Kid and dog tricks

Margaret has come up with a few new tricks in the last two weeks or so. First, she has learned to clap her hands. Initially, she would hold our hands and pull them together to clap them, something that she found very amusing. But now she has learned to "clap, clap, clap your hands."

She has also learned the appropriate response to the question "How big is Margaret?" - raise your arms and grin as your parents say "So big!"

She can also wave bye-bye, either with one hand or with both, which is sometimes accompanied by her babbling "bah-bah-bah-bah." She hasn't quite figured out the correct time to wave bye-bye since she generally does it for no apparent reason. Finally, she has started to dance which involves bouncing up and down and bobbing of the head. Doesn't last long, but when a Beatles tune kicks in, she starts bobbing for a few seconds. The occurrence of this trick is somewhat erratic, but it does seem to be related to music or at least someone asking her to dance. She's obviously not the skilled dancer that her cousin, Andrew, is, but we're just getting started.

She's pretty good at doing these tricks when we're at home. But she's much less inclined to do them in public. We got dim sum with some friends on Saturday and went to brunch with Joe and Siobhan from Chicago on Sunday and, in both cases, she wouldn't show off at all. Instead, she'd look at me with a blank, innocent expression as if to ask "What? Am I supposed to do something in response to your prompting?" Perhaps she was just being coy, but I think that she was having problems processing what was going on.

Which gets me to the purpose of this post - current differences in intelligence between Maddie and Margaret. At this point, I think that Maddie is smarter than Margaret. She's quicker at picking things up and retains things better. She also performs better since she'll roll over on command as much as I want, although it's debatable whether subservience is indicative of intelligence. Which is, perhaps, the entire problem with the intelligence of a dog.

When observing my nieces and nephew in Philly (and this is not intended as a comment on them), I've always theorized that Maddie, being a pretty smart dog, is smarter than most kids through the first year and a half or two. And I still think that's true on some level based on what I described above. But there are distinct differences in the nature of intelligence of a dog and a baby. Dogs learn things, but you never feel that there's a real "light bulb moment" at which point something clicks on a deeper level. Why am I rolling over? Only because my owner wants me to which makes him happy. With kids, on the other hand, you can watch them watch you and, occasionally, there's a comprehension that's somewhat deeper than you ever see with a dog. If that sounds hokey, then here's an example of how kids are completely different from dogs. Maddie looks at a mirror and there's nothing. No interest, no concept that she's looking at something special, and certainly no self awareness of any kind. With kids, it's completely different. As most kids are, Margaret has been fascinated with mirrors since she was only a few months old. And it's very clear that she recognizes others in the mirror and that she recognizes some baby, perhaps not herself, as well. This seems to indicate exactly what I was talking about earlier, namely the fact that there's a sense in which babies, even if they aren't as quick or trainable as dogs, possess a depth that a dog can never match.