¡Santo!

For his age, Leon masters an impressive multilingual lexicon of terms and expressions. There are two things however, Leon just will not say. The word “please” is in none of his books. He falls silent in Spanish, Dutch or English when we suggest him to use the word. More curious even is his refusal to refer to himself with his own name. He reacts when we say “Leon”, but when we do the pointing and naming game at the table, where everybody points to someone else and asks for their name, he can accurately name everybody, but he refuses to use the name Leon for himself. The only way he refers to himself is either “bebe” (the baby) or “niño” (the little one). Tonight, at the dinner table, we played the game and much to our surprise he referred to himself with a whole new name. It was not Leon (or Leense for that matter) but Santo. Leon proudly pounded his chest saying “Santo!”. He is half Mexican after all.