admiration feels too weak a word.
Charlotte says, “I’ll always be by your side,” and I hear love finding a sentence.
Rowan signs mom, and I see connection become visible.
Wyatt makes some small impossible sound from the baby end of the couch, and I know he is already on his way.
They are all becoming themselves out loud, each in their own way. One word. One sign. One point. One coo. One declaration about the objective nature of princess movies.
I cannot explain all of it.
I can only look at Christa across the room, laugh, and think: what the hell.
Then, usually a second later: how lucky we are.
These three kids
I don’t know what to say
Astonished
