learn From the Child
Yu Dan
《Youth Digest ·color version》

Since my daughter was born, I have been studying from her, because each stage of her growing up has its own logic .when she was two and a half year’s old, I took her abroad, I thought that she would feel boring during the six-hour flight, but she was watching out the window excitedly and said “let’s go outside” after the plane flew to the sky. I told her that we couldn’t go outside; she asked is plane not for us to go outside it? Then I realized that she took the plane as the “Shenzhou 7 manned spacecraft”, it flew to the sky in order to go out of the Cabin. She considered this tool as an aim while we consider the plane as transportation. I asked her what did we go out to do. She told me we could made snowman with white clouds, and after they falling down, we could made snowman only with snow, but we can made the snowman with clouds directly while we are at the sky. Then she talked about the fables with me, a child younger than three year’s old, looked the sea of clouds as a world full of colorful myths.
In fact, everyone in childhood may have imagination, but they lose it afterwards. So, sometimes as a University Professor I felt depressed whether our education would make the genius become Mediocrities? When I was facing with my daughter I didn’t dare to tell her about the aerosphere, I couldn’t tell her if she came out the plane she would fall down, if I did so I will break all her imagination. The longer the myths stay in her mind, may be the more romance in her lifetime.
Sometimes I took my daughter back from kindergarten, she saw the moon through the gap between the high buildings, she would shout happily: Mom, the moon! Her screams let me moving because we have lost the mood to watch the moon and we have no feelings while we see it. She jumped up and said that the moon was cool; the stars beside it were warmer. She seemed she touched those objects just now. I thought why the sky in her eyes was in different temperature? The children are genius.
Daughter is sensitive to the nature, concerning the things in the world; she always hit the nail on the head. One day, she asked me significantly: “Mon I know I’m the person you love most in the world, but who is the person you love secondly, grandmother or my father?” I thought I couldn’t tell her I love both, that was a lie; I must make a difficult choice. It took me a half day to make the decision, and then I told her the answer is grandmother out of educating her. She said:“ I know you will say this answer.” I asked why. The answer she blurted out let my tears came out at that moment: because we three are together originally. She and I are both caesarean birth child, she have seen the scar on my mother’s belly and mine, she know I stayed in her grandmother’s body originally and she stayed in my body originally, so she said we three are together originally. She felt certainly she was a stranger and I should love her, we three are must love and respect each other.
This answer was out of my expectation, but it was high-quality, it would give you a relationship between people and between mammals directly.
She didn’t understand most of the things, but her answer is more direct than the answer given by those who understood most things. During the Olympic Games, once we were going to catch the plane, she ran around the airport and saw many posts which the fuwa doing the act, she used her pinkie pointed and told me which was the volleyball ,which was the bicycle, ping-pong and diving, all her answer were right. But while she saw two people were embracing together(judo), she didn’t recognize, and se saw so many adults was looking at her then she spoke loudly:“this is fighting.” I told her immediately that fighting is not the Olympic sports. I surfed the Internet afterwards about the major term, judo and wrestling are collectively referred to confrontational sport, and that is a kind of well-regulated and match-style fighting.
My daughter is now less than three and a half year’s old, she gives me a kind of direct way of thinking, she can it the nail on the head, her logic is very simple. Simplicity sometimes is a truth, children always tell the truth, that because she doesn’t constrained by those tools. She will express her love and kindness sincerely, she keeps the imagination of the fairy tale and she has changed this boring world, she has added so many surprises on the things we see as commonplace, she makes my world full of colors. I believe that, if you learn from the children you can recall your simplicity, make your life clear, frank , simple and pure.