Everyone knows that kids are incredibly resilient and can be very elastic with adapting to changes and learning, but recently my kids have really demonstrated to me just how much they learn and how fast they can pick things up. This fall, my kids, the 6 year old twins and the two and a half year old, showed me just how fast they can adapt to other cultures and experiences on our trip to Europe as well as a long road trip and hiking in Acadia National Park, all while starting back up at school. It’s taken a long time to realize that kids understand a lot more than we give them credit for and that while they may test us, they can learn and change so quickly.

My kids can be quite stubborn and set in their ways. When we tell them to get ready or that it’s time for bed, if they aren’t in the right state of mind, we can be in for a long standoff. They can dig in, refuse to do anything, and make it feel like years of our rules and telling them what to do just simply haven’t made a dent. Then there are the times that they forget to turn off lights, flush a toilet, or put on shoes, despite years of repetition and completely consistent yelling from us. It’s like we are broken records that make no noise to them. We imagine our voices must sound like the teacher in Charlie Brown to them.

But then, every once in a while, we’ll be sitting and just barely listening to them interact with each other, and a little gem that tells us they have actually been listening the whole time will come out. They might tell each other that they have to clean up or they won’t get to do something fun later, or that they can’t watch TV right now because it’s a school day, or that they need to put away their Lego so that their little brother doesn’t eat it. Every time we hear one of these, it’s just enough to tell us that they actually do hear us, and while it may take until the 600th or 601th time we say it, eventually our rules will set in and they’ll get it.

There are also the times they pick up some unique phrase or way of putting something from us that they’ll repeat and always throw us off. It could be “Mommy, this food is so good, you just have to try this”, or “We can’t get all jazzed up right before bed”, or “Daddy, is my singing stressing you out”. The fact that they pick up these sayings at least shows me that they hear us some of the time. They may end up talking like kids from the 80s and early 90s as a result, but maybe that will be cool – I mean rad – again anyway.

It’s not just hearing us and repeating our sayings that shows me how much they can learn. It’s also with their school work. Our kids went from only knowing their letters to being able to spell a ton of words and read pretty much everything in a year. At the start of kindergarten last year, they needed help for almost every word in their books. A year, and many nights of reading together later, they are both reading almost entirely independently and I suspect are fairly close to being ready for chapter books together. I even ordered a copy of The Hobbit for us to start a new tradition of reading a chapter each night together and to share my love of books and sci-fi/fantasy with them. It’s also math though where they went from counting to 100 with help last year to doing addition and subtraction of two digit numbers. It’s one of those things where the initial groundwork we laid years ago has started showing rapid results that keep growing exponentially.

I’m not claiming this is because of us as parents, but rather shows just how fast kids can learn and build upon their learning with more advanced concepts so quickly at young ages. Sure, some of the things we’ve done like practicing numbers and letters at night and in the car and reading just about every single day together since they were born all help, as does demonstrating a passion for reading and learning that they pick up on, but it’s primarily the kids utilizing their own ability to grow rapidly and learn at hyper fast rates that has put them where they are now.

It’s also not just the twins and not just in school that I’m observing this though. With our recent trips and time together as a family, I see the twins as well as our two year old growing in new ways and embracing new and exotic situations. On our trip to Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany, all three kids were incredible in how they adapted physically and mentally to completely new situations. It was our first time on a plane with them and the first time out of the country since the start of the pandemic, and the first time overall for the youngest, and the twins in particular impressed us with how well they handled the overnight flight with relaxing by watching a little tv on the seatback screens, then deciding it was time to sleep without a fight. The youngest wasn’t quite so easy, but once he settled down, he slept well. He wasn’t fighting us much during the flight, it was more that he was so excited by the entire experience that he just wanted to take it all in and not miss anything. Arriving in Europe, they all also shifted to the new timezone faster than we did, and had no issues with the lack of naps during most of the trip. All three were amazed by the experiences and were excited by the opportunities to try new things every single day and didn’t fight us once about doing things outside of their normal routines from skiing on the roof of a building to boat rides and trains across the countries, to sleeping in a different location each night.

They were also incredibly adventurous with the food. We’ve always tried to instill a willingness to at least try different foods even if they think they won’t like them and try to vary our meals as much as possible at home. While they did tend to prefer standbys like burgers, pasta, pizza, and fries, they at least gave foods that would have sent me running when I was their age like salmon, oysters, schnitzel, and even several entire vegan meals a try. Through all of this, they didn’t just try things because we made them, they were actually excited to learn about the different foods in each country and how it was different than ours. For our youngest who refuses to eat anything green or that requires chewing at home, we were shocked that he tried fish, different fruit, and –gasp- even vegetables on the trip.

The twins were also incredibly interested in different languages and were very interested in learning new words, translating the ones they learned, reading other languages on signs, and practicing their language skills on people there. We may have had to encourage them the first few days to say hello, thank you, and good bye in the local languages, but by the midpoint of the trip they were doing it on their own. They even started figuring out that the language would be different each time we changed countries and would ask for refreshers on the words in the new country. They may not be fluent, but at least they now seem to understand that each country has a different culture and language, and that as tourists, it’s up to us to at least try to use some of the language before relying on English.

I also couldn’t believe how much our youngest showed he could adapt and change. As a kid who was born and grew up during COVID, his experiences outside of our normal routine have been far more limited than the twins were at this point in their lives. They had already been out of the country and on planes multiple times by his age. Considering this was his first time, he did a great job adapting to a new routine with fewer naps, staying up later, and doing far more in a day than he would at home. He’s naturally very interested in what everyone else is doing, so watching his brothers in particular try new things really seems to have encouraged him to also try new things. Beyond food, he also got incredibly excited for going on the boats, planes, and trains of our trip, pointing out all of the interesting and unique things he saw, and especially going to the Copenhagen and Berlin zoos and watching the animals. I’m not sure he has too much awareness of where we were or how far away from home it was, but I also might be underestimating him again and wouldn’t be surprised for him to eventually say something insightful and surprising about the trip in years from now, just like our twins regularly do.

Our trip up to Acadia National Park in Maine also shocked me with how quickly the kids embraced change. Starting with the long road trip up, I couldn’t believe how excited they were just to sit in the car and take in the sights on our many hour drive. They didn’t need their tablets or even any of the books or toys we brought to keep them entertained in the car and just passed the time looking at license plates and the changing scenery as we drove up into New England. They may have asked to watch Netflix in the Tesla while we were charging, but for the other 8 hours of driving, they were happy to occupy themselves with singing and looking out the windows.

Once we got to Acadia, the boys absolutely surprised me with their willingness to hike for long distances. At home, when we take a family walk over about a mile, they start getting tired and complain. On the hikes we’ve done, they have never made it further than about 3 miles before we had to stop and head for the car. But while we were in Acadia, we did 4 and even a 6 mile hike and they didn’t complain for a second. They were so excited to climb up rocks, walk around the ponds and ocean, and traverse the cliffs that they didn’t complain at all and were happy to go so far. In Europe, they were also happy to walk around for miles each day, exploring cities, castles, parks, and all manner of scenery without whining a bit, enthusiastic to see all kinds of things around each place. Whether it was hiking around the top of a mountain in Bergen or around the harbor in Oslo or miles around the city in Berlin, the kids didn’t mind the miles at all, completely counter to how they act at home and showing just how much they can change and adapt when the situation requires it.

I can’t believe all of the things my kids have shown me lately around how much they’ve grown and how much they’re truly capable of. Physically and mentally, they are growing leaps and bounds and they’re capable of surprising me pretty much daily. They show us that they do actually listen, even when it seems like nothing we say makes it into their ears. They prove that they’ve picked up so many things from us, though it seems they exemplify these things to each other far more than when we ask them to. They have demonstrated regular ability to adapt and surprise us with not only accepting changes on trips, but also being enthusiastic about embracing these changes. I love to watch my kids go full in on trying new things and embrace new situations. I love to see them growing at school and doing their best to try new things in new places and even understand different cultures. It’s amazing to see them grow so much and I’ve learned that I really shouldn’t keep underestimating them.