Budding Scientist

      
     A client told the story of her precocious three-year-old who was fascinated with how things worked.  She had to be careful about leaving appliances or electronics within his reach because he would want to take them apart.  One day she had left him in his playroom to play while she did a load of laundry.  This seemed pretty safe.  All he had in the room were his own toys.  Busily doing her laundry, she paid no attention to what he was doing in his playroom.  After about an hour, surprised that she did not hear him playing, she went to see what he was doing.  As she walked into the room, she stopped short and couldn’t believe what she was seeing.  This three-year-old had devised a system of pulleys using Tinker Toys, his shoelaces, yarn that he had gotten from her crafts bin, a folding chair, his Big Wheel bike, and a host of other random objects.  Crisscrossing the room were pulleys and he was testing different weights with them, seeing which objects could be transported, how the yarn stretched but the shoelaces didn’t.  It was at that moment that she thought, “This little boy might be gifted.”