On Sharing...through the eyes of a child

Ok, so you know how they say that 2-year olds don't truly understand the concept of "sharing?" Well, apparently they haven't met Madison. Because she's got it goin' on! She knows what's up! We were doing puzzles together yesterday and she was working on her Melissa and Doug animal puzzle that has different animals on it with different skin and coat colors and patterns. So, half of each animal is part of the background of the puzzle and the other half is the piece you are supposed to "match" up to it's animal with that skin or coat color and pattern. (I clearly can't describe this very well so here's a visual of the puzzle).

Well, Madison has done this puzzle (successully) a bizillion times so she knows how to match up the pieces and all that...but yesterday she started putting the "wrong" pieces in the "wrong" places. Wrong to my eyes and brain...but as she was putting them in she was saying "Mommy, these animals need to share with each other" And she systematically put each piece in the "wrong" place so that none of the pieces matched each other...all on the first try. Whoa. (Unf0rtunately, I did not manage to get a picture of that one since the profound nature of the moment hadn't really hit me yet). Then, she systematically took them all out and put them in the "right" places telling me they needed to be home again (the picture above).

Next, she moved on to the a puzzle which was a bit more advanced for this type of logic, or "sharing". It was another Melissa and Doug puzzle...this time it was a farmhouse puzzle that had little hinged doors that opened and you put the magnetic puzzle piece into the correct place in the farmhouse. This one is trickier because many of the pieces are similar in size and could potentially fit into the "wrong" spot but, again, she has done this one many times before and knows where they all go. Well, she systematically put all of the pieces into the "wrong" spots again telling me that they were all "sharing". She had to try a couple of different homes for some of them to make sure that they fit into their new home. The only one that didn't fit was the cow...but she still managed to find a place for her. I watched her do all of this with a look of awe on my face. What an amazing concept she was demonstrating...a way of looking at things I never would have thought of. But it made so much sense to her and it was perfect. And so simple. Sharing, through the eyes of a child.

(The first picture is where all the pieces are in the "correct" place and the second picture is her version of them "sharing")