Distressed

3 Years: “Mama, I’m distressed. (I bet you’ve never heard a three-year-old use the word ‘distressed’ before.)”

One of the curses of having a gifted child is that they have a tendency to know it, and pretty early on. That’s not always a bad thing. Unusual kids need to be prepared to live in a world that thinks and functions differently than they do. They need confidence and self-esteem. They need to know what is and isn’t typical about themselves. And they need to learn to adapt accordingly.

The downside, of course, is an arrogant streak, especially when they’re toddlers or preschoolers and haven’t learned the ropes of discretion or humility yet. If a child has learned that she can make any adult putty, simply by saying an unusual word in the right context, she’ll do it, and she’ll do it well.

My daughter was correct that I had never heard a three-year-old say “distressed” before. I had also never heard a three-year-old gloat about her vocabulary. I guess there’s a first time for everything.

Yellow Butt

3 Years: “Mama, why is your butt yellow if the rest of you is brown?”

We don’t make a big deal about nudity in my family. Although I’m not the kind of person to parade around the house naked, I’m also not the sort of person who clutches her clothes and screams if my child walks in the room while I’m changing. I firmly believe that our children’s feelings about beauty, about nature, and about confidence are influenced by the way they learn about human bodies early in life, so I don’t treat the human body as something shameful or embarrassing—just as something that isn’t generally shown in public.

That’s why, when my three-year-old toddled into the bathroom as I was getting out of the shower, I didn’t say much, just grabbed a towel and continued talking. But, since she was a kid, she had some things to say.

“Why are you so skinny?”

“Because everyone’s body is shaped differently, and mine is skinny.”

“Why do ladies have breasts?”

“To feed babies, just like you were fed when you were a baby.”

“Why don’t mans have breasts?”

“Because you usually have to be pregnant to make breast milk, and men can’t be pregnant.”

Most of these were good questions that had good answers, until she decided to point out that she had seen my tan lines. It was mid-summer and I’d been spending a lot of time at the pool, so most of my body was the color of cocoa, while the part of my body covered by a bikini bottom was my normal olive hue. It was a curiosity to my daughter, so she just had to know how such a thing could happen.

I did the only thing I knew how to do and explained what a tan is and why a butt doesn’t usually get tanned… Although, to be honest, I wish she had never asked. Self-consciousness about conspicuous tan lines (combined with increasing concern about the invisible effects that the UV rays could be having on my skin) kept me from going to the pool without sunscreen ever since then!

Liopleurodon

3 Years: “I have a bunch of little toy extinct reptiles. I have… a Parasuarolophus, a Brachiosaurus, an Apatosaurus, a Compsugnathus, a Maiasaur, a Pterosaur, a Dimetrodon, and… OH MY GOD. I don’t have a toy Liopleurodon!” 

My daughter’s second-longest-lasting obsession was with dinosaurs. For the better part of a year, she lived and breathed dinosaurs, and it took only a month or two before her level of knowledge outpaced mine. She could tell a Chasmosaurus from a Triceratops, a Deinonychus from a Velociraptor, and a Stegoceras from a Micropachycephalosaurus. (The fact that she could say “Micropachycephalosuarus,” alone, was enough to amaze me.)

Of course, the thing that made this phase especially amusing and adorable was the number of scientific-sounding Latin syllables she blurted out in what was, to her, completely normal conversation. This one little gem of an observation arose when she was playing by herself and taking a census of the creatures in her toy collection. I ordered her a toy Liopleurodon that day, even though I first had to use Google to figure out what it was and how to spell it.

The Loud Crash

3 Years: “Are you going to get me the children’s book about the Loud Crash?”

Questions about how we got here, and where we came from, dominate every childhood. Curiosity knows no limits of religion (or lack thereof) and doesn’t exclude itself to children whose families do, or don’t, believe in a literal and biblical account of creation. Children, no matter their background, all reach an age when they want to know how this massive, beautiful, seemingly impossible universe came into being.

I am a deeply spiritual person and I consider my beliefs to a core part of who I am as an individual. However, I don’t believe literally in an anthropomorphic creator-God who sculpted the cosmos with his hands or his words. I believe in science, I believe in skepticism, and I believe in giving kids real answers instead of pleasant or optimistic fables.

That’s why, even before my daughter was old enough to ask, I went to the effort of making sure we had books that reflected our family’s cultural, religious, and philosophical beliefs. Just as no creationist would dare have a home without a Bible, I wouldn’t dare have a home without plenty of reference material for when my daughter asked me those challenging questions.

I was looking through several books that explain a secular, or at least non-literal, account of the genesis of the universe. Among them was one book that later turned out to be my daughter’s favorite: “Born with a Bang,” in which the narrator, speaking from the perspective of the universe, explains how our world came to be. It gives a detailed but child-friendly explanation of the Big Bang in a way that makes sense to almost all kids over toddler-age, but can continue to capture the attention of much older children (or even adults, if they’re not afraid to admit to enjoying a picture book)!

Little did I know that, while I was on the phone with a friend talking about my mission to find a good children’s book about the Big Bang, my inquisitive three-year-old was listening closely. Not long later, she came to me and asked when this book about the “Loud Crash” would be arriving. I suppose that, no matter how deep or scientific I want to be about it, a three-year-old doesn’t know much difference between a big bang and a loud crash.