I find it fascinating but perplexing the way children see things. It's hard for me to even describe what that might be. It's more of a vague notion or like looking at something but having to squint my eyes to see it properly.
I was playing with my 5 year old neice in the garden today and we were playing with her toy gardening tools and I was using the rake and she said I was using it wrong, and I responded 'I don't know everything' and she said 'But you're 20'.
It made me think about how when I was a small child I didn't question the authority of adults and assumed they knew best. It was almost like the adults were a different species to us children, living beside us as we were living in another world of toys coming to life, games, father christmas and tooth fairies.
I remember once I slept in the middle of my parents in their bed as I was afraid of the tooth fairy coming into my room. And on a separate occasion I lost my tooth in the school playground, so I wrote a letter and put it under my pillow, telling the tooth fairy where I had lost it and asking can I still have the cash please. Things that are magical are so easy to believe when little. I remember that believing in something that you can't see is an exciting thing when a child.
I played with dolls and little characters when I was younger, and set up different scenarios for them - I enjoyed doing this as it felt real to me. If I were to do this now I wouldn't get any pleasure from it, but when I was a child each game I made up was like becoming engrossed in a favorite film - you feel you are there and believe it is happening.
It's one of the things that make children so special and fun, the fact that they act naturally and behave in a more natural and free sort of way. The only people who will truly know what the child can see is the child themselves, but it would be nice to feel what it is like once more.
2 comments:
I wish I had been aware of it at the time and taken pleasure in it then.
I remember thinking my parents were invincible, that they knew the answer to everything, and I remember when I first realised they weren't.
Being a child is magical. It's a shame they're often so preoccupied with becoming adults.
It is a shame that they want to become adults - kids often like 'running wild' and doing things adults are always telling them they shouldn't do, so I suppose they just want the freedom even if the adult is just looking out for them.
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