The Making of ...

Timur is crazy about Dinosaurs. It's difficult to say how much of it is my influence. I'm crazy about dinosaurs and other stuff from the past, and you cannot help but turn your children on to the same passions that drive you. I hope it's not just me, I like authenticity in people, even if they're very young. Most of our Timur's Dinosaur craze was effected by the BBC's extraordinary and beautiful series "Walking with Dinosaurs". The first time we watched it together was over 6 months ago. He was instantly fascinated. I had a short ethical discussion with myself on the risks of exposing such a young child to the sometimes cruel imagery of Jurassic predators catching and eating their prey. Timur seemed untouched by the violence, not at all afraid, all fascination. I figured this is all natural, nothing Timur is not exposed to when he is on the farm in Hungary or inspecting a small dead rodent our cat Max left on the balcony. So we indulged our love of those huge fearsome reptiles.



It became addictive, as Timur would demand as the first thing after breakfast 'dino kijkes': dino watching. Now the entire "Walking with Dinosaurs" series is only six episodes, so after only a few weeks you're watching re-runs. Timur seemed not to mind at all, and continuing to watch it with him gave me a chance to learn all the dinosaur names I didn't know yet, in addition to the names of their mammallian contemporaries. After the last episode, which ends with a tremendous meteor hitting planet earth 65 million years ago, the video contains a "The Making of Walking with Dinosaurs" segment. I remember Timur getting annoyed when this would come on. He did not want to be confronted with all these humans, all this science and explanation. We never got to watch the whole "Making of ..." because Timur would first complain then loose interest. He wanted to see the dinosaurs, that's it.

Now something has changed. They say that children develop in spurts, a period of seeming stability followed by great leaps forward. He is certainly showing such leaps in his language ability, starting to make complex sentences (making subject predicate combinations, uninflected still) in both Hungarian and Dutch. Yesterday we were watching the Dinosaurs again as part of our evening program. Timur continued to suggest something like 'onth-phon', and I really wanted to know what he meant. So we were scanning throught the episodes. When we came to the "Making of ..." part Timur's attention focused. He was interested, he seemed to understand the part about the skeleton, and the story of the paleontologist digging out bones from a hill in Montana. He seems to have developed an ability understand different levels of looking at something. There is the story of the Dinos, which is beautiful and fun. Then there is the story of how they made the story of the Dinos, which is informative and fun. This difference in conceptual level is something that he grasps now, and he can enjoy. He learned how to switch between conceptual levels. What an important step to make.



In the end I also realized the meaning of 'onth-phon'. The last episode of "Walking with Beasts" is about a herd of mammoth migrating, so I figured the association is with 'olifant', dutch for elephant. Timur smiled broadly when I sent the images of the mammoths to our TV screen. Papa understood what he meant.