I visited a dear friend this week and had the chance to meet her young son for the first time since before he turned one year of age. I believe he turned four years old this year, and I got to watch him ready himself to leave his pre-school program. Since Toronto still has winter, Kieran had to negotiate a coat, snow pants, boots, mittens, and all the while he was greeting and saying goodbye to his friends, running around getting some additional exercise, and just generally living in the moment. I don’t remember how long it took to leave the building, but it took some time. Melissa turned to me and remarked at how slow toddlers move. I disagree.

A toddler looks slow, but doesn’t move slowly at all. On the contrary, they move quickly from idea to idea, input to input, person to person, thread to thread, processing a ton of information. Novelty dominates the toddler’s life, robbing them of the opportunity to focus, as they dart around to every new piece of input. Their apparent speed, then, comes not from moving slowly, but from trying to do everything at once, responding to novelty and generally having no real plan.

I simply found that interesting. No connection to software. (Wink)