Our 5 yr old is as any her age well aware that dinos roamed the world ‘a very long time ago’ even before humans existed. Two weeks ago we discussed the Dodo (because it figured in a cartoon she likes), and how it died out in the late 1600’s.

Last night as I brought her to bed she asked me what werewolves are, and I told her that ‘vroeger‘ (an unspecified long time ago) people believed there were people who turned into wolves at full moon. “Did you believe that when you were young, vroeger?” she asked. So I specified that with my vroeger I meant a long time before even I was born, some 300 to 500 years ago.

To which she replied:

“Ah, so that was after the dinos, but during the time of the Dodo.”

Indeed, that’s correct 😀
I love how this shows how she is constructing mental images of the order in time of things and clears up the mists of time for herself. The dino’s demise at one end, us at another, and a marker for when the Dodo went extinct, with belief in werewolves somewhere before that marker. Vroeger.