Friday, November 7, 2008

The rooms of a child's mind

Jared describes the way a child learns as thus: "It's like your mind is full of rooms. Each room holds information about different things. Every time you learn something new, it's like a little person goes around your mind trying to find a room to put it in. Sometimes there isn't a room that it will fit in, so you have to open a new door and put it in a new room."

The other day I was giving Krystal a bath and when I told her it was time to get out, she responded that she wasn't done playing "Water Wally." I had never heard of this game before and asked her about it, except that this time when she said "Water Wally" it sounded more like "Walter Raleigh." Being that we had recently studied Sir Walter Raleigh and the Roanoke colony, I thought she must surely mean Walter Raleigh. However when I said, "Do you mean Walter Raleigh?" she said, "No, Water Wally!" So I was left a little confused, but quickly forgot said incident. Until tonight.

Krystal's friend Janet came over to play. Janet took off new shoes at the door, getting ready to go play and all of a sudden up came the name "Water Wally" again. Clarissa says to me, "Mom, remember that guy we were learning about? These are his eyes (pointing to Janet's shoes). To my amazement, she was pointing to the eyes of WALL-E, the character from the movie (The movie my kids have not yet seen).

So, the detective in me says that upon hearing the name Walter Raleigh, that little person who lives in the mind of my children went searching for a room to put him in and finding that there was no room for Walter Raleigh, the person put Walter in the Water room (to be played with during bath time) and Raleigh in the WALL-E room (to be watched when Mom finally decides to get it from Netflix) and somehow came up with a new character of the mind: Water WALL-E.

It's moments like these that make me laugh and remember why I love being a mom.

1 comment:

Jo said...

It's good to know we have a hard time organizing those rooms, even as kids.