The Cognitive Magic of “Hi”
ften, one of a child’s first words is or its twin . A parent may feel, proudly, that sheer humanity radiates forth when a child first says, “Hi.” But saying “Hi” is also a significant mental accomplishment, since the word refers to no visible thing.What do children have to know in order to use , and what does their learning path tell us about their qualities of mind? One child I knew had a habit of saying “Hi, table,” “Hi, hat,” and probably many children do this briefly, without our differently from adults? The answer starts to tell us why is complicated. It is a greeting, of course, but then, what is that? Do we greet only people? We say that we “greet the day with coffee,” but we do not say, “Hi, day.” is easily disregarded by adults as a model because it is an idiom, but how would the child know that it is an idiom?
