[Manglano]

I hear a lot about kids being kids, and adults being "childish." By the time I was ten, I could read Michael Crichton and Frank Herbert, and although I wasn't a mathematical wiz, I did have an innate understanding of the scientific method.

I'm of the mind that children have a precocial learning intelligence similar in rank and power to the adult mind--that is, the moment a child is born, they begin to absorb and construct knowledge about the world, with the only difference to the adult mind being that adults have more context for their "world theory"--and that it's the duty of the public to acknowledge and foster this.

When I consider that some people talk to children with "baby talk," I wonder how many people have been hurt by `keeping parrots with chickens` (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrot#Intelligence_and_learni...) so to speak. It's a controversial theory that might garner criticism, but that may be a failing--children can hear voices in the womb before they're born, talking to them in infancy as if they can't understand their mother's language is, at first, disrespectful, and later, possibly inhibits their development.