Child Development by Billy Collins

Child Development
by Billy Collins
As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs
and sauntered off the beaches into forests
working up some irregular verbs for their
first conversation, so three-year-old children
enter the phase of name-calling.

Every day a new one arrives and is added
to the repertoire. You Dumb Goopyhead,
You Big Sewerface, You Poop-on-the-Floor
(a kind of Navaho ring to that one)
they yell from knee level, their little mugs
flushed with challenge.
Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother tossing out
in a pub, but then the toddlers are not trying
to devastate some fatuous Enlightenment hack.

They are just tormenting their fellow squirts
or going after the attention of the giants
way up there with their cocktails and bad breath
talking baritone nonsense to other giants,
waiting to call them names after thanking
them for the lovely party and hearing the door close.

The mature save their hothead invective
for things: an errant hammer, tire chains,
or receding trains missed by seconds,
though they know in their adult hearts,
even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed
for his appalling behavior,
that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids,
their wives are Dopey Dopeheads
and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants

Vocabulary:

• Navaho-1.a member of a North American Indian people of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah 2.the language of this people, belonging to the Athapascan group of the Na-Dene phylum
• Invective- Vehement or violent denunciation, censure or reproach.

Analysis:

• As children get older they enter the stage of name calling, the speaker says that there isn't much meaning behind just the way kids behave and they often get scolded for it. They are scolded for being mean when really they mean nothing by it while adults are the real mean ones. Their name calling is done behind closed doors and in secrecy, there is actual meaning behind these words and while adults yell at there children they know they are the ones with bad behavior and that they should be scolded not the children. Secretly adults know they are being silly because while children say what they want then and there adults hide hide it and save it for later inevitably saying the same things as the child had in other words.

Theme:

• The theme of the poem is that people shouldn't care as much about how other people view them. Adults hide behind closed doors to call names in order to keep up a positive image. This caring of what other people think doesn't allow people to express themselves as most young children so freely do.

Personal Connection:

• I liked this poem because it showed some of the humor of childhood while relating it back to this ideal adults have that you must be perfect. This ideal doesn't allow for people to be themselves and this poem points out that it is a silly notion to care so much about what other people think.