My son is two and a half years old.
Few months back, my wife was showing him a children’s alphabet book. She said “I for Igloo” and my son repeated “Igloo”. Then they went to bed.
Fast forward couple of months. We went to San Francisco. My wife took him to the flight’s toilet to change his diapers. And he said “Mommy…this looks like Igloo”. My wife was thrilled and surprised. She came and told me about this.
I was surprised too – for many reasons. First, his memory is his strong asset. He is able to recall words and objects that we uttered long back. Second, his contextual retrieval of words. He does not use random words. We can see the expression of thinking in his face before retrieving apt words. Third, his imagination and finding similarity amongst dissimilar objects. I was wondering on how he made the connection between an Igloo and a Flight Toilet. He had seen a two dimensional representation of an Igloo. Probably he had used his imagination to fill in the third dimension and mentally traveled through it.
I am sure many of you would have had similar experiences with your kids. Also, when we were children we would have been imaginative too. And I am sure, our parents have many amusing stories on our creativity. But here comes the sad part – down the lane, we stopped making appropriate neuron connections and became normal folks. I don’t know who or what to blame – Ourselves? Our parents? Schools? Teachers? Education system?
Whatever it is, we should not let that happen to our kids. Even if we can not find ways to boost their imagination and creativity, at the minimum we should not make it go away.
I’ll try my best !!!
