A five-year-old boy sits at a picnic table, wailing. A Junior Ranger workbook lies in front of him, open to an I Spy activity. One animal is circled, then crossed-out, then circled again. Through tears, he keeps repeating, “I can’t erase it!”
Almost 30 years earlier, a toddler girl sat on the floor, struggling to shove a block into the wrong hole in a shape sorter. Fed up with the whole thing, she chucked it across the room.
The first was my son on a camping trip a few weekends ago. The second was me as a kid. I don’t remember it happening, but my mom has told the shape sorter story over and over again. The frustrated apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
