Today I learned a big lesson from a three year old. When he was busy fishing the grass grub beetles from the water in the bucket (read previous post), I asked him what he thought the beetles were called, as I, myself, had no idea (I am learning as much as the children are). He gave me a name with this typical three year old pronunciation, and it sounded rather foreign to me, but something like “Christmas beetle”. I thought it was something he made up, as Christmas is looming, and I suggested looking it up in one of our books. He was rather adamant that it was a “Christmas beetle”, but I dismissed it and we identified the beetle as a grass grub beetle. How surprised I was when today I showed his mum one of the beetles and she called it “Christmas beetle”. In New Zealand the grass grub beetle is known as “Christmas beetle” as that is the time of the year the beetles come out and are abundant. How right our three year old was, how wrong I was in not listening to him. There are several lessons to be learned from this. It made me think, but I am very excited about the knowledge of this three year old and how much I can learn from our youngsters, no matter how old they are. Children often know more then you think they know. We are all learning from each other, we are all on this journey. The connections we are making, sharing nature with each other, are a wonder in itself.
You're so right, we really need to keep listening to our children, the way they look at things is unique. Your whole perpective on everyday things changes dramatically when you take the time to listen and participate in a childs world.
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