Walking NYC streets with a two year old is in its own way fascinating. Last week we spent 28 minutes (I timed it) in front of a building on upper Broadway while she played with a fire nozzle that stuck out of the building. There were two nozzles, next to each other, each with a simple chain looped over the front. 28 minutes! I leaned on the building and just watched, and she tried to turn the yellow nozzles, ran her hand over the different surfaces, pulled on the chain, carefully looped each chain over the nozzles, stepped back to crow and admire her handiwork, told me she was fixing the building, and then went through the process all over again, and again, and again. What was she learning or thinking? I am not sure, but it seems to me that growing up on the streets of NYC and in its hallways and elevators is basically an education in space, angles, and surfaces.
I was also a NYC child, and I still occasionally have the reoccuring dream of my childhood. I am very small and surrounded by flat surfaces, high walls, wet streets, puddles with reflected blue and red and yellow and orange lights. Rain is falling. Obviously a child's experience of city streets. I also have an affinity for high light spaces. I remember apartment hunting for a family member here in my small town years ago. I walked into an empty second floor apartment with the light shining in through the windows and the sky visible and I thought "Now this feels like home." The New York was still in me.
So one thing I've been doing is watching the next generation explore the sidewalks, curbs, cracks, chains, grates, stairs, halls, walls, ramps, protrubances, and spaces of her surroundings. Not surprisingly, she is an expert on "rough" and"smooth."
What do kids learn outside the city, if not primarily rough/smooth, stop/go, hard/hard?
Posted by: Molly | October 25, 2011 at 09:07 AM