Forever in the Basket

I hid my daughter’s stuffed lamb in a basket the other day when we were playing. Since then she keeps going over to look in the basket and says “lamb? lamb?” in a puzzled way when he’s not inside. She’s seen him in several other places around the house but she keeps checking in the basket.

This is a dilemma of the advanced sensorimotor stage. If I hide the lamb while my daughter is watching she finds him immediately. Most babies master that task between 10 and 12 months. My daughter, at 16 months, only struggles when she has no idea where the lamb is. All she can think of to do is check the last place she successfully discovered him. In a few more months she’ll branch out and search more creatively. Then I’ll have to hide things for real if I don’t want her to find them!

This whole episode makes me smile because my daughter is employing MY mother’s technique for finding lost things. “Now think back, where was the last place you remember seeing the lamb…”