Whee!

Science News, July 24, 2004 by Alex Robinson, Jerry Day, Susan Torrans

I can pretty easily tell what was going through the kiddo's mind while trying "in vain to scoot down a miniature slide" ("Toddlers' Supersize Mistakes: At times, children play with the impossible," SN: 5/15/04, p. 308). 1. "Slides are fun. Why not pretend to slide on a toy slide to get the feeling you get from the real one?" 2. "Wow, I'm big now. I'll prove it" So, perhaps the words in vain are not appropriate.

ALEX ROBINSON, MAPLE VALLEY, WASH.

To say that an infant attempting to slide down a 6-inch-tall slide is making a "mistake" is like saying scientists who smash atoms are "destructive." It misses the entire point of the activity. Toddlers are not in the business of correct slide usage. They are in the business of making sense of their surroundings by, for instance, discovering the importance of scale and kinetics through whatever experiments are available to them. The child who does not experiment is the one to worry about.

JERRY DAY, BURBANK, CALIF.

Anyone who has watched a city council discuss a budget knows that toddlers are not the only ones who have trouble with an "incomplete ability" to integrate scale.

SUSAN TORRANS, LITTLE ROCK, ARK.