Seeing Red

A few weeks ago, Little Man pointed to a taxi parked outside the library.

"Dada," he said.

"Dada is at work, remember?" I told him, grasping his chubby little hand tighter while we climbed up the stairs, as his attention was now focused wholly on the taxi and not where his feet were going.

"Dada!" He said stubbornly.

"See the person in the car? That's a lady. That's not Dada," I said. My son gave me a look. The look clearly said, Mother. You aren't listening to me. Very patiently, he led me to the taxi, touched the bumper and said slowly (as if he were talking to someone a few french fries short of a happy meal), "Da.Da." It was then that I realized Little Man was telling me that this taxi looked like what his father drove, a yellow sports car. "Oh!" I said. "That's right! This car is yellow, just like Daddy's car."

Little Man looked terribly relieved that I had figured out what he meant. Or perhaps it was relief that his mother wasn't as slow as she was acting. Either way, we waved bye-bye to the taxi and went about our business at morning storytime. When we came home, I tested Little Man's newfound knowledge looking at one of his picture books. "What's yellow like Daddy's car?" I asked him. He searched for a moment and found a page with a yellow duck.

Later that night I simply asked him, "what's yellow?" and he dug around in his hotwheels box until he found a yellow car. A few days later he brought a book to his Nana, opened it, and pointed to a red balloon. "Red," he announced. She, of course, proclaimed him to be the genius we all know he is, and thus has started Little Man learning his colors.

He takes hunting for colors very seriously. We've had success with identifying blue and green, but it's red that really gets him worked up. Ask him to find you something red in a book, and then get comfortable--he goes page by page, pointing to every red object he comes across. He might even go get another book and keep looking for red things, just to make sure you really get it, in case--like his mother--sometimes you're a little slow.