Grandma's Ice Cream Parlor

Children learn what they are exposed to. Good, or bad, simple, or complex, like sponges they cannot pick up what is not there, but they are bound to pick up anything that is.

I spent less than three hours with Lennon today and a good part of that time was on a walk that ended up eating ice cream in my back yard, which kind of upset him. He doesn't like being tricked, evidently. As we sat on the backyard swing, eating our ice cream sandwiches he explained this to me. They are the same brand as the ones we buy at the gas station after our long walks, but he still prefers those others. I kind of know the feeling. It is anti-climatic to think you're walking to see a new place called Grandma's Ice Cream Parlor only to discover you are back home and it is Grandma's kitchen.

Before we went for our walk, he was moving very slowly, very very slowly then he suddenly spun out and began leaping across the room, shouting, "Watch me! I am getting farther and farther from the earth's center, watch me, the gravity isn't as strong, now I can float. I'm in space! He has no trouble with concepts at all. I said something about the recliner and he thought I said incliner. He told me, "My slide is not a incliner, it is an incline, an incline plane."

When people talk about three year olds they act like they are babies who don't understand what they are seeing and doing. Lennon is already a very whole little person who understands so many things it is kind of scary. He knows what is right and wrong, good and bad. He has an almost instinctual knack for knowing if something is not quite what it should be and he will question you in such a way that it becomes very clear. He plays with words, not just rhyming and naming, but more intricate things. He likes to distinguish between same and similar, love and like and he will play games with you because he knows people prefer to be loved more than liked in his world.

He is already fully aware of the power he holds and, in some cases, actually very responsible in his own way. Imagine, then, what a twelve year old, or fourteen year old, is already dealing with in today's world. Imagine the responsibility really thinking about all this puts on the people who surround a child.