an experiment

You meet really interesting people at the park. The week of Annikah’s birthday I was pushing Anni in the stroller through Welles park and a man with a little girl that looked similar in age “pulled up” alongside us. I asked the ever popular parent question, “how old is your little girl?” He told me her name was Lilly and that she was 13 months. I told him that Anni was turning one this week (although she did have some pounds on the other baby). We, of course, exchanged the common “she is precious” comments and kept chatting. He told me that his wife is Korean and as is tradition they conducted a little experiment on their child’s one year birthday.

Here is how it works: you lay out many objects that represent different career of life paths and allow the baby without hindrance to chose an object and this item is supposed to represent what path they will chose later in life. I am always fascinated by cultural traditions and so I asked him to elaborate. He went on to explain that his daughter had chosen money so maybe she will be an entrepreneur. The “rules” of the experiment are that every object must be new to the baby, that is they cannot ever have seen that specific item before. Here is the video of Anni’s first choice and then a short video of her second choice (which made Jason so happy). Looks like we may have an athlete on our hands (maybe it is all those miles she has logged running with me).

NOTE: the without hindrance part did not stop me from trying to coerce her towards the paint brush and the history book but alas she would have non of it.

It was an interesting and fun little experiment but we probably will not hold her to it.
http://i204.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vid204.photobucket.com/albums/bb212/roxanne_engstrom/AnniWalkingcompressed.flv
http://i204.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vid204.photobucket.com/albums/bb212/roxanne_engstrom/aaniwalking002.flv