Little Pitchers Have Big Ears

Have you ever heard the expression "little pitchers have big ears"? I was reminded of it recently and looked up some information about it which I have copied and pasted here.

 http://word-ancestry.livejournal.com/50599.html

 little pitchers have big ears,
-This English expression refers to little children overhearing and understanding more conversations than their parents might think. The allusion is to the ear-like handles often found on smaller pitchers. This phrase appears to be rather old, dating at least back to early 16th century England but likely even earlier. One of the first written records we have of it is found in the fifth chapter of part two of John Heywood's Proverbes (1546 C.E.): "Auoyd your children: smal pitchers haue wyde eares." We also see it used in Shakespeare's Richard III about half a century later.


I was reminded of this proverb recently in the toddler nursery. Marjorie came in for Sunday school and explained to me that Evelyn, her two-year-old daughter, was not wearing pull-ups but underwear and would I please take her to the potty sometime during the hour. And so I asked Evelyn, and I took her to the bathroom. When Sunday school was over, I explained the situation to the children's church worker Dorothy. After church I was in the hallway outside the nursery, and I overheard Marjorie and Dorothy discussing how the potty scene went. For your information, there were no accidents in Sunday school or church.

That evening I was again in the toddler nursery. I had only two children to watch: Evelyn and a little three-year-old boy named Lawrence. The three of us were sitting at the low toddler table concentrating on play doh creations when Lawrence asked, "Ebewyn, are you weering puw-ups or unda-weer?" Evelyn, who doesn't talk much, calmly answered "unda-weer."

I smiled at the sweet innocence of this exchange, but I thought later that not one of us was really aware that all the children heard multiple conversations about the status of Evelyn's potty training. It was a reminder to me that even very small children have little brain recorders, continually recording all the conversations going on around them. Furthermore, they are good multi-taskers:  playing, chattering, and recording all at once. And don't forget that if they can record it, they can play it back!