Intelligence: Toddler vs. Canine

Last night my mom brought over a tricycle she had in her garage for my son to use.  He was extremely excited about it, so much so that he wanted to ride it right away even though it was past his bedtime.  Unfortunately, it needed some work.  First and foremost, it was missing a bolt and this bolt needed to be replaced in order to make the tricycle functional.

This afternoon, my son and I went outside to clean the tricycle up a bit.  We hosed it down, got all of the dirt off, and tried to remove some of the rust (which didn't go well).  Then we went to the basement in the "work room"  (the place where we keep all of the tools and the like since we don't have a garage) to dig through Anthony's coffee can full of spare screws/bolts.  We didn't have much luck.

So I sent my son to get Anthony and told him to ask him about going to the store to get a bolt.  Well, my son, who LOVES to help his daddy fix things, only asked about going to the store 6 times in 3 minutes. 

A little while later, I wanted to see if Anthony was going to take my son to the store to get a new bolt, only I didn't want to actually say that because my son was right there.  I knew if he heard me ask, he would ask about it nonstop again for a good while.  So I did what you do with dogs when they figure out what a word means, I spelled it out, thinking he certainly couldn't crack my code.

"So, are you going to take him to the s-t-o-r-e?", I asked.

My son butts in immediately before my husband could respond.  "Yea, we need to go to the s-t-o-r-d (he didn't quite catch the last letter apparently) to get a bolt for the tricycle.  Come on daddy, let's go to the s-t-o-r-d, to the store."

Anthony, thinking that our son couldn't crack that code also, immediately shoots me this look of Whoa!  Are you kidding me?  This kid is freakishly smart!.  I was obviously was thinking the same thing.  Either he is that smart or we just way under estimate children's ability to understand things at this stage in life.  I'm not sure if he knew that what I said spelled/meant store, or he used contextual clues to figure out what we were talking about...either way, I was impressed.

I guess, you could say, today was a big moment in my son's development, as he is now officially smarter than a dog (since I have never known a dog who understood words when they were spelled).  :)

Sincerely,
The Mother of a Brainiac  (Can you say "college scholarship"?  HaHa)