Three, Two… Seven?
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Thursday, August 12, 2010 3:00 PM
My daily life—and, I suspect, the lives of many other families with toddlers—involves a lot of counting. Three songs before bedtime; twelve grapes for a snack; five seconds to calm down from throwing a fit.
Blaise is too young to “get” numbers, but Camilla likes them. The framework of numbers for treats and discipline works well for her because she can understand it.
She also enjoys counting for its own sake. Her cousin has a set of flashcards with sets of cupcakes and butterflies and hats and trucks, and they both love to sit on the couch with a grownup and count them, keeping track with their little index fingers.
The counting is cute. And though I’m hardly unbiased, I think she’s all right at it. She can count to twenty and sometimes higher. But she cannot, for the life of her, remember fifteen.
It’s bizarre, really. She’s solid up to fourteen and then right again from sixteen upward, but fifteen? Forget it. She can say “fifteen,” but when she counts stuff, it may as well not exist.
Her cousin, just a few months older than her, is even funnier: “twelve, thirteen, fourteen, eighteen, sixteen!” If there are more than sixteen items, he just keeps going: “fourteen, eighteen, sixteen, fourteen, eighteen, sixteen, fourteen…” No matter how many times we say “fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,” he just doesn’t get it.
I’m sure that eventually Camilla and Daniel will learn to count properly, but for now we think their random numbering is lots of fun.
Have your kids ever counted in funny ways? Please share the stories!
Fourteen, eighteen, sixteen… go!
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