Does an umbrella keep us warm?

What does an umbrella do? Edie says it keeps her warm, because when she and her mother got caught in the rain with no umbrella, they were so cold they had to take off all their wet clothes and put on dry clothes. Next things Edie needs to understand are that being wet can make you feel cold and that an umbrella can keep you dry. It’s all complicated to figure out. We need to listen to what our children think, so we can figure out what they understand.

A scientist would define Edie’s confusion as the difference between causation and correlation. It’s a very sophisticated issue that scientists worry about all the time. Aren’t three year olds smart? They make us all think.