My wife and I are the proud parents of a 17-month old boy who excels in life.  Of course, there’s a little biased bragging going on, and as any parent will tell you, smooth sailing can abruptly and absurdly transform into a full-on Arctic Ocean rescue without prior warning.  However, it is so great see how our son is beginning to use language to communicate with us.  Now, some words are easy to understand, such as “Dada” or “Meme” (his spin on Mommy).  Others, such as “uppooh” is really a long-form use of the word “up”.  And there are scores more, words he’s using that sound like words you and I use every day, but his 17-month old pronunciation make it sound different.  Sometimes, it’s really different.  He makes a clacking sound with his tongue when he want a cracker, because he can’t say cracker yet.  His word for water is the same word for several other things.  And there are simply times he uses sound to indicate what he wants/needs/desires.  When that happens, we take the context into consideration, we look around the room, notice the time of day, look at where he is pointing to, and ask him straightforward questions.  And you know what, it works.   It works because we want it to work, because he wants it to work.  We all want it to work.  It takes our full attention and his full attention to eventually get to a place where that never-to-be-found-in-a-dictionary sound is understood.  And we all are better off when that happens.  Now if we can only do that in our work life…wait, why can’t we do that in our work life.  You know what, we can, if we all want to.