Yesterday I learnt a lesson from my 7-year-old daughter... in communication!

We were taking a flight home and engaged in a book of simple puzzles (which my wife had smartly bought to keep her occupied during the 90 minutes from Bangalore to Pune).

One page had a series of pattern-completion tasks (e.g. 'What follows after circle-square-circle-square-circle? It's a square').

When we came to the last pattern (pic attached), here's how the conversation went.

Me: See Swara, these are two triangles with their pointy side facing each other, and then two triangles with their bigger side..."

Swara: No appa. It's skirt-diamond-skirt-diamond-skirt...

She then proceeded to fill in the next 'diamond', while I reflected on our natural tendency to over-complicate even simple messages.

(And I teach this for a living 😬)


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