Six Words Are All You Need
January 19, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Everyone has a six-word story, or so Smith notes (and here’s a video—some pictures must only be worth six words). Indeed: Sometimes (a lot of times) in our house, a little goes a long way. My son Charlie can talk, mostly in short phrases or single words and six words at one time from him is quite a lot.
Blue ocean, Chinese food, I know.
It’s telegraphic speech, in which a single word is connected, by fibers invisible and strong as the threads of a spider’s web, to a full cosmos of meanings. All in just six words.
I cannot even put on a number on how many times I’ve described TH’s speech as “telegraphic.” That was until recently. And it’s still like that. These days, I think of it more as a fritzy FM radio station. In fact, I was going to do a post about that because it’s such a good description of so much of what he does–school, talking, dressing…
It makes me reflect on how few words it takes to say the essentials!
Only five
Years ago, our son’s noises with obsessive and repetitive language was very distressing. One day he must of instinctively known just how upset I was….”no noises, go library Mommy?”
5 words said it all
xR
It’s rather poetic, like Haiku, where every word or syllable has value. in the six traits writing model, this is the ultimate in Word Choice.
Sometimes the things said with the fewest words make the greatest impact. So long as our ears (and minds!) are open! Lovely post, smiling here thinking of your son’s messages. Thanks for sharing the links too. Great stuff.