As a writer, language and the way we – human beings – use it to communicate and form connections with each other, has fascinated me for a long time.
On the flipside, as someone who doesn’t have children and doesn’t have a great deal of experience around them, I don’t have a huge amount of understanding about how they learn language. However, I wanted to share a story about my niece that has taught me more than I expected.
My niece is six years old. I don’t see her very often because they live quite far away.
However, I’ve called her “Trouble” for as long as I can remember; in a “Hey Trouble!” (replacing her actual name), kinda way. And one of my fondest moments was roughly two years ago, when she finally gained enough understanding to tell me – very seriously – “I’m not Trouble.”
It made me laugh, of course, but it also struck me as significant. That tiny protest held layers: a growing sense of identity, the early roots of autonomy, and her beginning to understand nuance – not just the words we say, but the intention behind them. It was one of those moments that make you sit back and marvel at how much children absorb from the world around them.
Needless to say, I think that happy memory might have just been usurped.
This past weekend, I saw her again. It had been a while since we were in the same place, and I hadn’t called her “Trouble” in some time. But out of nowhere, she looked at me with a knowing grin and said, “Hey Trouble.”
I was completely floored.
She wasn’t just repeating a phrase she’d heard. She was connecting. She was recalling a shared moment, an inside joke, and flipping it around; playfully, affectionately, confidently. It wasn’t mimicry. It was relationship.
And it made me reflect on what we’ve built, despite the distance and time apart. A nickname, one silly little word, has become a thread. A symbol of our bond. And in using it back at me, she wasn’t just speaking. She was telling me, in her own way, “I see you. I remember. This is ours.”
As someone who’s always been curious about how language shapes connection, this felt like one of the purest examples I’ve seen. Children might not articulate things the way adults do, but they’re constantly learning how language feels, and how it makes others feel, too.
“Trouble,” she called me.
And in that moment, I’ve never been prouder to be called it.
If nothing else, my interactions with my niece prove – more than anything – that words hold so much more power than I think a lot of us truly appreciate.