Sharing a Nacho

One evening when friends were gathered around a table, I observed a 14 months old boy experimenting with corn nachos. He was sitting on his mother’s lap. A bowl with nachos and glasses filled with water were on the table (besides other things that are not important for what was going to happen).

The boy took a nacho and dipped it in his mother’s water glass, then he put it in his mouth and sucked. When he took another piece from the bowl, a woman that sat beside him caught his eye, and bended towards his hand asking him if she could get some. The boy first stretched his arm towards the woman’s mouth, but suddenly changed his mind and started to dip the nacho in the water. Now he held the nacho with both hands, each forefinger pressing against the thumb, pulling the nacho in opposite directions. His fingers slid along the moist surface. He repeated the dipping and pulling, again and again. The more he dipped, more slippery the nacho became. After a while he seemed to get annoyed, his fingers “got angry” and, to the boy’s big surprise, the nacho ended in small pieces on the table. There was a moment of silence – as he was just waken and needed a few seconds to “absorb” what had happened. Then he slowly and with confidence took one of the pieces, again stretched his arm towards the woman, and put the nacho piece in her mouth.

Observing the scene I wondered if he was used to tearing bread and had experience with dipping it in water. His mother approved that he did, but this was the first time he had tried with something else than bread. The nacho had un unfamiliar consistency – it was not possible to tear like a piece of bread! This surprised the boy – he didn’t know much about breaking by bending. The unexpected event of crushing the nacho gave him a new experience – and possibility to fulfil his intension to share!

What can I learn from this event? I believe that the child’s experience, gained through the experiment, wouldn’t be possible if the “materials” (nachos and water) were not on the table, or in a reachable distance. I also believe that the communication context was of a decisive important for motivating the boy’s actions (and learning?): an adult addressed him with a question and an inquiry.

It is also interesting to reflect about if the boy understood the words in the question, or he rather understood the woman’s body language (bending towards his hand with her mouth opened). I believe it was the combination of body language, setting around the table (for purpose of eating), and all the other dimensions in this multimodal communication context. Different “languages” support each other!

(The shown images are from an attempt to reconstruct the actual event - which was not possible to recunstruct entirely because the boy now (two months later) knew how to break a nacho easily.)