The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh Innocence and Youth

You know how young children can do the same thing over and over again? How the simplest activity can be really engaging? Like playing peek-a-boo, catch, or clicking a clicky pen over and over again. Turns out, this is developmentally appropriate. There's no better way to learn about something really well than repeating it to exhaustion. 

Roo is the youngest character in the book, though Tigger may be about the same in terms of juvenile behavior. Milne characterizes him as having unbridled enthusiasm. Since Roo is too young to understand the possible negative repercussions of falling into a rushing stream (i.e. drowning), all he sees is the fun. Who cares if it's not real swimming?

Milne has a unique understanding of stages of development. We've talked about taking other peoples' perspectives, but here's a great view of educational stages too. Sure, one way of looking at this is that Pooh is mistaken, and he can't read. But there's another way. Pooh is in the emergent stage of literacy development. He recognizes at least one letter, "P" and he connects it to the word that he knows with that letter, "Pooh." This is an early step among many on the way to being able to read for real. 

Christopher Robin also sees the excitement of potentially harmful situations. But, unlike Roo, he's also a little worried, too, as he's concerned about Pooh and his other friends. 

Milne presents this little bit of play in a dry, realistic tone, as if Christopher Robin actually went to Africa. With this, he respects the way that imaginative play can feel very real to young children. In fact, the whole work of fiction is based on this premise. So the next time your kids pretend to be a tiger, a pirate, or a chef, just go along for the ride. The more they fully embody that role, the more they'll learn from it. 

While Milne allows us to see how capable children can be, he doesn't let us forget that adults should be kind and nurturing. 

While Eeyore is burdened with cynicism regarding all the things that could go wrong, Christopher Robin—our resident youth representative—doesn't see "wrong" in those things. Children make the best of any situation, Milne tells us. 

As knowledgeable readers, we take this kind of physical property for granted—that a river will carry something with its flow. But for Pooh, who has never seen this before, this is a veritable Nobel Prize-winning discovery. And what's more, he wants to try the experiment again. In fact, this kind of process is exactly how young children learn about the world around them through play. The famous developmental psychologist Jean Piaget called children "young scientists." This is why.

In the carefree existence of youth, it's pretty easy to forget about responsibilities, too. 

"Nothing" is Milne's view of early childhood in a nutshell. 

For Milne, youth is almost a spiritual stage of life. Even as children grow older, their young selves can exist on some metaphysical plane in dreams or memory or nostalgia. We wonder if this is comforting for him, a burgeoning empty-nester as his son outgrows the fantasy world of the Forest.