Ava, 5: Half-Understanding Is Contagious

She shrugged. “It hasn’t always been. It took me while to stop focusing on what I’m not built for and quit crying about it. When I got to know myself again after that, I got better real fast. At the time, I had no idea that there were more methods than the straight-forward ones, so I thought I was broken.” She winked. “Luckily I figured it out.”

This was an efficient way to train a young child. It reminded me of the game I played with my friends as a baby, but my experience was slightly different. My friends went into other rooms, away from my view entirely, sometimes behind certain lawyers of metals, and preferred to hold real objects. Instead of always asking me for the object’s identity, they also asked me for its shape, size, color, texture and use—sometimes even its age. They liked to use living beings sometimes, too. The game continued to complexify as I aged.