Chances are that if you're on Facebook - or even email - you've seen a regular feed of kids being ruthlessly cute through honesty. Kids will ask people why they're fat, why they're ugly, and why <insert insult here>. Kids will also come up with funny names for things - a child once called highway rest areas 'Pee Pee Stores'. Kids will also cry for no apparent reason... or so it seems.
If you've been around children regularly, you will see that they may cower quickly at things they don't understand, things that may scare them. They will seek shelter through an adult they trust. Kids will do this during movies at parts that aren't scary at all for adults. You will find that kids will instantly warm up to complete strangers when, most of the time, they're hopelessly shy. They are born with being highly sensitive to things they don't understand - in other words, they don't use logic at all; they simply react.
Because they do surprise parents by, for example, warming up to a select few strangers it makes one wonder if children are operating wholly on their intuition. As adults we use our intuition in situations that we don't fully understand. We let our gut tell us what to do - in part or in whole. Children are no different except they don't understand MANY situations. It would be easy to say that children are born being scared but if you've been around children you will see that they are not scared 100% of the time. Something is telling them not to be scared.
I was recently spending time with some children. We were watching Curious George (the newer series produced by Ron Howard). A three-year-old asked me if Curious George was a monkey. I said he was because everyone on the show calls him one and he looks like one. The child retorted, "But monkeys have tails. Curious George doesn't have a tail." And how about that? Curious George doesn't have a tail and monkeys, by definition, have tails. A three-year-old was able to put the pieces together that me, an adult, didn't notice.
The next time a child cowers, take note - there could be more to his/her reasoning than just being scared.
(for the record apes do not have tails and if you really want to split hairs one can point to macaques as being monkeys without tails... George doesn't resemble a macaque)
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