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Still no DSL at home.

So I share with you, with commentary, four Conversations With Our Daughter that I wrote down on lined paper with a pen.

Conversation #1: Erudite.
Alex: (playing with blocks) Look, Papa, I made a forest.
Michael: (to me) Wow, that's some solid representation!
Alex: Yes, so it is.

I don't know why, but "so it is" just totally cracks me up, coming from a three-year-old. It wasn't until after this conversation that I realized how often we say "so it is" - probably because conversation with a toddler involves a great deal of responding to statements of the obvious.

Conversation #2: Imaginative.
Alex: There's a wolf in here.
Us: There is? Where?
Alex: In here. Right there. (gestures to empty space.)
Michael: Is this one of those very, very tiny wolves?
Alex: Yes. (gestures with thumb and index finger about half an inch apart). It's this big. Are you afraid of the wolf?
Me: No.
Alex: You're not afraid of the wolf?
Me: Not such a tiny little wolf, no.
Alex: Are you afraid of big wolves?
Me: I guess so.
Alex: There's a BIG wolf in here.

Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce the long conversation we had about a dragon who initially attacked the house and then wound up marrying Alex. We are pretty much knee-deep in wolves and dragons, 24/7. Have I mentioned before that she's going through a huge fairy tale phase?

Conversation #3: Embarrassing.
Alex: Africa is a special kind of zoo.
Me: No, no. Africa is a huge land. It has cities and lots of people living there, and it also has a lot of animals too.
Alex, scornfully: Noooo, it doesn't have cities and people!
Me: (dies of liberal guilt)

Okay, I didn't really die of liberal guilt, because (a) she's not quite three and (b) no one heard her say this but me. But it was kind of shocking to realize just how easy it is for kids to absorb ethnocentric assumptions about the world, even when it's the last thing that you, as their parent, want to convey. But yeah, when you're a preschooler - especially a white preschooler - probably your only exposure to the word "Africa" comes from the context of African animals.

We talked more about it, and when we got to the zoo (which is where we were headed) I was able to show her the relative positions of Baltimore and Africa on a little world map. Now I have to figure out how much cultural education constitutes overkill. Just in general, she should probably have a laminated world map to consult when we talk or read about other places. But does a three-year-old even understand the concept of a map?

Conversation #4: Sad.
Alex: Is there going to be a new baby in our family?
Me: No.
Alex: Why not?
Me: Remember when I was very sick? That was because we thought there was a baby growing in my tummy, but there wasn't. And it made me sick.
Alex: But you're not sick anymore.
Me: I know, but there still isn't a baby.
Alex: Awwwww.
Me: I know. I wish there was a baby too. It makes me very sad, and sometimes I cry about it.
Alex: It makes me very sad, but I don't cry.

No commentary on this one. It happened out of the blue while I was doing the nursery school drop-off one morning. I guess that, just as we didn't realize we had to explain that moving meant not living in the old house again, we also didn't realize that we had to explain that healing from the miscarriage didn't automatically equal pregnancy. Damn.

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I don't know why, but "so it is" just totally cracks me up, coming from a three-year-old. It wasn't until after this conversation that I realized how often we say "so it is" - probably because conversation with a toddler involves a great deal of responding to statements of the obvious.

Along the same lines, Henry says "Shall we...?" very frequently, which just seems funny coming from a toddler.

But does a three-year-old even understand the concept of a map?

If you start with a map of the house -- which you could draw together - and then a map of your neighborhood, and then a town map, sure.

My response to statements of the obvious is usually "Imagine that!" Which Liam doesn't really quite get.

First: Every time you say "She's almost three," I have to sit back and remember, "Oh, that's right, she's only almost three."

I used to lie around reading the atlas. The concept of maps can be picked up very young, but it helps to have basic training the way you do basic training for literacy by helping her spell her name, having alphabet fridge magnets up, reading aloud, etc.

When you're arranging furniture in the new place, you can draw a map of the room with her by your side, figuring out where things go. Try printing out a google map of a place you go regularly that's only two or three turns away, and follow it (with her) to get there. The book "Me on the Map" is good for the experience of powers of scale.

With our big board-book atlas at nursery school (it wasn't great but it was good, I think it was called "It's a Big Big World") we used to talk about where kids traveled, or their grandparents came from, etc. When Ali moved to Dubai we found Dubai, when Violet came back from her grandparents' place in Florida, we found Florida. When Betsy sent us a postcard from Colorado, we found Colorado. And because it was a board book, I just left it out, and they'd pore over it too. They liked finding places where "toilet paper" came from (paper forestry is represented by big rolls of paper on the map), where kangaroos live (pics of kangaroos on Australia), where sharks are, where trains are, where the airport is, etc.

You can get an inflatable "beach ball" globe for ten bucks online. There are pictures of real life in Africa (malaria and HIV and war in Darfur can wait) online, or in National Geographic from the library booksale.

(Hang on. Have we touched something I'm passionate about?)

(And the thing about the miscarriage? Wow. But she seems pretty wise about her own emotional world.)

It looks like the nice people at Doring Kindersley put out an atlas (http://www.amazon.com/DK-First-Atlas-Reference/dp/0756602319/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205435167&sr=8-1) for little kids - that might make a good purchase.

I kind of like the idea of a laminated world map that we could mark up to show travels, or, you know, stick a little picture on Korea when we read Bee Bim Bop (http://www.amazon.com/Bee-bim-Bop-Linda-Sue-Park/dp/0618265112/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205434877&sr=8-1), or whatever. Hmm.

One of my most-loved pieces of furniture, one of the few semi-heirlooms I've acquired, is the library table I grew up with. Atlases were on top of it and National Geographics (back to white covers) on the shelves, and I'd lie underneath it and read.

Her birthday's coming up. An atlas would be good. ;)

The map's a cool idea, too, maybe one color of sticker for "been there" and another for "read about it."

First: Every time you say "She's almost three," I have to sit back and remember, "Oh, that's right, she's only almost three."

Every time you say this, I'm surprised, because from everything I've heard or seen about the school you taught at, I'd expect Alex to fit in as a fairly typical kid. I mean, I don't think she's average, but I think she's not that unusual for the child of well-educated, upper middle class, progressive parents. No?

Edited 2008-03-13 20:24 (UTC)

I only know her from your posts, but based on kids I've worked with, which comprise mostly (not entirely) kids from families with your background and advantages, she's probably about at age level in some areas (her response to illness seems typical), a bit above in some other levels (her verbal sophistication would be completely typical in a child born a year earlier than she was, her playing with the letters on the fridge, back when you last reported it, would be expected of a kid who's now around 4). The ways in which she argues with you or cajoles I'd expect from a 4. But I most often notice her emotional intelligence. That statement you wrote down about how she feels sad, but doesn't cry doesn't sound flippant, it sounds like she's very aware of what she's feeling, but more than that, she can verbalize it exactly. Her ability to verbalize and even more, to have a conversation about exactly what she's feeling is a skill that I'd call "emotionally adept" in a kindergartner or first-grader -- or beyond.

Of course this doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of kids who are as emotionally adept as she is (it's like saying I was that unusual for reading and being atlas-obsessed at 3, maybe I was, but it's not unheard of, and other kids have been), but it's still not typical. If I had to place her somewhere just from what you've revealed here, and coming from a completely non-scientific position, I'd probably stick her in the 90th+ percentile for some of those areas at at least 75+ for most others.

Even as I'm writing this, I'm thinking, "Well, maybe this is typical, but then, she's not even four yet." But she's not three. She's just barely old enough to start at the school where I taught for so long. And she'd stand out in the crowd there.

She does seem somewhat unusual for her age. There's only one comparable kid I can think of that I've met, and she was almost three several years ago, so I'm not sure I'm remembering right.

Kiera went through a very argumentative phase at about three. She would pitch a fit if I disagreed with a factually incorrect statement, so when I didn't have the energy to deal with that, I would respond to bizarre claims with, "if you say so." She figured out really quickly that this was not the same as "yes, you're right" and started throwing fits over that, too. I was pretty impressed that she had figured out how to identify blatant condescension on my part. (My kids were both a huge pain at three -- it was like the day after their birthday, they changed from delightful and basically easy-going little children into DEMON SPAWN. And stayed that way for several months. So if Alex does this, take heart: it's not anything you did, and it will pass. Two-year-olds get a bad rap; they're mostly sweet and charming, if also impatient and easily frustrated. Three-year-olds will experiment with some truly antisocial behavior just to see what happens. This is why they invented preschool, because they will often behave flawless for OTHER people, it's just their parents they try to drive insane.)

SO, so true. My youngest is three, and I was whining to my mother about her, and she said, "When you were three and your sister was one, I thought I just liked her better. When you were five and she was three, I realized that no, I just don't like three."

I've heard this about three-year-olds before, and I never understood it because I've always loved babysitting three-year-olds or teaching them Sunday School or working with them in a daycare setting. So your last sentence makes me laugh.

Alex is definitely argumentative. Wow is Alex argumentative. My absolute favorite is when she responds to some variation on "Why?" "Because I asked you to" with a cool, "Is there another reason?"

But yeah, it's the development of logic gone wrong. You should hear her disqusitions on why shortbread is kind of a breakfast food, and on how she's too hungry to eat her breakfast eggs because she needs two things, eggs and shortbread, and her hunger is too great to allow her to eat the eggs if they're all alone on the plate. But fruit isn't an adequate addition because "I need something flat and square to eat."

...Okay, maybe you shouldn't hear it. Because you've raised two three-year-olds already. But someone should hear it besides me. ;-)

I want something flat and square to eat! But I don't think Alex means Sicilian style pizza ;)

.... *blink*blink*

I think I needed to read that, thank you. My daughter turned 3 one week ago today, and I have not yet dropped her off a high cliff. But now I feel heartened.

I don't know how far one can take Victorian sentimental poetry as a guide to child development, but I give you Charles Tennyson Turner's Letty's Globe:

When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year,
And her young, artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old empires peep'd
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd, And laugh'd, and prattled in her world-wide bliss;
But when we turn'd her sweet unlearned eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry,
'Oh! yes, I see it, Letty's home is there!'
And, while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.

I had a proper globe as a kid, which I enjoyed, and we came at the issues of maps and scale from the solar-system perspective. I can't promise that I understood there were cities in Africa, though, certainly not at age three.

Being a big city, I bet Baltimore has its share of multicultural festivals and performances and such - I wonder if it might be easier for Alex to grasp the concept of the world if you started seeking out occasional African dance performances, world-music festival, etc. for family outings, preceded with a bit of maop-pointing.

Either that or subscribe to National Geographic. My folks got a life subscription as a wedding gift, and I loved them for the photos long before I knew how to read.

Yeah, that kind of thing shouldn't be any trouble to find at all. Baltimore actually has a great series of weekend cultural heritage festivals all summer, which we've often thought about attending, but it's usually blisteringly hot. We have gone to see African drummers and storytellers at neighborhood events like the Book Festival.

Our neighborhood library takes its role as the main branch for a majority African-American city very seriously. They have an excellent collection of books and resources on African and African-American experiences, from the picture-book collection on up.

We've read several African stories as part of our deep immersion in fairy- and folktales. I haven't explicitly identified them as being "from Africa" or "about people who live in Africa," though. Time do that next. I'm sure they can also supply me with some good age-appropriate picture books about life in modern Africa.

But it was kind of shocking to realize just how easy it is for kids to absorb ethnocentric assumptions about the world, even when it's the last thing that you, as their parent, want to convey. But yeah, when you're a preschooler - especially a white preschooler - probably your only exposure to the word "Africa" comes from the context of African animals.

YUP. And rarely are the names of the countries mentioned - just "Africa", like it is one big country (I actually used to have a tshirt with a map of africa and the words, "Africa is not a country" under it. Looked like ass on me, though). And sometimes African animals are meant to represent the continent. It is pretty horrible.

The impact is pretty great - the number of ADULTS I have met who believe that there are no paved roads below Spain is pretty shocking... or people completely unaware that African countries have universities and technology and skyscrapers and highways. Not everywhere, and not every country - the diversity is pretty astonishing.

I think one way to address it is to have images of how people live in in different countries. There was that book you mentioned awhile back about "how people eat". Aside from the political agenda, I love the idea of photos of normal people in their homes. People living in places like Mali and Rwanda are, in some ways, just like us, and in others, completely different. hard to really get that across without visiting, but we can all try.

my 2 cents

(Gawd, Alex is a clever child...)

I'm looking forward to Alex being old enough for books like Children Just Like Me (http://www.amazon.com/Children-Just-Susan-Elizabeth-Copsey/dp/B00076VE1G/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205435977&sr=1-1) or A Life Like Mine (http://www.amazon.com/Life-Like-Mine-DK-Publishing/dp/0756618037/ref=pd_sim_b_title_2).

We've read some African folktales, but she picked up the word "Africa" from an episode of (here's where I lose my crunchy parenting cred) Little Einsteins where the kids went on a safari. So part of what comes next can just be applying the word to contexts she's already aware of - that drum comes from Africa, this is a story about people who live in Africa. Living in such a majority-black city gives us lots of opportunities for cultural context on this one.

My kids love maps, and at about three, could identify several states and find where they lived, and where grandma lived and where the lemurs in Zaboomafoo come from. ;)

A globe is a really fun thing to have in the house, no matter how young or old the kids in that house may be. I keep ours with Antartica at the top, because years ago we turned it that way when we had a housemate who worked for NOAA whose ship went there, and it struck me as a useful way to keep on challenging my geographical biases. I usually have to turn it back southside up after parties, because people helpfully turn it northside up.

It can be a useful prop when demonstrating revolution and rotation as well, although those are easy to demonstrate if you have enough people. When Amber was about 6, we had her be the sun, while Glenn was the earth and I was the moon as we all walked and rotated and revolved down the sidewalk.

But does a three-year-old even understand the concept of a map?

Depends largely on the three year old, and also on the level of understanding in question. I"m not an expert on early childhood development, but my Mom has a master's in it, and has worked in the field most of my life. At one point, she was teaching Head Start (3-5 year olds) and had a great deal of difficulty trying to explain that cities are in counties are in states are in countries -- she'd try to explain "We live in the United States" and get "Noooo! We live in [TOWN]!". Your three year old, however, can and will vary.

While the *text* is way too old for her, I wonder if photos in _Material World: A Global Family Portrait_ might work for some discussion. (Photo of a not terribly atypical family in X country, with all of the stuff in their house, usually taken outside.)

I know we had maps growing up, but I'm not sure if we ever had a world map handy - just the big ones of the UK and Greece. (which, y'know, explains a lot about my instinctive identifications...)

The boy got an introduction to maps at a very early age. We got him a laminated one that doubles as a placemat when he was about 1, and it was amazing how quickly he recognized country shapes. He has been messing around with Google Earth for about as long, as well as our atlas, and seems to understand the concept of scale, at least at some basic level. And when he sees a Foster beer logo, he says, "That's Australia!"

I had a globe as a child - I have no idea at what age they gave it to me but I know I loved it to little bits. It lighted up, too.
I was lucky enough that my father got shipped to Nigeria when I was little to help set up a tannery there. He came back full of stories, photographs and little black figurines in a very light wood that seemed dead exotic to me.
(When you get ADSL back, you can show her African cities on Google Earth!)

Z had a kid atlas, and we had a globe, but it wasn't until he had been to places and we talked about that that he actually got it. Before that they were just pictures. But "Cardiff is here and Lancaster is here, and that's a lot on this map but a tiny bit on this other map and hardly visible on the globe, and here is Greece where I used to live and here is Canada where our friends live" went in, sometime around three or four. Alex has already been further from Baltimore than Z had from Lancaster -- Lancaster-Cardiff is about a five hour drive -- so she'll have a better idea of scale.

You can absolutely turn her into an Africaphile. Talk about it, show her pictures of it, talk to your husband about it when she is in the room, watch movies about it, put in her situations where African people are, and keep doing these things for years.

I wouldn't start this process with a map. That only emphasizes distance.

K.

It's not so much that I want her to be an Africaphile in particular (although

bosssio may have that goal for her kids). It's just the realization that unless we specifically do something about it, the culture she lives in is going to encourage her to develop limited, stereotype-based assumptions about other places and people. And that she's not too young for that to start happening.

Linnea drew "maps" the year she was two, so I would expect Alex to grasp the concept and start mapping your neighbourhood to scale pretty quickly. I get the idea that scale would appeal to her.

I really, really want a light-up magnetic suspended globe, someday.

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When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year...

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