A spark of meaning?

How do teachers notice and recognize meaning-making with very young children who do not share the same language? Metaphoricity (that is, metaphor use), as a shared symbolic experience, offers teachers a potential means of attunement by looking for 'sparks' of meaning through an appreciation of the range of language forms at the infant's disposal. Engagement with the potential of toddler metaphors provides a means of appreciating their ability to both support and thwart shared meaning through strategically oriented dialogic acts and shifts the emphasis from a listening dialogue to one that embraces 'seeing'.