JUNE 18, 2026 – Today I barely glanced at news headlines, and I embarked on no conversations with anyone about anything of substance in the realm of worldly matters beyond some basic issues of business law. Instead, I followed the lead of our grandchildren—and their grandmother, who has a better sense than I for how young minds operate. But I’m learning.
To get down to a kid’s level of perception and understanding of the world, a grown-up must take into account the child’s neurological development, of course, but just as important is the child’s “frame of reference.” I realized this today as we chased, then walked, then wandered about with our not-quite-three-year-old grandson, with his 10-year-old cousin as his shepherdess.
For a few nerve-wracking seconds my wife and I watched as his little legs carried him like wheels on a a cartoon character down the sidewalk toward the T-intersection at the end of the street. His cousin was ahead of him and ready for the interception, in case of any cross-traffic. From our vantage point, the STOP sign at the end of “run” was as symbolic as it was practical: observe the sign when a car is hurtling down the cross-street and you live to see another day; ignore the sign, and you risk some pretty bad consequences.
A not-quite-three-year-old might not hear his grandparents yell, “Sto-o-o-o-p!,” or, hearing them, might choose not to heed them. Accordingly, my wife and I switched to “Code Orange” immediately and simultaneously. Too far away to stop the kid, in tandem we instinctively initiated a spontaneous backup plan. We yelled at our 10-year-old granddaughter to stop her 10-year old cousin. Having the reflexes of a panther, Illiana grabbed the little scalawag by the wrist and held him tight—before the sound waves of our voices had even reached her ears.
“Now look both ways,” she said demonstratively. Her younger cousin, who worships her, emulated with extra emphasis, the older-cousin’s actions. Before this simple lesson, the almost-three-year-old had no helpful frame of reference; no understanding that any motor vehicle on the move poses a threat and that the threat can and must be mitigated by taking precautionary action. The 10-year-old has a sufficiently developed frame of reference to understand the threat and how to react to it. I was fascinated by this juxtaposition of “frames of reference.”
After the extended walk-and-wander outing, Grandma found the sidewalk chalk and gave big cousin and little cousin unrestricted access to both chalk and driveway. For the next long stretch of time, we the grandparents watched with delight. The older cousin has extensive experience with sidewalk chalk. Plus, she’s a gifted artist. Unleashed on the long curving and sloping driveway, she turned the pavement into a splendid ribbonlike drawing board. At first, her younger cousin mimicked everything that the bigger cousin said or did. It was a bit like attending a show featuring a ventriloquist’s “sidekick” who could also do impressions.
“This line I’m drawing leads to special strawberries,” said the big cousin.
“Leads to special strawberries,” her little sidekick said.
To give the big cousin a chance to focus on her creation, Grandma led the little cousin to the upper part of the driveway and worked with him on an amusing version of hopscotch. Drawing a meandering series of various geometric shapes on the driveway, she then wrote a verb inside each shape—“Hop,” “Clap,” “Laugh,” “Sneeze,” “Rub Elbows Together,” “Stand On One Leg,” and so on. This little game turned into big entertainment—as much for the grandparents as for the grandchild. With each passage across the shapes, the little guy became more proficient. He was improving his “frame of reference.”
But the piece de resistance was provided by the older cousin, whose “frame of reference” is her boundless imagination. While Grandma and I were watching the World Cup of Hopscotch, the 10-year-old visiting artist was having a field day creating an elaborate illustrated, interactive story down the length of the driveway.
What gave us special delight was the depth and breadth of our grandchildren’s pre-occupation with lines, shapes, written narratives and pictographs made of colored chalk applied to driveway pavement. No screens, no apps, no AI; just a box of chalk and imagination built on ever-expanding “frames of reference.”
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
