What We Have, Is Failure To Communicate!

My kids have always been very good at communicating. The twins have always had a great vocabulary and they know how to use it.
My youngest also has a very good grasp of the language.
Today, I discovered one of the ramifications of this particular skill.
Having kids who are good speakers, I sometimes forget that they are just that...kids.
Particularly with Mitch, the young one.
So, today, he asked me to write out some math problems for him to work on......yeah, you read that correctly. He wanted me to write out several math problems so he can practice. In actuallity, he just likes to show off, but I don't care. I think it's cool that he likes to do math. I didn't like to do math until Calc II in college.
So, I wrote out several problems of the form:
   20
+ 15
+ 10

He works out the problems and gives them back to me. The first problem was off by a huge number..like 40. I asked him, to review the problem and let me know what he did wrong. After checking it out, he informed me that it was correct!
So, I read the problem to him, and this is where I discovered the problem....
You see, when I write a 2, I make it all loopy...the 2s that he sees are more like the two's in this font...no loops. His little mind saw that, and the closest number he could associate that with was a 6. If you substituted a 6 for the number, then his answer was correct!
After telling him this was a 2, he redid the problem and got it right.
I got to thinking about this....about how experience makes all the difference in the world...how I take for granted what my kids know (and don't know) and how I maybe shouldn't do that.
Also, if you wonder why it's so hard for computers to do things that you may think simple, it's for the very same reason...there's brazillion's of ways to do the same thing, but until you do it (or see it or smell it or taste it) it's very difficult to contextualize things.
Mitch saw a number he hadn't seen before and tried to put it in context...the best he could do was think that Dad had wrote the number backwards!
The cool thing about this is, the next time, he WILL be able to put it into context...we both just got a bit smarter today.