Recently, Bill of DubiousQuality fame(?) posted the following tale of Eli 4.10 (his 4 yr 10 month old son):
His favorite book right now is Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets. The first time I read it to him, he laughed so hard that he almost fell off the bed.
So you think that he’s just a goofy little kid, which he is, but then something happens that you just can’t believe. Gloria was reading him The Skull Alphabet Book, which is an A-Z book where there’s the skull of a mammal for each letter of the alphabet, and you have to identify the animal from the picture and the description.
Here’s the description for “I”:
I is for…This fast and graceful African animal has eye sockets on eacah side of its skull. It has monocular vision. Each eye sees something different.The first time Gloria read that page and saw the skull, she said “I think that’s an Ibex.”
Eli said “Mommy! That’s not an Ibex–the horns are pointing in the wrong direction. That’s an Impala!”
He was right.
Sometimes, I find similar situations with my children. My 3.25 and 6.75 year old children surprise me with what they know. For example, after my mother-in-law dropped me and my wife off at the airport for our vacation 1.5 weeks ago, she thought she got lost leaving the airport because of the changes to the roadways since the last time she drove there (about 15 years ago). She said both of my kids told her she was on the right road and to just keep going. About 2 minutes later, she came out somewhere so she knew where was and found out the kids were right.  Given their lack of drivers’ licenses, she was a bit surprised they knew better than she what the right way was.
[tags]Dubious Quality, Kids, Wisdom in youth[/tags]