Why We Should Never Underestimate Babies: The Day Two-Year-Olds Taught Me About Jazz

On my first day as an assistant teacher at the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center in Washington, DC, I had a serious case of imposter syndrome.

I was young, I was from a small town, and I felt way out of my league.

So I barely said a word.

We sat down at circle time, and the lead teacher told the children we would be going to see Ella.

The children were really excited.

I had no idea who Ella was.

Was it that big elephant in the Rotunda upstairs? A teacher at one of the other schools? A museum employee everyone loved?

Later that day we began our walk next door to the American History Museum. I still had no idea who this Ella person was, but I wasn’t about to ask.

All I knew was that my new friends really liked her.

The moment I realized who Ella was

Understanding finally dawned when we walked into a small exhibit all about jazz.

We were there to see Ella Fitzgerald.

As we walked around the exhibit, the children started pointing out familiar faces.

“There’s Louis Armstrong!” They wiped their brows with an imaginary handkerchief.

“There’s Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet!” They blew out their cheeks the way Dizzy did. 

It was adorable.

And I was impressed.

We walked around talking about the exhibit for a while before sitting in front of an old-fashioned black-and-white television.

It was time for Ella.

We watched a series of clips of Ella Fitzgerald singing with other jazz greats. Every time a new musician appeared on screen, the children recognized them.

“That’s Count Basie!”

“That’s Benny Goodman!”

“There’s Duke Ellington!”

“I like this part. She’s scat singing.”

“A-Tisket A-Tasket! Yay!”

I was floored.

The children schooled me in jazz, and they were literally wearing diapers.

Babies and toddlers can build real knowledge

That was the moment I realized we should never underestimate the brilliance of babies.

It was also the moment I understood something that has stayed with me throughout my career: every child deserves a strong early learning experience.

The teachers at the school understood how capable these young children were. They gave them rich language, planned interesting experiences, and had real conversations about art, music, history, science, and every bird or squirrel we met along the way. 

The Smithsonian gave them an extraordinary setting, but the deeper lesson was simple.

Young children can build knowledge long before they can read.

And when they do begin to read, that knowledge matters.

Reading comprehension starts early

Early literacy for our youngest children shouldn’t be about letters and sounds.

Those things matter, but they are not the whole story. 

Reading is built on a foundation of language, one recent model posits that Reading IS Language (Snowling & Hulme, 2025). Children with strong language skills in the preschool years tend to learn to read easier than those who don’t.

And once children learn to decode the words on the page, they have to understand what those words mean. They need vocabulary. They need background knowledge. They need ideas to connect to.

That foundation starts long before kindergarten.

Those two-year-olds’ knowledge of jazz would not stay in the jazz exhibit. It would become part of the foundation they carried into future conversations, future classrooms, and eventually, future reading.

That day shaped the way I think about early childhood.

It is one of the reasons I created Brilliance of Babies.

Why I created Brilliance of Babies

I wanted to make books that respect what babies and toddlers are capable of learning.

Books with real photographs, rich vocabulary, meaningful concepts, and guidance that helps adults turn reading into conversation.

Brilliance of Babies books are knowledge-building board books for babies and toddlers. They’re already listening, watching, noticing, and connecting. They’re learning from the people, books, and world around them.

They don’t need watered-down books.

They deserve books that give adults something meaningful to talk about.

Books that build language and knowledge now, for reading comprehension later.

Access matters

But I also know that access matters.

Every baby deserves books that build language, knowledge, and connection from the beginning. That is why Brilliance of Babies offers special pricing for literacy nonprofits, early learning programs, and community organizations that give books directly to families.

The goal is not just to sell books to one family at a time.

The goal is to help more babies have access to the kind of language-rich, knowledge-building experiences that shaped my own understanding of early childhood.

Because I learned this lesson a long time ago from a group of two-year-olds in a jazz exhibit:

Never underestimate the brilliance of babies.