Beware of Unintended Echoes

The grade school I attended from grades four through seven was an L-shaped building, with one wing on a ridge, slightly higher than the other wing. The playground extended outward from between the two wings. If one faced the spot where the two wings came together from a distance of about 100 feet, you were, as we kids soon discovered, in a delightful echo chamber. One could holler at the building, and it would faithfully answer back. It didn’t matter what you said; that is what came back. It didn’t matter how you said it; that is what came back. Echoes.

Almost two years ago, my wife and I were visiting her sister and brother-in-law. Also there that day were our daughter and granddaughter. I was sitting in the living room, reading. Daughter and granddaughter were in the family room, at the other end of the house. My daughter’s voice came through the air, “Grandpa, are you ready to eat?” Immediately following was a much younger voice saying, “Grandpa, are you ready to eat?”

“What are my choices?” I answered back.

My daughter quickly gave a short list of choices, only to be followed by the little voice providing the exact same list.

“I hear an echo!” I said.

“You do?” queried the little voice from afar. Moments later she was in the living room, big eyes looking for the echo. It was amusing the way she had echoed her mother so clearly.

While teaching my kindergarten students, sometimes when one does something very well, or in a surprising manner, I’ll lean back and say, in an astonished voice, “Mercy!” One of the classroom teachers I serve told me yesterday of an experience they'd had the day before. A boy and a girl, neither of which are my students, were sitting at a round table with the parapro (teacher’s aide) working on a project. The boy did something (I wasn’t told what) and the little girl leaned back and exclaimed, “Mercy!”

Many of the words which we hear from our students, especially the younger ones, are actually echoes of things they’ve heard at home, the baby-sitter’s, or at abuelita’s house. We need to be careful not to judge the little ones by the echoes they produce at school. We don’t know under what circumstances they’ve heard the words they repeat, or the attitudes reflected by what is said.

We must work hard to provide positive, re-enforcing “echo” material to these minds that come to us daily. We have to be so careful in what we say, even in a joking manner. Walls that produce echoes, like the walls at the grade school I attended, don’t take into account attitude, situation, or intention. They just bounce back what they’ve heard. The same is true with little children.

Mercy! I forgot my lunch choices. What were they again?

Dr. G