The subject appears calm. Her earlier burst of energy now forgotten, she moves among her vast collection, thumbing its contents one by one, in the manner of someone scrying a goat’s innards. The nature of her system eludes us, but any questions we have are irrelevant. She trusts it, and that’s all that matters.
At some point in every child’s life, a developmental shift occurs. I refer not to the wonders of speech or motion, nor the slow dawning realisations of empathy or mirroring. I mean that period – in my daughter’s case, now, shortly before her second birthday – when they become a tiny little weirdo sorting every single object in your house.
