Disbelieve me if you like, you probably will, but I can remember very far back in life, and I can even recall some thoughts as if they happened yesterday.
When I was a small child I was given a toy that I’m sure you all had. You get a round peg, a square peg, a triangular peg, and a star shaped one, and you have to put the pegs in the correct hole… You know the thing I mean. Anyway, when I first had this toy, I knew instantly that the round peg would not go in the star shaped hole, I did not need to try and put it in to find out that it would not go in or not, I knew just by looking that it would not go in. However, I still tried to put it in the wrong hole, because I wanted to see why it would not fit. I still remember when I started to put the pegs in the correct holes how my father said “he is starting to get the hang of it now” as I thought to my self “oh wow, these people don’t even know that I already know what the correct holes are”.
A very similar thing happened when I was learning to walk. My parents thought that I had a problem standing or walking as they tried to teach me, but I could have walked if I wanted to. However I chose to experiment with contrasting walking and crawling. For quite some time I would switch between walking and crawling, until my parents finally told me “no more crawling” because they had now figured out I could walk.
What I’m getting at is… Because of my own personal experiences, I suspect children never “learn” to walk. They just wake up one day and are strong enough to walk now if they want to. It is highly probable that children “learning” to walk are just experimenting and playing with it.
I still remember my mothers pride at me when I used the toilet for the first time. While the entire time I was thinking “I could have crapped in that thing any time I wanted to, you just never let me before”.
Children of that age are probably much much smarter than we give them credit for, and I think it is probably more likely that we just don’t understand their behaviour.
