The child gets a fancy gift that cost hundreds of dollars. He unwraps the gift excitedly --- then plays with the wrapping paper.
I had my own version of this experience with Elliot yesterday. We have a petite doll hanging over his changing table. Elliot is fascinated by it. When he lies there getting his diaper changed, if I want to quiet him down all I have to do is give the doll a whack and get it swinging.
So when he was fussing recently, I thought I would try another strategy: show him the doll from the side, rather than from below. After all, looking from below isn't the best angle from which to appreciate a doll. Maybe he would like it even more if he could see all its details.
So I stood him up (yes, he's pretty much standing on his own. Balancing, not at all. But standing yes.) on the changing table, about six inches from the doll. And he looked at it. For about five seconds.
What he was really interested in, it turns out, was the piece of green wire bent into a hook, which we used to hang the doll. When I gave the doll a whack and set it swinging, it was that green J-curve that his eyes fixated on. His face curious, puzzled, fascinated.
I guess you can see the conclusions I'm jumping to. He's interested in how things work! He's going to be an engineer! An astrophysicist! He's going to solve the Grand Unified Theory of Everything!
Okay, maybe that's premature. We draw all kinds of conclusions about what babies are interested in based on what they look at. And those assumptions are not always correct.
But what is it about the gift wrap phenom? Maybe it's that kids want to see how things work. The idea of a piece of paper wrapping around something else, clearly that paper was serving a function of some kind. It was working. And since kids want to learn how things work, better to investigate the thing that is serving a function (wrapping the box) than the thing lying inert inside.
But as I've said before, I'm not a child development expert.
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