Pattern Recognition

My kids are three years old — yes, both of them are three years old; they’re twins — and they already know how to read and spell. I’ve always enjoyed watching kids’ intellectual development, but it’s all the more exciting when they’re your own children.

They’re pretty good with numbers, puzzles, and patterns, too, but yesterday they reminded me that they’re still just three years old. Alex, Eli, and our golden retriever Remy were riding in the car on the way to a local park. From the backseat, Eli asked, “How do you spell park, daddy?”

This is a word that Eli knows how to spell, so I said, “I don’t know. Can you help me spell it? What’s the first letter?”

That was all the prompting he needed. He spelled it easily: “P-A-R-K.”

“Great!” I said. “Let’s spell some other words. What’s the opposite of light?”

Alex said excitedly , “Dark!” and then spelled it correctly: “D-A-R-K.”

“Excellent!” I said. “And you have a cousin…”

“Mark!” Eli screamed. “M-A-R-K!”

“Hmm… park, dark, Mark… and what would Remy do if he saw a cat?” I asked, thinking that they’d see the pattern of rhyming words.

“He’d chase it,” Alex said.

I chuckled. “Well, yeah, he probably would. But what else might he do?”

“He’d eat it!”

Like I said, they’re only three. “I suppose he might,” I said.