I teach at a Montessori school, and one day, I was standing by the classroom door watching and greeting the kids as they left for their next class. As they were walking, a little boy bumped into a little girl and she fell down, landing on her buttocks. This girl is a child who easily cries, and the little boy watched her as her face started to crumble.

Normally, what would happen: the girl would cry and most probably come and complain to me that the little boy pushed her and she fell and got hurt. I could see that it was an honest mistake that the boy bumped into her and in my mind, I had already started thinking about how I was going to handle the situation.

I’m not kidding about what happened next. The little boy looked me straight in the eye and, less than a second later, threw himself down on the floor, landing on his buttocks, as well. He got up, slowly rubbing his back, and went over to the little girl and held out his hand to help her up. He said, “I’m sorry, [Little Girl]. Seems like we bumped into each other. Oh, no!”

The little girl was definitely looking slightly shocked. but she took his hand, got up, dusted herself off, and said, “Oops, sorry!” They walked off, smiling and waving goodbye to me. I was standing there with a stupefied expression, wondering just what the heck had happened.

That little boy is a genius. He avoided a scene and he knew it. This incident took place in literally a few seconds. The intelligence of children never fails to amaze me.

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(I’m reading a book to a class of four- and five-year-olds. Many of them read the book several times last fall, so I’m curious to see if any of them remember.)

Me: “There was an old lady who swallowed some leaves; I don’t know why she swallowed some leaves, perhaps she’ll—”

Class: *in unison* “DIE.”

(Sneeze. The answer was sneeze.)

My mom has been a teacher for all my life, and often teaches me things before my school does, especially when I was younger. I’m relatively advanced for my age, which means that I have been reading since three. This occurred when I was four, and my mom worked as a first-grade teacher in the same school I attended.

For some reason, my school thought teaching four-year-olds Spanish was absolutely necessary, so we got a new Spanish teacher in the middle of the year when the first one quit. She came into the classroom and started putting up posters while we played. Being by the teacher’s desk, I spotted a paper that seemed interesting, mainly because it had the word “snack” on it. Bored, I started to read the paper, which I did out loud.

At first, the teacher didn’t notice anything. Then, when she heard me, her eyes got huge and she rushed to the class phone. Dialing my mom’s classroom, she yelled into the phone, “Mrs. [Our Last Name], your child can read!”

My mom simply replied, “I know. I taught her how.”

That teacher avoided my mom and me for the rest of the year.

I work with Japanese toddlers, who, like toddlers the world over, say the cutest things, especially when imitating the adults in their lives.

While putting on her shoes one day, one of the three-year-old girls — who hasn’t yet started speaking English unprompted — said to me in Japanese, “I have to go home now, sensei, but it will be okay; don’t cry!” I had to smother my laughter until she had gone.

(Lunch is over in our toddler classroom, and we are putting the kids down for nap time. It’s fairly dark with the lights off, and my co-teacher and I are sitting on the floor patting the backs of toddlers. My co-teacher looks around me.)

Co-Teacher: “Hey, what is [Child] eating?”

(This child’s nap time mat is near the lunch table, and he will sometimes eat off the floor if we miss something during clean-up. I turn to look at him. He takes his fingers out of his mouth, gets a refill, then puts his fingers back in his mouth.)

Me: “Boogers.”

Co-Teacher: “Gee… Glad I asked.”