Sensation

When I'm running barefoot I'm very aware that the world has texture and feel and huge variety. Other than that, my interaction with the world through touch is pretty sterile. My feet are separated from the world by shoes. Most of the rest of my body is always on the other side of clothes. My hands reach out, but even they are limited to tasks that they've done time and time again. Food is eaten with silverware, cleaning done with washcloths, everything I touch is familiar. Even though I have five senses, I really only explore the world with my hearing, sight, smell and to a lesser extent taste. I've done about all I'm going to do with touch.
Not kids though. They're still feeling things out. From the time they can grab things, they grab. They move things and throw things and smush things. Food is as much tactile as it is about eating. Sand between fingers and toes and on their head. Mud. So much mud. Sticks and sticky things alike. All of those things that I've played with and checked out in my life, they need to try too. It's not enough to tell them not to play in the dirt, they need to feel it, they need to actually get dirty to put things in their proper place in the world. And so it goes with bugs, and jello, and frost on the grass. Seeing it isn't enough. Having someone tell you about it isn't enough. When you're a kid, you need to get in there and experience it to really learn about the world.
I know these things and think about them in relation to my kids and parenting all the time. They still sneak up on me. The way that kids view and experiment with the world still surprises me. My six year old is still learning to write. She can write letters and words and stories, and she's been handling crayons longer than she can remember, but she's still learning. She loves to write and draw on a dry erase board that we gave her. Write, erase. Write, erase. Over and over. She has a great time. Somehow it occurred to her to combine the fun of gloves with the joy of writing on her dry erase board. I asked her how it felt and she said it was weird, but fun. She wrote and drew for about 20 minutes, and then she went on her merry way. Bouncing through life, giving it a go, just to see how it feels.