Pointing

Anjali has started pointing. As with crawling, as soon as she picked it up, she "ran" with it; she points all the time. Usually an enthusiastic and expectant smile accompanies the extended finger. With this tool, she can express what she desires. She wants me to take her where she is pointing. She wants to touch and hold what she is pointing to. She wants to eat the pile of strawberries on the table. With pointing, it seems that another level of interest in the everyday world around her has blossomed; she asks me to pick her up expressly so that she can look around at things on my level and point to them. This might be her favorite activity. And now that she can convey more of what she wants, she understandably protests if I resist helping her touch, hold, eat what she is pointing to ~ *finally* she can communicate about objects, and *still* she cannot always have them! The frustration of being a young human!

Also I have found that pointing accompanies a desire for a higher level of independence. The other night Anjali was playing with a radish as she rode around in the carrier on my front. She dropped it, and it landed on the table. She reached out for it, and I mindlessly picked it up and handed it to her. She got this look of distaste on her face and kind of shrugged, not taking it from me. I put the radish back on the table. She reached out and grabbed it. She didn't want me to get it for her; she wanted to pick it up herself. So I am making an effort, even more than before, simply to facilitate her interacting with the world on her own, as opposed to doing things for her that she can do for herself. A ha!