Another thing I’ve noticed working as a children’s librarian is like… kids get so Paralyzed By Choice and the adults in their lives never really register why. Like, for example, we have little scavenger hunt sheets in the children’s section and when a kid completes it, they get to pick out a cute eraser from our prize basket. We also have a little toy prize chest as part of our “1000 books before Kindergarten” challenge for when kids complete 100 books–and kids will spend minutes carefully picking through everything while their parents are shooting us anxious looks like “sorry they’re taking so long! I know this is silly and it’s completely ridiculous that my child is taking so long to choose between a bath toy and a cube puzzle because these are cheap and arbitrary objects! Hurry up, Harper! Just pick something! You’re embarrassing me!!” But in the kids’ perspective, they already have so little control over what objects come into their lives, and in this case, the object represents labor and effort on their end, so of course they feel they must choose very carefully. I’ve always been an anxious and indecisive person, so it’s striking to see how being rushed really doesn’t help that and really only makes it harder for kids to figure out what they want.