Thursday, October 27, 2005

Shaping The Young Mind

“Wectanggu,” my three-year-old nephew AJ says.

My wife draws a rectangle using MS Paint on our PC. I just look on as AJ claps his hands upon seeing the rectangle.

“Shirkow,” utters AJ. His eyes glued to the PC monitor the whole time.

My wife draws a circle right beside the rectangle. AJ thinks this is really fun.

“Huch,” AJ instructs as the next shape to be drawn.

Wife flashes a puzzled look on her face. “What’s a huch?” she asks me.

“Beats me,” I say as I shrug my shoulders. “Mom,” I call out to my Mom to help us out translate AJ’s language. “What’s a huch?”

“A huch is a heart,” Mom explains.

“Ahhh… heart,” wife and I pronounce in chorus.

“Huch, huch,” AJ repeats as if saying yeah that’s what I meant as my wife draws a red heart on the computer.

“Ok, what’s the next shape you want us to draw AJ?” I ask the little rascal sitting on my office chair.

“Atigun,” AJ says excitedly.

My wife and I look at each other.

Atigun? What the? We’re totally clueless.

I turn around to ask Mom for help yet again. But she has already gone to the kitchen. We’re all by ourselves in trying to decipher this one.

“What’s that shape again, AJ?” I ask and this time I tried to listen as carefully as possible.

“Atigun,” AJ repeats with that pleading look on his face telling me how can you not know what an atigun is?!

I pause for a moment, trying to decipher the word. Atigun. A shape. With three syllables. We’ve already done the rectangle, circle, heart. It can’t be the square. Nor the triangle. What other shape could there be? Atigun. A-ti-gun. A-ti…

A light bulb flashes inside my head.

“I have a guess on what an atigun is,” I tell my wife.

“Is it an octagon, AJ?”

“Atigun! Atigun!” AJ says rather loudly almost to a shout, repeatedly nodding his head in agreement. If he can only express his thoughts, I know he would have said “Finally, thank God.”

And my wife draws an octagon.

Reminder to self: ask my brother as to who taught AJ what an octagon is. Little children are not supposed to learn about the octagon till they are about 7 or 8.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Children are really joyful in their unique ways...BTW, nice template.

A.R.Martinez said...

@major tom
Thanks. And yes, they are really joyful even if it means having to guard them from snatching those balls on your Christmas tree (which is what actually happened before this draw-the-shape incident)

andy.kalabasa@gmail.com said...

Yes, they're lots of fun at that age. My second daughter will be three next week and she's definitely a lot of fun!

A.R.Martinez said...

Hey Andy! I see that you finally decided to formally join the blog world by having your own one.

Happy blogging!