There is a scene from the movie “The Matrix” that cracked me up at the time and totally stuck with me. It’s the scene where Trinity needs to know how to fly a helicopter and so she requests that the information gets uploaded directly to her brain.

There is a flash of data on the screen at the base ship then you see Trinity’s eyes momentarily flutter (to portray the massive amounts of details flooding into her grey matter) and then she opens her eyes and confidently states, “Okay, let’s go” (or something to that effect). And off she goes behind the joystick of the helicopter, the massive knowledge transfer complete, seamless and a success (not to mention almost instantaneous). So awesome.

Well, the reason I’m mentioning this scene is because I’ve kind of witnessed it at home. No, my children are not exactly flying helicopters after a 3-second learning lesson. But I have noticed that I will show both children something briefly (either consciously or inadvertently) and then moments or days or weeks or months later, I see the ‘learned’ behaviour display itself. Examples include Tai seeing me engage the shower knob in the bathtub (and then he tried to do it himself next time he was in the bath), Sloane watching me draw certain pictures (days later she’ll try to duplicate them), and a much-younger Sloane hearing us swear when we thought she was too young to understand language (months later she dropped the f-bomb in context much to our horror).

Ah, if only adults could learn and retain information as early as the little ones.