Opposites

At night, I have been reading the Sandra Boynton books to my 2 year old son L. There is this book called Opposites and it is an easy read. The problem is it is a difficult concept to grasp.

To a 2 year old, they see pictures of animals and they hear some words they understand, such as big, small, short, and tall. What they don’t understand is the word pairings are opposites. They probably even see the difference in the pictures and maybe understand the differences in some of the words. Understanding that those all are associated with the word opposites is on another level.

What I have started doing is telling L after each word pairing that they are opposites and they are wayyyyyyy different. I repeat that phrase and emphasize the word wayyyyyyy different so he can start to understand how that phrase connects with opposite, which connects with the word pairing. I feel like after a few nights of this, L is starting to get it that those words are far apart from each other, which means opposite. Even if my brain is deceiving me and L has no idea what opposite means, at least the exposure to that word is good enough (and that’s what I’ll keep telling myself!).