There Was A Child Went Forth

I like this..poem? Story? Whatever it is, I like it.
Its very creative in explaining its point which from what I got was that a child's childhood experiences make that child who they will be for the rest of their life.
Not only did the author use experiences, Whitman also used just things that the child was surrounded by and saw/observed, things that stuck in the child's mind.
Whitman also described the personalities of the child's  parents and related it back to the child.
I feel that although we as humans don't obviously observe the people around everyday, we could describe them right off the back just because of the fact that they're apart of our life.
Even little small things like "The early lilacs" became apart of the child's life.
Im willing to bet everyone can recall something that small from their childhood.
For me it would be the smell of the tree outside of my pre-school.
It smelled horrible but I smelled it every morning and eventually my brother and I began to crack jokes on it.
Its stained in my memory. I think about it everytime I pass my pre-school. It still grows in the same spot.
Something that small became a big part of my childhood and it kind of shows the bit of creativity that I have now for taking something negative and making it postive.
But of course we don't think about how these things until, well I didn't think of this until I read this excerpt thingy.
Its very deep and had me thinking.