Draclea vs. Frakenstein

Let me start off by answering a couple questions that the title "Draclea vs. Frakenstein" might understandably raise. First off, no, the title is not misspelled or a typo (even if I'm seeing the little red lines under the words as I type them, indicating that I need to fix them!). And, no, this is not a post about the 1971 movie "Dracula vs. Frankenstein". And, to be honest, this post actually isn't even about either Dracula OR Frankenstein at all! I'm sorry for any confusion and I apologize if anyone feels misled or is concerned that this entire post might be some sort of clickbait. So, let's get to what this post really IS about, shall we? Hopefully all will become clear very soon...

Today is The Little Monster's birthday. As some long-time readers may recall, the biggest impetus for the launch of this blog was to share my experiences raising our two daughters as a stay-at-home dad. In June of 2010 (when Monster Dad went online) The Little Monster was actually little. She was only five years old at the time, with a lot of growing and life experiences ahead of her. We've had a lot of adventures since then and she has already done a lot of growing. She has had quite a few birthdays since then too. What makes this particular one special enough to write about? Well, it's actually a pretty major one, and one that I'm finding a bit scary to think about and even kind of hard to fathom. Today The Little Monster turns THIRTEEN! Today she is a TEENAGER! Where has the time gone? How has this happened? And, what the heck does all this have to do with "Draclea" and "Frakenstein"?

Well, I've chosen to celebrate The Little Monster turning into a not-so-little teenager by remembering something she used to do when she still WAS little. Since a big part of being home with her for me was to share some of my childhood interests in movies, music and TV shows with her, it's probably not too surprising that she would gain a certain knowledge or awareness of both Dracula and Frankenstein. Most of that knowledge came from the movies "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (which featured Dracula and the Werewolf in addition to Frankenstein) and "Young Frankenstein". We used to watch films like those pretty regularly back in the early days.

But, as happens to many kids, my Little Monster had a tough time pronouncing some words when she was young until she figured out what they were supposed to sound like. One of her little quirks was that for some reason she had a tough time with certain words that featured a "U" in them. And another thing she would sometimes do (also not particularly uncommon for young kids) was to randomly drop a letter or two from some words.

I noticed both of these traits pretty quickly after she started talking. When a word had a "U" in it she would skip the "U" and then change the sound of the word after where the "U" should have been. I think she must have just thought she had heard some of these words a certain way and stuck with that as her pronunciation. After all, she wasn't spelling or reading yet, so it's not like she'd say "Wait, this isn't how the word is pronounced, it's spelled completely differently!" Everything was pretty much based on sound at that point. The most obvious example of this quirk was when she'd mention "Dracula". Instead of saying it the familiar way, and how it's spelled, she'd pronounce it as... "Draclea" (Drak-Lee-Uh). And this wasn't the only word with a "U" that this happened to. She also pronounced Regular as "Reglea" (Reg-Lee-Uh), and Ambulance as "Ambleance" (Amb-Lee-Ance). Those are the only examples that I can think of, but you can probably get the point.

The dropping of letters when pronouncing words also seems like a common thing for young kids just learning to speak. I can imagine that the word Frankenstein would most likely be pretty intimidating for one of those new-talkers. It's a rather long word that has many letters and three syllables. And if you saw that word spelled out on a TV or movie screen it would probably look kind of scary (even from just a pronunciation standpoint), especially when you don't even know how to read yet! The Little Monster would drop the "N" and pronounce the word as... "Frakenstein" (Fray-ken-stine). I don't have too many examples of other words that she would do this to, but the one that I can think of is very similar. I used to always read books to her at bedtime (a ritual that I really miss, though at the moment I'm still doing it with the Tiny Creature--at least until she decides she's too old and grown-up to be read to). Some of the books we used to read included the series that featured Franklin the turtle. You can probably guess where this is going. Yes, The Little Monster pronounced Franklin's name as "Frakin" (Fray-Kin). She went ahead and dropped both the "N" AND the "L" for that one.

Here's our copy of the book Franklin's Halloween:

In which Franklin goes to the Halloween party as "Franklinstein"

Time passed and The Little Monster continued to grow, learn and experience life. She eventually found herself in Preschool and then Kindergarten. By that point she was starting to really learn her letters and words, as well as how to read. I was constantly surprised that as she aged she continued to use her "Dracleas" and "Frakensteins" in conversation. When I first heard them there was an impulse to correct her. But it just sounded so cute that I didn't want to "ruin it" by making her grow up too fast. However, after a while I did start to get a bit concerned that she wasn't figuring out the correct way to pronounce certain words. It didn't seem like too big of a deal (like a learning disability or something like that), but I was kind of wondering why she hadn't grown out of it. And I was getting worried that maybe I should have stepped in earlier to correct her. But in the end it STILL sounded kind of cute to hear her talk about how something was "Reglea" and that an "Ambleance" was coming down the road.

She did continue to grow though, of course. As her age was reaching double-digits and she was learning all kinds of new things at school something happened that I managed to miss in the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life. Somewhere along the line she did indeed correct herself and started pronouncing the words correctly. I have no idea exactly when it happened or how it happened. Did she realize her mistake and correct it on her own when she was able to read? Did a teacher or friend at school correct her? Did she simply "grow out of it"? Whatever happened, the days of "Draclea" and "Frakenstein" were suddenly over and she was just that much less of a Little Monster. I'll always be her Dad of course, but I do find it kind of sad to think that at this point she's closer to things like college and getting married than she is to the days when we'd hang out and watch stuff like "Draclea" and "Frakenstein" movies together.

HAPPY 13th BIRTHDAY LITTLE MONSTER!!!

...even if you're not so little anymore!