growing baby

Mateo loves numbers. He loves counting, forwards and backwards. Pays attention to page numbers, to street numbers, to house numbers. He counts things, too.

He’s less good at the concept of adding and subtracting though. This is obviously a more advanced skill, so we’re not pushing him — perhaps just casually working on things like adding one apple to a batch of 4 etc.

But apparently, when he’s got some vested interest in it, Mateo can add just fine. Our evening routine is that one of us sits with Mateo for a few minutes after we turn off the light and names a time when we’ll leave (i.e. we turn off the light at 8:32p, and say that we’ll sit there until 8:37p or something). Mateo usually negotiates another minute, then we sing some songs or whatnot and leave at the appointed time. If he’s close to falling asleep, we’ll name a time when we’ll come back and look in after him (i.e. 8:52p or something like that). Sometimes he waits and starts calling us as soon as his clock shows the right time, and at other times he’s asleep and we just look in and see him sleeping.

Well, so apparently Mateo keeps even more attention to this time than I’d thought. Several times now I’ve come back and said, ok, I’ll sit here until, say, 8:58p. Mateo then calls out “Ok, 6 more minutes!” — i.e. he’s done the math to realize how many minutes have to pass until I have to leave. He’ll then call out “5…” and “4….” as the minutes pass until it’s time for me to leave.