Pathways and Triggers 33they need something, they point, grunt, cry, or babble.
Then we get to try to figure out what they’re trying to
“say.” I’m hungry? My diaper’s wet? Can you play with
me? I’m tired? But there are many older children (and
adults) whose skills at telling people what’s the matter or
what they need are not significantly greater than the av-
erage eighteen-month-old. That’s frustrating!
Finally, language is the mechanism by which most
people solve problems. That’s because a lot (if not most)
of the thinking we do in solving problems is in the form
of language. And also because most of the solutions we
have stored in our brains (from problems we’ve solved or
seen solved previously) are in the form of language as
well. (We humans aren’t quite as creative as we think we
are in the problem-solving department: We rely almost
exclusively on past experience to help us solve problems
in the present.) For example, if you find you have a flat
tire, you don’t have to do a whole lot of original thinking
to solve the problem. You just have to think about how
you (or those you’ve observed) have solved that problem
previously. There aren’t that many possibilities. You
could fix the tire yourself, call your significant other, ask
someone for help, call a service station, swear, cry, or
leave the car for junk (some of those solutions would be
more effective at solving the problem than others). The
process of accessing previous solutions tends to be auto-
matic and efficient for many children. But children