After 99 it’s Tenty! Why?

I feel super excited to share this cute little story of our 4-year-old helping us in our unlearning process.She wasn’t introduced to numbers till she was three-plus. Somehow she learned through her sister and some toys about how to count till 20. After a few days, she quickly figured out what comes after 20. She took only very little time to figure out the 30s and 40s.

I was so thrilled to see her count enthusiastically crossing 80s, and I found my smartphone to record her cuteness. When she came close to 99, we haven’t expected her to come up with this Tenty thing. As I was recording, I was a bit conscious of my reaction; still, I couldn’t control my surprise when she began counting Tenty one, Tenty two, and it went on till Tenty nine and there came Eleventy, eleventy one…

We didn’t want to change her innocence for a while, so we didn’t introduce ‘One hundred’ to her. Within a few months, she learned through Amazon Alexa that it’s ‘One Hundred’ after Ninety Nine.

She came to us and complained about how Alexa was wrong. Elders in our family who are sincere followers of what they studied, tried to teach her that she was wrong and only Alexa was right. They didn’t know that we didn’t change her Tenty thing. So they were trying to correct her every time she said Tenty. Even after a year of knowing that everyone else is using ‘one hundred’ after 99, my little one was so stubborn to correct us, saying that only Tenty makes sense and not One hundred. When it’s only Ten after Nine, how in the world they brought One hundred after Ninety Nine is her Million Dollar question.

Click here to check her explanation of why she is right.

Click here to check her counting-cuteness.

When she said that she wanted to correct them all, she made us think. Yes, we realized that we weren’t allowed to question in our childhood, and also we followed many things blindly without asking ‘Why’ for many of our doubts.

Being a homeschooler, she is enjoying the freedom to use her brain 360 degrees. All we did during our school days was following what teachers taught us. What they said was the Right angle to us and whatnot were just wrong angles. We never thought of 180 degrees or 360-degree usage of our brain at all. And so,

The unlearning journey has begun for us already.