The mind of a child

I had my German Class this morning, and had a big breakthrough. A simple thing that I have never fully understood finally became apparent to me.... I was all excited to test my new skills out on Mia, and so I slowly rattled off the following to her : "Ich raume nicht gern auf". The word for word translation of this is: I clean not like up. I asked Mia what I said, and she rattled off right back to me, "I do not like to clean up." I'm always amazed at her translation skills, but as I was trying to explain what I had learned to Bryan, I really stopped and thought about how amazing language is for kids to learn. I had to explain to Bryan about the verb placement (in German, the verb is always in the second place, and the second verb goes at the end). Mia chimes in, as she was listening to us talk, and says, "What is a verb?" She automatically knows parts of speech without even actually knowing what those parts of speech are, because she can translate and totally turn the sentence around. What I am trying to say, is that if she didn't understand the placement, she would not say "I don't like to clean up," but instead would have said "I clean not like up ." It struck me today, how amazing a little mind can be, when I have such a hard time with it!