When Kya was about three, we went to a friend’s birthday party at one of those big soft-play centres. You know the ones – flashing lights, screaming kids, the smell of chips and disinfectant. Total sensory overload.
Every other child ran straight for the ball pit. Kya walked to the corner of the room and crouched down next to a fire door. She’d spotted a strip of sunlight coming through the gap at the bottom, and she was watching dust particles float through it. Tiny specks, caught in the light, drifting and spinning. She was transfixed.
Another parent gave me the look. The well-meaning, slightly concerned, “is she alright?” look. I smiled and said she was fine. But inside I was torn. Part of me wanted to guide her toward the party, toward the “normal” fun. Part of me knew she’d already found something better.
That was Kya’s curiosity in its purest form. Not scattered or surface-level – laser-focused. She didn’t flit between things like other toddlers. She picked one thing and went deep. Spinning wheels on a toy car for forty minutes. Watching water spiral down a plughole until the bath went cold. Opening and closing a particular book – not reading it, just feeling the weight of the cover, the sound it made, the way the pages fanned out.
For a while, I’ll be honest, it worried me. The health visitor had given us a checklist – “does your child show interest in a variety of toys?” – and Kya didn’t tick that box. She showed intense interest in very few things. But the depth of that interest was extraordinary. She wasn’t ignoring the world. She was studying it, one detail at a time.
As she got older, her interests shifted but her approach never did. There was the washing machine phase – months where she’d sit and watch entire wash cycles, mesmerised by the tumbling clothes and the rhythm of the drum. Then came maps. She’d trace road networks with her finger, following junctions and roundabouts with a focus that most adults couldn’t sustain. She never told us why. She didn’t need to. The fascination spoke for itself.
I think what changed for me was realising that curiosity doesn’t have to be broad to be valid. The world rewards people who know a little about a lot. But Kya knows a lot about the things that matter to her. That’s not a deficit. That’s a superpower.
She still finds dust in sunlight fascinating, by the way. And I’ve started noticing it too.
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