Amazed at the osmosis of children

[Draft Dodger]

isn't it amazing how kids seem to soak up information and knowledge? Graham (3 in March) just keeps coming up with stuff that my wife and I just look at each other and say "where'd he learn that". Not a bragging thread, just an amazement at how the human brain works...

on Christmas, for example, someone gave him a whistle. He took the whistle, put it in his mouth and blew...and then immediately yelled "ok, kick the ball". It took us all a minute to figure out what he was doing - he was acting like a football referee blowing his whistle before a kick. Now, my wife and I watch some football, but we aren't freaks about it, and usually he's just playing with stuff while it's on anyways. Never have we made any mention of the whistle before the play / kickoff...but, he somehow picked up on that nuance.

a couple days ago, we were putting together an alphabet puzzle. We really haven't done anything with his ABC's yet, instead focusing on his numbers (he's been counting for a while...and now we're teaching him to recognize and write numbers - although basically, his repetoire for that is just "1"). Anyway, we put this alphabet puzzle together, and then he proceeds to do the ABC song - fairly accurately too (including the "now I know my ABCs part"). My wife and I have NO recollection of teaching him that song. I'm guessing he picked it up on TV (he doesn't do daycare), but it sure surprised the heck out of me.

the other odd thing I noticed that he would have an uncanny knack at picking out which songs on the radio / TV were Christmas-themed. Sometimes it was obvious what was tipping him off (sleigh bells in the song, for example), but there were other songs that I'm sure he hadn't heard before that he would know were Christmas songs without any real definitive clues.

the point is not, of course, that my kid is a prodigy, but just the incredible way that they pick up subtle nuances of life without being taught them. it just fascinates me, and I thought I'd ramble about it.

[Cringer]

no no, you kid is much better then mine. where do I return her and get a newer model like yours? :D

kidding, and I understand what you are talking about. my daughter is 5 and it's the same thing with my wife and I. We always wonder where she got this word from or how she knew "this" did "that" and stuff like that. i agree, it is pretty amazng sometimes.....

[Bubba Wheels]

Not a child psycologist or anything, but I think one advantage kids that young have is that they haven't yet been structured on how to think. In other words, they just take something and run with it by instinct, stream of conciousness kind of thing where later through 'structure' they are taught where and when to put it all into categories.

I told this story before, my kid was 7 yrs old and I was teaching him about history. He had heard of Vietnam and wanted to know how it fit in with everything else we did. All I could tell him was that the cost was getting too high so we left. Then he asks me 'what about the South Vietnamese?" I tell him, well, we promised to come back it the North invaded after we left. "Did we?" No, we didn't want to get involved again. "So we played a dirty trick on them?" Maybe this all sounds pretty stupid, but coming from the mouth of a 7yr old, my jaw just dropped.

[oliegirl]

I love listening to my son talk, sometimes he comes up with the most amazing things to say! It always shocks me how they have the ability to not only comprehend something pretty advanced for their age, but to break it down and make it seem so simple.

[Franklinnoble]

My 14 month old son has the uncanny ability to operate any TV set in the world.

Seriously. He can turn on any TV set and start channel surfing until he finds something he likes.

I'm not making this up.

He's only been alive for a year and two months. He still drinks from a bottle and craps his own pants, but he knows more about what's on my DirecTV than I do.

That, and he knows how to turn the lights on or off in any room in the house. He's too short to reach, but that doesn't deter him. He has a laundry basket that we keep his toys in. He dumps it out, flips it upside down, and pushes or drags it to the desired switch, steps up onto it, and, voila.

[Draft Dodger]

Graham will go to my wife's computer, turn it on, climb into her chair, grab a mouse, click on the shortcut to Noggin.com, maximize the window, pick a game, play until he gets bored, then climb down, and turn the computer off.

he's got a head start on me - I didn't use my first computer until my early teens...

[sovereignstar]

Graham will go to my wife's computer, turn it on, climb into her chair, grab a mouse, click on the shortcut to Noggin.com, maximize the window, pick a game, play until he gets bored, then climb down, and turn the computer off.

he's got a head start on me - I didn't use my first computer until my early teens...

So basically he's at the level of my dad.. except that your son can maximize a window.

[duckman]

My son was amazing me the last couple of days. I haven't seen him in two months, and he was doing things that he wasn't doing very well the last time I've seen him. He was having problems focusing in class and my ex-wife thought he might have a learning disablility. He was struggling with reading and was becoming very frustrated. When he came to visit, he was reading stories like Green Eggs and Ham and How the Grinch Stole Christmas as if he was a natural. It was like a switch was turned on in him. Now, he's one of the best students in his class and has been completing his homework before school ends. I couldn't be a prouder father.

[Chief Rum]

My kid learned how to mow the lawn, take out the trash and do the dishes. It was a very relaxing weekend.

Wait a sec...I don't have a kid. Oh crap, I have a lot of stuff to do! Stupid thread... ;)

CR

[Draft Dodger]

My kid learned how to mow the lawn, take out the trash and do the dishes. It was a very relaxing weekend.


it's insulting to think that you'd manipulate a kid like that to do your work








can't you just get a wife for that like the rest of us?

[cuervo72]

Franklin, can he order PPV "movies" yet?

----

My 2 1/2 year old daughter has begun singing twinkle twinkle little star recently...must have picked it up somewhere, because we didn't teach it to her. Also, she has a Dora book that I think we had read to her maybe twice, before she started trying to "read" it to herself. Did pretty well too - she knew that it started with "Hola, I'm Dora". There is also a part where Boots gets stuck in what the book called "icky-sticky sand". When she was reading to herself, she called it "icky-sticky mud". I read it to her a little later, and when I read "icky-sticky sand", she told me "I said icky-sticky mud" - she realized that she had made a mistake earlier (and was almost apologetic about it).

[cuervo72]

Dola - my son was very good with the computer early on as well - probably the age my daughter is now he was working the mouse, playing pre-schooler games (Caillou, Arthur, stuff like that). My daughter isn't as into the computer nearly as much as he was.

[Franklinnoble]

That reminds me of a little episode from my childhood. One that makes more sense now that I have kids of my own.

My son loves to push things around. His favorite toys are those that he can push around and make noise with. One is one of those classic "poppers" that has a dome full of plastic balls on wheels that he drives all over the floor making like a psycopathic corn popper. Another is a pseudo-vaccum cleaner. He loves these things. I think boys are hard-wired for this stuff. But I digress...

When I was a kid, I was probably the same way, but I can remember watching my dad mow the grass and thinking, "Gee, that looks like fun." I mean, for years, I would bug him about it... I desperately wanted to mow the lawn. And for years, I was denied. I was simply too short and too young to be pushing around a gas-powered lawn mower - I might have chopped myself to bits.

Finally, when I was about ten years old, it was decided. I was old enough to mow the lawn. At last! The day had come! I could push the mower around, and smell the fresh-cut grass first hand! I, yes, I, would be the one to cut handsome swaths through the yard, churning out a clean, crisp grid of lawnmower tracks into the sod. Me!

The anticipation was overwhelming as I fidgeted through my father's safety instructions. Why did I need this? I'd watched him do it hundreds of times... I knew how that old Lawn Boy ran better than anybody. No, I didn't want him to start it! I wanted to tug the cord and kick the engine to life...

And so it began. I was turned loose on the unsuspecting blades of grass in our front lawn, and I mowed like the wind. I mowed like a fish that had been denied the water for too long. I mowed like a lover that had finally returned home to his beloved.

I mowed for the rest of the time I lived at home. Never again did my dad mow the lawn. My only relief came when my brothers were old enough to mow... but that was much later, as somehow, their enthusiasm was much less than my own had been...

[Solecismic]

Mine can defeat any child proofing known to mankind. He pushes down gates, unhooks wall anchors to move furniture, removes the tops of medicine bottles, moves chairs around to use as footstools to reach higher places, throws balls at anything else he can't reach to knock it down. He'll be 2 in March, and he's one of the most destructive forces in the entire universe. He's also above the 99th percentile in height for his age, which is surprising given he won't eat anything.

[Qwikshot]

My daughter was talking to me, asking why I wasn't with "mommy" anymore even though we were married.

And I said to her, "Honey, Mommy and I weren't married."

She looked at me and then said, "then why did you have a kid?"

Z is off the charts in height for a 4 year old, I'm hoping that with the basketball hoop my brother got her, she can learn the hook shot and set herself up for a scholarship.

[Anthony]

he's one of the most destructive forces in the entire universe.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. :D