Moulding Developing Minds

My two year old is figuring out the world. He has an excellent vocabulary, though he is sometimes hard to understand. And he now has graduated to having his own thoughts, independent of the conversation at hand.

Driving home last night, with AC/DC playing in the van (a whole other story), he asks me, "Do elephants swim?" It sounded more like "epants wim?" It was out of the blue and extra points should be awarded to the translation expert who manages to deciper a question - in toddler language - that has nothing to do with the current conversation. In his defence, we were coming home from his swimming lessons.

I looked around frantically for that source of all information useless and settled knowlingly on my signigicant other. Yes, he assured me elephants can swim. I pass that information along to a satisfied response. But we were not done there.

"Epants fly?" he asks. No, I explained. Epants ... er ... Elephants do not fly. He has developed this thing when he gets excited: he stutters his "w's"; nothing else. But w-w-w-w-why and w-w-w-w-what are hilarious. I knew it was coming. I was prepared. I braced for it. W-w-w-w-why mommy? So, I intelligently explained the elephants were too heavy to fly.

Only to be quickly shot down by the know-it-all seven year old. Mom, he yells (to be heard over the blaring thrash music) planes are heavier than elephants. All three children look and me and there is the preverbial silence in the van. What will mom say? Rather than talking about the relative distribution of weight over mass and um, THE WINGS, I mention the super powerful engines that planes are equipped with.

Effectively shot down, the seven year old yells to his brother - let's play the opposites game. Elephants don't swim. Elephants fly. Poor, poor youngest brother. At two you have no idea what an opposites are. The poor thing looked at me confused and continued to thrash to the racket - er, music.