There's a carrot in the bath - transporting schemas and their challenges
This week I had a friend and her 18 month old over for a cup of tea. Little Maxie spend the whole two hours moving items around my lounge. The grapes ended up on the shelves, the shoes ended up on the sofa, the magnetic letters in the bowl. Then I remembered...
When I was in my thirties I had a vegetable storage rack that looked like this. Maybe you had one like it too?
The interesting thing about the vegetables in it is that they never stayed in the rack. I would find a carrot in the bath.... a potato in the washing machine.... a onion under the bed. My 18 month old was, what's known as, a transporter... a child who was intent on moving objects from place to place and exploring his world by doing that.
In his hands, in pockets or through filling any containers such as a bucket, bag or plastic pot, these collected object would, then be deposited in various places around the house. It's challenging tidying up after a transporter, sometimes you don't even know where the object has come from. Sometime it was the first time I'd seen the object in a LONG time!
It's really difficult sometime to value what they are doing, because sometimes it's plain annoying. Instead of 'doing the activity' set out (by the adult) they seem to simply moving stuff about.
Everyday in a small hundred ways our children ask "Do you see me? Do you you hear me? Do I matter?"
L.R. KNost
Let's tune in everyday....
Other blog posts about patterns of behaviour in our youngest.....
