[NT] INT Child's Exploration

[Magic Poriferan]

I did very little physical or sensoral explanation. I explored the world through books, predominately informational ones. I didn't read so many essays when I was young, and I read no fiction.

I did have a tendency to do a lot of fiddling with anything that was new to me (something I still do to a childish extent) but I never went out of my way to explore for tangible things. I just messed with whatever wound up in my lair.

 

[Cimarron]

I can't really remember ever experiencing a phase of more intense questioning than normal. Maybe I did and forgot about it, I'm not sure. But what I knew of reality was very small growing up, and I took most things for granted (like most kids do, I guess). I don't think I ever really grasped the extent of things until I got into my later teens. I suppose I've just never had much of an imagination. I know, I make a poor INT.

That's part of the point of my thread. I don't care what they say about INTs, I want to hear it from the INTs themselves. So whatever you did is fine.

I did very little physical or sensoral explanation. I explored the world through books, predominately informational ones. I didn't read so many essays when I was young, and I read no fiction.

I did have a tendency to do a lot of fiddling with anything that was new to me (something I still do to a childish extent) but I never went out of my way to explore for tangible things. I just messed with whatever wound up in my lair.

And this was my main purpose to the thread. I was wondering whether, as an IST, I made my learning more "tangible", and I was collecting your stories to see. So far it looks like it, but maybe you guys just haven't thought to mention certain things.

 

[nightning]

I remember pondering a lot of small philosophical points when I was very young, such as:

The color I see in the sky is blue and I call it blue because everyone says that color of the sky is blue. But when someone else looks at the sky, do they see, say, red and call it blue because everyone says that the color of the sky is blue?
​

I remember, years later, hearing about how Descartes arrived at his "I think, therefore I am" conclusion and remembered that I had pondered the same kind of thing as a child.

I also couldn't wait to learn how to read. I knew that all of mankind's accumulated knowledge was written down, most of it in English, and I wanted access. Once I could read, I spent countless hours with encyclopedia volumes spread across the floor around me, as the answer to one question raised another question, which raised another, and so on.

I'm also like that as a kid. Drove my teachers crazy with my constant questions.

I had a cousin I used to visit when we were younger, and he was always--always--taking things apart. Like there was a toy pig (Babe, from the movie), with some place on its stomach that repeated phrases when you pressed it. He ripped the fluffy outside "skin" off, I think with scissors and a knife, then used a screwdriver and other things to take the plastic pieces apart, and in the end we had a metal-skeleton robot that walked around, repeating Babe phrases.

Heh! That kind of reminds me to Toy Story. The spider robot with a doll's head. It's a common NT trait, taking things apart to figure out how it works. The ENTPs I know loves to do that. My impression of other INTs is not so much just taking things apart but dissecting it piece by piece. I'm usually less destructive as a child though. I enjoy building things more than taking them apart.

 

[The Ü™]

I did very little physical or sensoral explanation. I explored the world through books, predominately informational ones. I didn't read so many essays when I was young, and I read no fiction.

Yeah, this is me, too.

Except I read and still read trade journals, namely Cinefex, and I've been a frequenter of Internet forums for a very long time, on subjects other than MBTI and the Enneagram.

I read about things related to my passions, and also created fantasy games inspired by them.

 

[Orangey]

I don't really have a strong memory of my experiences from before 4th grade...but my parents tell me that I was always reading something or other. I remember that my dad bought me a crystal radio kit, and I spent an intense few hours building it, which I remember gave me a great feeling of accomplishment. I was also obsessed with erector sets and k'nex, which were kits that came with little pieces to build stuff from. I was proud when I finally built the big, fancy ferris wheel. I would also make little things of my own, like my own robot or my own catapult.

Actually, I do remember being absolutely obsessed with different, weird things from the first grade on. I had become the class expert on whales, for instance, and I remember reading everything there was about whales and reveling in the different categorizations, and how the whales compared to each other. In the fifth grade, I became the class expert on dogs, and I had memorized the entire AKC breed book.

 

[Bugs701]

I took stuff apart quite a bit.

I still do this. When I buy a new gadget and the clerk tries to sell me the extended warranty, my stock reply is "No thanks, I'm going to void the warranty as soon as I get it home". And I do.

I have a natural talent for disassembly. Reassembly is a skill that I've had to learn.

 

[iwakar]

When I was like 6 or 7 I had a mini-existential crisis about how horrifying the concept of "forever" was to me. Sometimes I would freak out in the middle of the night while picturing myself existing up in space for ever and ever.

Hahaha, I had the same crisis as a kid after discussing the book of Genesis with my grandparents at around age 7.

I also distinctly recall experiencing bouts of depression as a child, such as being overwhelmed by all the sadness in the world as I learned of it (Questions about "What is a war?" "Why are there homeless people?" "Why can't I give my squash to the starving kids in Somalia if I don't like it and they aren't picky?" etc.) and questioning the reason for growing up and living at all if all the grown ups were mucking everything up...

(Sorry for the intrusion... obviously not an NT. Just two cents being tossed in there! xD )

I also read books at a torrential rate.

 

[ajblaise]

As far as toys went, I think I had a healthy obsession with legos, Lincoln logs, kinex, and some others that I forgot the name of. I spend hours building, but I never read the directions or built things how they were suppose to be built. I made a lot of houses, buildings, forts, vehicles...

I put together little scenarios in my head with dinosaurs and the lego people and action figures within the sets I created and acted them out.

 

[ajblaise]

Hahaha, I had the same crisis as a kid after discussing the book of Genesis with my grandparents at around age 7.

I also distinctly recall experiencing bouts of depression as a child, such as being overwhelmed by all the sadness in the world as I learned of it (Questions about "What is a war?" "Why are there homeless people?" "Why can't I give my squash to the starving kids in Somalia if I don't like it and they aren't picky?" etc.) and questioning the reason for growing up and living at all if all the grown ups were mucking everything up...

(Sorry for the intrusion... obviously not an NT. Just two cents being tossed in there! xD )

I also read books at a torrential rate.

Yeah I think religion played a part with me too, and people telling me I was going to go to heaven and be there for eternity.

Wasn't really overwhelmed by the sadness of the world though, just one of the perks from being an NT instead of an NF I guess..

 

[bluebell]

My parents made me do enrichment learning outside of school.

Me too, starting from before I went to school (age 2) to around age 10 or 11. Most of it was fairly mindless though, like rote learning or arithmetic. Then my knowledge outstripped my mother's and I got more mental freedom.

What about working out models/systems, whether physically or mentally? Kind of like Nightning's story about the Legos...

What sorts of models/systems do you mean? If you mean mental models of the world or how things work, that only really started to develop for me from around my mid to late teens.

My sister and I used to create mini-worlds together. I don't see that as an INT thing though, given she's not one (XSFP is my best guess but I could be wrong). Our worlds were more focused on people interactions, like setting up schools with dolls or whatever.

 

[pippi]

And this was my main purpose to the thread. I was wondering whether, as an IST, I made my learning more "tangible", and I was collecting your stories to see. So far it looks like it, but maybe you guys just haven't thought to mention certain things.

I can't speak for other NTs but I lived in my head, still do I suppose. Tangible things had very little appeal for me. I never collected things, didn't play with dolls, or build anything. Books appealed because I could escape to another place or time in my mind. I watched TV much less than my peers.

 

[Cimarron]

I can't speak for other NTs but I lived in my head, still do I suppose. Tangible things had very little appeal for me. I never collected things, didn't play with dolls, or build anything. Books appealed because I could escape to another place or time in my mind. I watched TV much less than my peers.

(In case you were sort of replying to me) To be more clear, what I meant was that I spent most of my childhood learning, reading, and thinking, but then I usually transferred that into something tangible. I wanted to "use" what I learned, get my hands on it, to a greater extent than some of you guys, from the way it sounds. Which is fine, I'm just curious.

Like for instance, I was always drawing all over the science books I got. Looking back through them, you see ink everywhere, outlining every shape on the page. I did this with maps, too, tracing everything and sometimes labeling, eventually drawing my own maps while looking at a real one beside me.

Kind of like Orangey said, I learned everything there was to know about dinosaurs, collected tons of information about them, and then I would talk with my classmates/friends about them. We would act like dinosaurs and roam the playground, and if I were pretending to be a 3-fingered dinosaur, I'd make sure I folded in my thumb and pinky.

 

[Salomé]

Hahaha, I had the same crisis as a kid after discussing the book of Genesis with my grandparents at around age 7.

I also distinctly recall experiencing bouts of depression as a child, such as being overwhelmed by all the sadness in the world as I learned of it (Questions about "What is a war?" "Why are there homeless people?" "Why can't I give my squash to the starving kids in Somalia if I don't like it and they aren't picky?" etc.) and questioning the reason for growing up and living at all if all the grown ups were mucking everything up...

Wasn't really overwhelmed by the sadness of the world though, just one of the perks from being an NT instead of an NF I guess..

Not necessarily, I wasn't spared the early existential angst. I was acutely sensitive to other people's pain. Terribly sensitive in every respect, actually. I had to toughen up or I wouldn't have been able to cope.
And I had a very rich fantasy life - but I suppose all children do. When I was 4 or 5 I used to make up songs about imaginary friends and rabbits and shit. I still have it on tape. It's soooo cute.

 

[The Ü™]

Yeah, I never watched TV, either. I watched movies, but not TV. I always had a fascination with the death sequences in Disney movies (usually bad guys falling off an impossibly tall castle or cliff) and enjoyed dreaming of new ways to kill characters.

I've had an interest in movie deaths ever since.

 

[Uytuun]

I was mostly extremely imaginative and narrative-oriented. My curiosity was boundless. I was constantly asking questions.

Books, creating whole stories for my dolls, wandering around the garden looking for herbs, believing I was the long-lost sister of the druid I'd just read about...I was very much in my own world as a child.

 

[Totenkindly]

When I was like 6 or 7 I had a mini-existential crisis about how horrifying the concept of "forever" was to me. Sometimes I would freak out in the middle of the night while picturing myself existing up in space for ever and ever.

oh geez.
That is exactly what happened to me.

I was around five or six, and instead of being afraid of death (which at least is a "boundary," I was afraid of "forever" and "eternity" which have no boundaries and thus cannot be understood; and I couldn't sleep and would lay there and cry... and my ISFJ mom would sit on the bed next to me unsure of what to do to make me feel better... and there was no way I could explain it to her in a way I knew she'd understand, so I was still alone.

It was bad.
I think I never got over it.
I just block it out of my mind right now, knowing I can't do anything about it, and I'll just have to deal with it once I get there.

 

[ajblaise]

Not necessarily, I wasn't spared the early existential angst. I was acutely sensitive to other people's pain. Terribly sensitive in every respect, actually. I had to toughen up or I wouldn't have been able to cope.
And I had a very rich fantasy life - but I suppose all children do. When I was 4 or 5 I used to make up songs about imaginary friends and rabbits and shit. I still have it on tape. It's soooo cute.

Alright, I can see that. I've known NT's (with a lot more N than T) like this.

oh geez.
That is exactly what happened to me.

I was around five or six, and instead of being afraid of death (which at least is a "boundary," I was afraid of "forever" and "eternity" which have no boundaries and thus cannot be understood; and I couldn't sleep and would lay there and cry... and my ISFJ mom would sit on the bed next to me unsure of what to do to make me feel better... and there was no way I could explain it to her in a way I knew she'd understand, so I was still alone.

It was bad.
I think I never got over it.
I just block it out of my mind right now, knowing I can't do anything about it, and I'll just have to deal with it once I get there.

Yeah the "Oh well I'll just have to deal with it when I get there" line of reasoning is always what would eventually calm me down. The concept doesn't really bug me anymore, but this is probably because my worldview has drastically changed since then.

 

[Kaizer]

To the INTs out there:

When you were a child (before puberty), and you were in that phase of exploring and learning so much about the world and its ideas (I assume such a phase exists for you), how did you go about it?

In what ways did you explore new ideas on your own? It's kind of a general question.

I went against the norm based on Ti and a very personally built Ne (if that makes sense) and it was valid enough to have been true to date.

It had elements of that which now seems more like what mature ENTPs seem to be like, but the parenting aspect of Ne seemed to have made predictions either non-existent or very true. Thinking things through and presenting complete efficient solutions. This had the propensity of manifesting itself in terms of insight.

one simple example... telling people that 'that person looked at me' was a combination of two things.. cause 'I was looking at them'.. stuff like this which led 'thinking' down multiple paths etc

Don't know how much sense I made and if it helped.

 

[Kaizer]

I used to drive folk crazy asking questions like that.
Not much has changed.

exactly!

I took stuff apart quite a bit.

School was boring.

Most kids couldn't understand what I was on about. I was in my head a lot of the time, trying to figure stuff out.

it never ends does it?

teachers ......

were fed up of my questions (later on in college, a few profs too)

 

[Tallulah]

When I was like 6 or 7 I had a mini-existential crisis about how horrifying the concept of "forever" was to me. Sometimes I would freak out in the middle of the night while picturing myself existing up in space for ever and ever.

oh geez.
That is exactly what happened to me.

I was around five or six, and instead of being afraid of death (which at least is a "boundary," I was afraid of "forever" and "eternity" which have no boundaries and thus cannot be understood; and I couldn't sleep and would lay there and cry... and my ISFJ mom would sit on the bed next to me unsure of what to do to make me feel better... and there was no way I could explain it to her in a way I knew she'd understand, so I was still alone.

It was bad.
I think I never got over it.
I just block it out of my mind right now, knowing I can't do anything about it, and I'll just have to deal with it once I get there.

ME, TOO. The concept of eternity was the scariest thing I could think of as a child, and it still freaks me out. I never could understand why people thought getting to live FOREVER in heaven was such a great thing. I couldn't wrap my brain around never, ever dying. I was the same way, too--the only way I could stop freaking out was to tell myself I would know how to deal with it when the time came.

My sister and I used to create mini-worlds together. I don't see that as an INT thing though, given she's not one (XSFP is my best guess but I could be wrong). Our worlds were more focused on people interactions, like setting up schools with dolls or whatever.

Yeah, my sister and I would always just improvise this whole little world and then interact as characters in it. Sometimes we'd be the characters ourselves and sometimes our Barbie dolls would. We'd set up the whole framework of the situation, like a plot, and then just play. We'd also play characters in our favorite tv shows, like Charlie's Angels or Wonder Woman or Laverne & Shirley. Probably not an NT thing, as all my friends did that.

I remember reading lots of books, mostly non-fiction. I was kind of trying to figure out the way the world worked, gaining knowledge more than experience. I read lots of biographies, I remember--kind of like wanting to crack the code of "success," which meant just being like the cool people I admired. I know that's not a typical INTP thing--from what I can tell a lot of INTPs can't relate to having role models, but I always did.

I was a quiet kid until I knew people, and then I could talk their ears off, but then I'd be extremely embarrassed if someone pointed that out. I always wanted to know why a rule was in place, and would challenge the rule-makers if I thought the rule was stupid, despite being a pretty easygoing kid. I was argumentative and opinionated, which my mother wasn't thrilled about, but it was never rude or personal. I just felt like my opinion was as important as anyone else's. I couldn't really understand the concept of an adult's opinion being more important than mine, or that someone might not want to hear my opinion.

I would collect information about a certain subject I was interested in from an early age, as well. I loved school, but was bored with the subjects I lacked interest in. I would always try to do my schoolwork as quickly as possible so I'd have extra time to read my library book.