Bahasa Anak

Kehadiran anak yang sudah lama ditunggu-tunggu tentu saja sangat membahagiakan kami. Bisa mengikuti perkembangan fisik dan pertumbuhan mentalnya merupakan sesuatu yang sungguh-sungguh menakjubkan. Setiap hari kami tersenyum karena tingkah lakunya yang menggelikan. Semakin lama, kemampuan bahasanya juga semakin baik. Banyu Gunung (Artinya air gunung.) adalah nama anak kami. Sekarang dia sudah berumur 15 bulan. Sejak berumur 2 bulan, dia sudah menunjukkan gejala “cerewet”. Di usia itu dia suka sekali mengoceh. Banyak orang bilang bahwa dia akan cepat bisa bicara karena ayahnya dan saya, ibunya, banyak bicara. Teman-teman saya di kantor pun memberi predikat ‘cerewet’ kepada saya. Itu karena saya memang selalu banyak bicara. Sejak usia 2 bulan, Gunung sudah biasa saya bacakan cerita (dari buku cerita) sambil melihat gambar-gambarnya. Dia mendengarkan cerita yang saya baca sambil menggerak-gerakkan badannya dan mengoceh tidak karuan seolah-olah dia mengerti apa yang saya bacakan. Tanpa berpikir apakah dia mengerti atau tidak, setiap hari saya mencoba berbicara dengannya. Saya yakin bahwa dia akan bisa menangkap kata-kata yang saya ucapkan kalau saya sering berkomunikasi dengannya. Seringnya dia saya ajak berkomunikasi akan membantu mengasah otaknya untuk bisa merekam kata-kata yang dia dengar. Saya selalu menjelaskan kepadanya apa yang sedang saya lakukan. Tanpa saya sadari bunyi-bunyi bahasa itu terekam dalam ingatannya dan akhirnya pada umur 9 bulan dia bisa mengerti kalimat-kalimat perintah sederhana. Ketika dia masih di dalam kandungan saya, saya suka mendengarkan musik. Sekarang Gunung sulit tidur kalau tidak ada musik. Ternyata tanpa saya sadari, kebiasaan itu sangat bermanfaat untuk dia. Pada umur 7 bulan dia sudah bisa mengikuti lagu anak-anak dengan ikut mengucapkan bunyi-bunyi akhirnya. Semakin lama, semakin banyak kata yang dikuasainya. Kini, dalam usia 15 bulan, dia bisa mengikuti dan menyanyikan 6 lagu anak-anak yang sering saya nyanyikan. Kalau saya perhatikan, dia belajar bahasa dengan menirukan ucapan orang-orang di sekitarnya. Gurunya di playgroup juga mengatakan bahwa dia bisa dengan cepat menirukan ucapan gurunya. Saya yakin, penting bagi para orang tua untuk selalu mengajak anak-anak mereka berkomunikasi , baik dengan berbicara maupun menggunakan ekspresi-ekspresi gerakan badan. Kita juga perlu menciptakan kondisi-kondisi yang memungkinkan anak-anak mendengar orang bicara dan kemudian menirukan apa yang dia dengarkan. Hal itu akan mempermudah pemerolehan bahasa bagi anak. Veni (one of PURI’s teachers)

My Son’s Language

The birth of our son that we had expected certainly made us happy. Being able to follow his physical growth and his mental development has been something very amazing. Everyday we smile because of his funny and cute behaviours. The older he is, the better his verbal skill is. Banyu Gunung (meaning mountain water) is our son’s name. Now, he is 15 months old. Since he was 2 months old, he had shown the symptoms of being “talkative”. At that age, he already liked to babble. Many people said that he would be able to talk soon because his father and I, his mother, talk a lot. My colleagues in the office also call me “talkative”. That was because I indeed always talked a lot. Since he was 2 months old, Gunung had been used to listening to me reading stories (from story books) while looking at the pictures. He moved his body while listening to the story and babbled around as if he had understood what I was reading to him. Without thinking whether he understood or not, I always talked with him. I was confident that he would be able to catch the words I said if I kept communicating with him. That I often involved him to communicate with me would help to train his brain to record the words he heard. I always explained to him what I was doing. To my surprise, the sounds were recorded in his memory and when he was 9 months old, he could understand simple commands. When I was pregnant, I liked listening to music. Now, Gunung has a problem to go to sleep if there is no music. It turned out that my habit of listening to music is very useful for him. When he was 7 months old, he had been able to listen to kid songs while uttering the last sound of the lines. The longer, the more words he mastered. Now, in his 15 months of age, he could follow and sing 6 kid songs I often sang to him. I notice that he learned language by imitating the utterances of the people around him. His teacher in his play group also said that he imitated his teacher’s utterances quickly. I am positive, it is important for parents to always make their children communicate, by talking or using body expressions. We also need to create conditions in which kids can listen to language and then imitate what they hear. That will facilitate language acquisition for kids. Veni (one of PURI’s teachers)