I read an article yesterday that caught my attention.
This is surprising given I usually scan the headlines about teaching two year olds how to organize shapes and colours to create museum ready art, or “Why Doesn’t Your Child Poop On The Potty Liz? Learn Our Top 10 Training Techniques.” Or, “Children Can Sense Bees” and I always think to myself am I just clueless or are these articles not geared towards my specifically?
Yesterday’s article talked about kids and collections. I guess I was intrigued because I have noticed anytime our eight year old acquires more than one of any particular item it is immediately labelled “paperclip collection” and assigned its own basket with two clips somewhere on an unsuspecting shelf.
The article explains the benefits of kids becoming collectors and how they learn from the exercise of organizing, compartmentalizing etc.
Here’s what I took away from the study.
- My kid’s collections are not surprisingly, unlike any of those mentioned as being normal. Her biggest ongoing collection is an enormous basket of magazine cut-outs of girls. She organizes them sometimes by hair cut, by dress length, by age or skin imperfections. Thanks to this article, I realize there’s no harm in her leafing through magazine cut-outs until the wee hours of the morning because at some point, this will be a stepping stone, a conversation starter and she’ll instantly gain new friends. I knew there was a happy ending somewhere in all of this.
- “Budgeting Skills”—this one is lost on me. The article suggests kids need to budget their allowance or paper route money in order to save up for the next package of sports trading cards or dinosaur book. At no time did they mention magazines. Hanna no longer even asks if she can cut up my old magazines, she just helps herself to anything on the coffee table, almost as though a kleptomaniac lives among us. I don’t usually notice until I look for a dog-eared recipe and find half of the ingredient list missing because the flipside of the article is the head of a woman eating a Mars bar, missing her torso.
Thankfully, the article doesn’t mention anything about magazine cutting as a future indication we are raising a professional ransom note artist. Then again, I can’t be sure, the bottom third was missing.
- “Social Skills”—again, you had me, you lost me. There is really no socializing involved when it comes to talking to paper people. In fact, I think this is the very definition of a recluse. There is no negotiating with friends over who needs a pair of thick ankles in purple running shoes, “I’ll trade you for my green purse draped over one arm holding a specialty coffee?” It is becoming clear my daughter is the only human collecting these items.
- “Reading Skills”—try again.
- “Personal Responsibility”—She does care for the sometimes limbless creatures as though they are as important as say a younger sibling.
In summary, collections are healthy.
