Preliterate Stage

During the preliterate stage most children are relatively passive in their acquisition of language. At the mercy of their parents, children soak up everything around them; their minds are sponges. They touch everything given to them, discovering different textures; they eat everything placed in their mouths, learning taste; they gaze at everything, taking in distance and color and shapes; they smell everything, discovering various aromas; and finally, they listen to everything, discovering language. Their essential mode of becoming literate is mimicry (Say Momma!). Thus, the more they are exposed to language, the more language they acquire and the more quickly they excel.

It may never be completely known how much infants learn and retain; each one is different and lives in a different environment. Scientists cannot simply ask them about what they are learning and expect a legitimate response; they may receive a giggle, a few burps, or even some malodorous flatulence as answers from their subjects. As a result, they can only observe what infants do and how they grow, thus laying the foundation for the stages of growth in literacy, which I use in this memoir.

In discussing my preliterate stage, I am certainly not the best source because I have no recollection of this stage in my life. So, I query my parents about my infancy.

My dad shrugs his shoulders and says, “I don’t know, sweetheart. You were always smart for your age. I think your first word was Momma, or maybe Daddy; I can’t remember.” Obviously, my first word was nothing too exciting, especially since my two older siblings probably said it too.

My mother, beaming with pride and eyes glistening with joyful tears, recalls a few of my more resplendent moments: “You were such a beautiful baby, all the nurses said so. You never learned to crawl either; you always sat up and pulled yourself around on the floor with one leg—it was the funniest thing to watch. I wish we had a video recording of it. And then there was the time you ate…” I’ll stop her right there.

All in all, I was a “normal” baby. I do know that I had various hand-me-down toys that were designed to speed a child’s mental growth, and there are a few pictures to prove it.

My cousin, Jason, and I with toys (above)

Me with my Mickey Mouse Telephone (below)

I also had a glow-worm. Apparently, this glow-worm and I were inseparable. The technology behind the toy is, by today’s standards, unremarkable, but to an infant, it was magic—whenever I squeezed the glow-worm’s abdomen, its face would glow. Allow me to demonstrate:

My mom, me, and my glow-worm

Amazing! However, even in such a simple plaything, I was able to improve as a thinker because I began to associate a stimulus with something else. With the glow-worm, I would squeeze it, expecting it to glow. Through what I will call “association,” I began to navigate through my environment and actually to do things such as walking without bumping into hard things and speaking. For example, when I finally did say “Momma,” my mother would gasp excitedly and encourage me to repeat it. As I matured, my ability to speak matured. I began to speak in coherent sentences and to have conversations with other people, and so I transitioned to the next stage of literacy, Emergent Literacy.