When our friends from Europe visited last November, they brought Miles a farm animal matching game that allows kids to string together a series of animals and props to mirror sequences on a card. While he doesn’t quite understand how to match these sequences, he loves playing with the figures, cards, and (weirdly) the instruction manual.
I was sitting at our dining table working while Miles was playing with this game, and eventually he brought a sequence he had threaded together over, handed it to me, and said, “Daddy, I make a story!”
Now, there’s room for nitpicking here. Does my kid think milk comes from horses? Or does he just think horses drink cow milk? None of this is important though. This might not seem like much to a lot of people, but I saw this thing, I heard what he said, and I realized that my kid had just build his first narrative structure. I BEAMED.
And like all great art, it’s open to interpretation.
The Perils (& Pride) of Paternity 