Fintan's world of imagination

It is often instructive to ask a child what something represents - the answer is often surprising.

Yesterday, Fintan, three, was playing with Lego. He had built some kind of platform with complicated protrusions. It was a mysterious object whose purpose was not immediately clear to an observer.

"What are you building?" asked Syahidah, of him.

Without looking up, he said: "My country."

We live in Singapore, where there is much talk of "nation-building" - but this is not quite what they meant. Fintan, however, has bigger dreams, it seems: he is set on building his own nation - at least with Lego.

That night he took two things to bed with him: his favourite "teddy" - actually a cow - and his own "country". Fintan slept with a newly built nation in his bed.

(If you would like to learn more of Fintan, three, or his gifted brothers, including Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and five months, or Tiarnan, fifteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of child prodigy, gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)