As chaotic as kids are, it can be equally funny (or disconcerting) when you realize that many do not exactly understand the implications of their actions. For example, younger children do not really understand the concept of betrayal, and by extension, loyalty, although the situations where one would ask a four-year-old for loyalty are few and far between.
This also applies to imagination, as younger children can struggle to understand that something is imaginary or hypothetical. They can, however, easily attribute emotions and values to fully inanimate objects. So a plate that falls and smashes, causing a loud, scary noise can be called “bad” by a child that didn’t enjoy the experience.
As they grow older, they start to realize that there are things a little bit further beyond their own understanding and perspective. Before it, they truly think they can get away with anything just by saying it wasn’t them. Logically, if they say it, other people can not have any other information, hence, they have gotten away from it. Most kids grow out of this period, called the preoperational stage, by the age of seven.
While partially, this is a result of a brain developing and the actually high cognitive load needed to imagine things, it also has an interesting side effect, as it helps children develop a very stretched and primitive logic. Kids think that if they tell themselves something enough times, it can become true. By extension, they believe, this also works on adults. Does this work? No. But it's a good foundation for developing other complex ideas.
Positive reinforcement, many teachers and adults know, is a good tool as well, but it can, at times, happen accidentally. Take a birthday party for example, which most kids tend to enjoy at some level. They might start to mix the positive emotions with the event and as a result, actually believe that one grows older only after a party. At the very least, kids will attach a very ritualistic significance to birthday parties.
Once the imagination starts to grow, with it comes a deep, almost ceaseless curiosity. Many parents will recognize the experience of an ocean of questions, about why a year is 365 days, what is birth and inevitably, why do we die. And that’s just birthdays, after all. This curiosity is good but often exhausting, but it serves as a comical way for parents to assess just how much or how little about the real world they know.
At the end of the day, a child's imagination should be encouraged and developed, as at some point they will start to seek out answers themselves, a vital step on the road to adulthood. At the same time, a child's imagination can often exceed an adult's, but this is a double-edged foam sword. On the one hand, childlike joy, on the other, they will create the sorts of messes professionals will gawk at in wonder. If you want to see our other collections of parenting tweets, click here and here.
