One of the fun things about teaching and being around other people is to see the interaction between the basic person, his family and culture, his education and his current themes and interests. The novel "Where the Crawdads Sing" is good writing to remind us that a human being is a complex animal. Yes, what his family, his church and his teachers told him matters. Sometimes, you can easily see the influence of parents or others.
But as teachers like to say, each person is unique. There is no one else with just his combination of influencing factors, emotions, drives and memories. I sometimes hear people express doubt or amazement that a given person, maybe a child, could think of something all on his own. We can get a better grasp of the very wide possibilities a curious and active mind can think up if we take time to think of different possible perspectives.
Take a look at this blog post from 2010
https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/2010/12/6x7-42.html
Take a look at "A Mind At a Time" by Mel Levine. Some people have an easy time with time sequence. First, we chop the tree and then it falls down and then we haul it to the chipper. But, for some, sequence is difficult. The link above mentions a girl who happily greeted the mailman with the dazzling information that 6 times 7 = 42!
Some minds are more interested in location and in geometery and land layout than others. So, as decribed in "Parallel Play" by the Pulitzer-winning music critic of the Washington Post, Tim Page, he was careful to examine the bus route his class experienced when he was in the 2nd grade. The teacher and the students didn't think of road routes and spent their time observing different things.
We can all understand that Charlie Brown's fascination with his little red-haired girl classmate. The other girls and many of the boys are not fascinated with her and didn't observe her carefully and frequently, as Charlie did.
You and I would have thought differently and seen differently, no doubt.
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
Lewis Carroll, 1872 The Walrus and the Carpenter
