Little kids are just amazing to watch, before they have absorbed the rules of thinking and behavior that we adults impose on them.
My granddaughter is just three, and yet she displays many of the leadership characteristics so admired in the libraries written about what it takes to be a great leader. Her only failing against the list is that she is as yet unable to clearly articulate the stuff swirling in her little head, but the palpable excitement at the world around her more than makes up for this minor shortcoming.
Relentless curiosity.
She is never satisfied with the first answer, and rarely the second, ‘Why’ being her favourite question. To an adult this can be annoying, so we set in place rules to avoid having to answer consecutive ‘why’ questions, and kids learn quickly not to. This is a lesson we should ‘unlearn’ for an engaging environment. Last week, at about the 4th ‘why’ to a question about the operation of a set of traffic lights to be seen out of their kitchen window, her mother responded by saying ‘because I said so’, to which my granddaughter responded, ‘Mummy, that is not an answer’.
No boundaries.
Nothing is off limits, her boundless curiosity takes her all sorts of places both in her mind and physically. Last week walking with her in the local park, she took off to what she later told me was her favorite ‘place,’ which was an ants nest in a garden. Down on her haunches for 10 minutes she watched the comings and goings of a colony of ants, all the while asking questions I found I could not properly answer.
Feedback = Learning.
She is a little ‘info-sponge’. Give her an answer to one of her relentless questions she accepts, and you can almost see it get stored away, for use later on. Walking back from the park, two tradies were struggling to get a heavy bit of gear off the back of their ute. Quick as a flash she told them they needed someone else to help, just like the ants. Then volunteered me. Delegated to by a three year old!
No feedback = Rebellion.
Being ignored is a sin to her. When she asks a question, or seeks attention in some way, ignoring her, or dismissing the effort leads to rebellion, displayed in a very diverse set of responses, from noise, to walking away muttering, to going somewhere she is normally not allowed to go. (best spot is under her Dads desk, amongst the rats nest of cables, where all sorts of mischief can be achieved in a very short time. Mums make-up once got a run, but the container was put out of reach, a problem she is no doubt still working on)
Try another way.
She has a box of Duplo bricks that get assembled, scattered around, and reassembled as something different, a legacy from her father at the same age dug out of our roof storage. While the attention span is still a bit short, she sets out to make something, usually from a picture in a book, then gets cranky because it is hard to see the similarity, but that does not stop her pulling bits off and replacing them with different bits in different places in an effort to replicate the picture. Usually they are unrecognisable to anyone but her, but she will tell you which bit of her construction relates to what in the picture.
Inclusion.
While she does love to be the center of attention, and often is, she is generally also happy to be just included in a conversation. She will happily sit beside Mum or Dad when there are several adults around having a chat, observing the conversation, and occasionally making some sort of contribution, usually one we adults fail to properly comprehend, but which is nevertheless valuable to her.
Memory of an elephant.
Even at her tender age, she is able to recognise a different answer to a similar question, and responds poorly to the inconsistency. In the absence of an explanation of why this time it is different, that meets some standard she seems to have evolved, the inconsistency niggles her. It will come back later at a seemingly random time in the form of another question, that seems to activate another series of ‘Whys’.
At three she is a joy, God help her parents when she is 16! However, by then she will probably have been conditioned by school, peers, the boss in her part time job, and even her parents, just to go along with the flow to make life easier.
I hope not, as that would nullify what I call Grandparents revenge, (the opportunity to engage with grandchildren, but then hand them back to their parents when the going gets tough), and diminish her, and the contribution she has the innate capacity to make to those around her.
