Our children know they are not supposed to point. They also know they are not supposed to speak with their mouths full. So the problem becomes, how can they draw attention to something without doing either? You may think they could wait until they swallow. This takes entirely too long.
Instead they find a work around. Pointing means your fingers. They’ve never seen anyone “point” with an elbow, so perhaps it’s not called pointing. Within two minutes they are both “shouting” at each other with their elbows and getting quite animated.
We both have our heads down not believing what they came up with. I take a deep breath and enlighten them on the fact that pointing means to DIRECT SOMETHING, ANYTHING in a direction. They stared at me in disbelief and turned to their father for support. Good thing none came their way. We were fighting back the giggles and finally got them to catch on and accept that elbows, forks, knives, spoons, pieces of bread, French fries and carrots all count as pointing.