A child’s imagination is a wonderful gift, never take it away from them

Our daughter brought our grandchildren over to see us today, they’re here for a few weeks from the UAE and this week they will be visiting friends but from the weekend will be staying near us so we can spend time together.

My granddaughter, Harriet, wanted to have a look around the garden so I sat on the bench while she wandered through the undergrowth (well not really, it’s well cultivated and there are gravel paths but it’s fun to add in the atmosphere).

Every now and then she would come over to show me a stone, or a shell (all sorts go in to make up the gravel paths) and we would talk about where it might have come from.

There were pebbles split in two showing a reddish centre in its grey shell; or a piece of slate showing the layers of compressed mud that would have created it over the millennia.

She listened intently as I told her how slate mined out of mountains in North Wales had been shipped all over the world as roof tiles used to keep people dry from Patagonia to Perth. from Canada to the Caribbean.

There were even pieces of flint and I explained to her how thousands and thousands of years ago people had used these stones in the same way as we now use knives, axes and anything else which needed a sharp edge.

It is wonderful how the young mind can take in such information and store it for when they might need it.

Soon afterwards she was telling me about fairies and elves – don’t try telling a child that fairies and elves are impossible, after all the Queen told Alice that she could believe six impossible things before breakfast.

This is why children are so wonderful. They have imagination.

The problem is we take that away from them as they get older.

I am happy for my granddaughter to believe in fairies and elves. In fact I added to her imagination by telling her about leprechauns.

Later she asked me if leprechauns were real and I told her: “They are as real as fairies and elves, as real as dragons and unicorns.”

I did not tell her a lie, you shouldn’t lie to children.

When she gets older and possibly no longer believes in fairies and elves she will remember that I did not lie to her about leprechauns, dragons and unicorns.