The Magic of a 3-Year-Old

The tiny child sat before me, and my body was folded over the low table so that we met at eye level. In front of Tobias was a picture book, full of detailed illustrations of vehicles and skyscrapers, pedestrians and city streets. Tobias was consistently and easily engaged in our book-reading tasks, which was a rare and delightful phenomenon in my line of work. He was a foster child, well-loved by his attentive foster family, and so eager to please that it hurt my heart a bit.

In this particular moment, Tobias and I were pointing out the colors in street signs and stop lights.

“Look, the light is red!” I told him, watching his gaze track my index finger as it moved across the page. “Red means stop. All the cars are stopped,” I continued. His dark eyes were wide and sparkling, taking everything in. He looked up at me then.

“Does blue mean go?” he asked.

“No, green means go,” I said. “All the cars can go when the light turns green.” Tobias processed this information; I could see those little wheels and gears turning, helping him make sense of the world. We turned the page.

“Well what does blue mean?”

It was a logical question. He had just learned that red had a meaning, that green had a meaning, and that people driving cars had a shared understanding of these meanings.

I had to think for a second. Does blue have a meaning?

“Well, blue isn’t on stop lights,” I started, then paused. “But blue is the color of the sky. It’s the color of the oceans.”

Tobias’ eyes grew even rounder; he was, apparently, satisfied by this response.

“Oh wow,” he whispered. “Blue has a big job.”

Indeed, the color blue has a pretty massive “job” in our perception of the world.

Everything is pure magic in the eyes of a 3-year-old, and I love little ones for the fascination for life that they help return to us.