The older of my two children (for the sake of privacy, I’ll adopt common internet convention and call him DS) just turned three. Some time between the ages of 30 and 36 months, according to Dr. DeLoache, is when human beings get the ability to symbolically reason. If you can’t be bothered to click the link, I’ll give you a short description of what this means:
Let’s say you have a dollhouse, and in the dollhouse is a room that is a scale replica of a real room. Now let’s say that you hide a toy in the dollhouse room in front of a child, and you tell that child that the toy is hidden in the same place in the real room. A two-and-a-half year old won’t know what you mean, and won’t go look for the toy in the real room. A three year old will go get the toy in the real room, based on where you hid the toy in the dollhouse version.
Right now, it’s pretty clear to me that DS’s ability to symbolically reason has exploded, and this ability is currently a mixed (even if fascinating) bag. On the one hand, it is fun to see that DS is currently completely obsessed with maps, and likes to draw ‘maps’ for Mommy. On the other hand, it means that DS can take things he sees in one context and apply them to another context–and worry about them. Alot. Unnecessarily.
Last week, some construction vehicle tore down an old building across the street from DS’s school. DS’s teacher told me about it when I picked DS up and it sounded impressive. Apparently the vehicle (DS is calling it a digger, but DS calls any construction vehicle ‘digger’.) completely tore down the building in two passes.
Later that night, during dinner, DS regales us with the story of the amazing digger. Then, to his parents’ complete consternation, DS bursts into tears. ‘We don’t want the diggers to come to our house,’ DS says. ‘Our beds are in our house.’ It is clear that DS is very worried about this.
‘Don’t worry,’ we assure DS, ‘the diggers aren’t coming to our house.’
DS, who is obviously the child of scientists/engineers, doesn’t trust assurances based on authority. He wants proof, or at least convincing evidence. He is not consoled. The gist of his concern is that the diggers knocked down one building, and our house is a building. What makes our house so different that the diggers won’t come? (Tangentially, I’ve had a similar discussion with DS recently about dragons, dinosaurs, and the ability to breathe fire.)
We put forward that the building across from DS’s school was old, and that the people who owned that building wanted a new building. Those people asked the diggers to come. In contrast, we like our house and we don’t want a new one. We won’t ask the diggers to come.
DS is better consoled by this line of argument, but does make us repeat it a few times. And over the last week, we’ve had to repeat the argument a few more times. Daily.
The good news is that I’m not having to wake up in the middle of the night anymore to comfort DS after digger-infested nightmares.
No, the privilege of my late-night cuddles are now thanks to the video I let him watch a few days ago. The video in which the main character lost his baby teeth. But that’s a different story.