Children are our best teachers

Children have a lot of special talents to offer. Their pursuit of novelty and wonder is both a cause and an effect –a gift of the life fully lived and one of the things that makes life worth living. Anyone who knows children can tell you that they do the following:

Children follow their interests. If a kid is bored, you know it. None of this polite interest stuff the rest of us get stuck in. What they like, they do, and this teaches them that following what they like makes them happy - so they do it some more.

Children seek out and risk experimenting with new things. If kids are confronted with something unfamiliar, they will take a chance and try it out. They prod and poke it, smell it, look at it from all angles, try using it in different ways, look to see what you think about it - maybe even give it to you to see what you do with it. We adults, by contrast, slap a label on it, say, "I know what that is," and dismiss it. What we're really saying is, "I know what I already know about that, and there's nothing more worth knowing," which is almost never true of anything or anyone.

Children pay attention to their own rhythms. We, grownups, tend to drive ourselves until something's done, or until a certain hour strikes, but children do things when they feel like it. Naturally, since someone else tends to their necessities, they may have more time and freedom to do that, but we would do well to follow their lead where we have the choice. When we work during our most productive times and rest during our other times, we make the most of our energies. That means if we do our best work between 4 P.M. 2 A.M., then we should strive to arrange our day to make use of those hours. We become more trustworthy to ourselves and others.

Children honor dreams and daydreams. Children pay attention to, talk about, and follow up on their dreams and fantasies. They may draw pictures they saw in their dreams, conduct conversations with dream characters, and try to recreate something experienced in dreams and day dreams. These are all creative acts. Moreover, they are important: Mankind has learned that dreams are a language the subconscious uses to communicate to the conscious. Many people say they don't remember their dreams, but I know of no serious effort to connect with one's dream life that hasn't succeeded. Those who succeed often report an experience of waking and sleeping that is like living two lives, each one feeding and nourishing the other.

Children consider mistakes as information, rather than as something unsuccessful. "That's a way it doesn't work. I wonder how else it doesn't work?" For children, the process of figuring something out is in itself a win. We, however, are hung up on outcomes, so we lay judgments on our mistakes - "We did it wrong" and what is worse, we take it further - therefore "People won't love us," "We're never good enough," and "We'll be all alone." No wonder mistakes frighten some of us so deeply. Patterns like that aren't learned overnight, and changing them may take more than a few tries, but they can be changed.

Children play. Kids make a game out of everything. Their essential business is play, so to speak. They delight in spoofing each other, parents, and personalities. They love to mimic, pretend, wrestle, hide and seek, surprise, play practical jokes. They love to laugh, tell secrets, devise stories of goblins and fairies and giants and monsters and heroes. They're not hung up on accuracy. When in doubt, they know they can always make it up. Many adults, however, have withdrawn permission from themselves to be silly, to expose the part of themselves that feels young.

We've become overly concerned with violating cultural or institutional norms - of appearing "unmanly" or "unfeminine." Even today, women march to echoes of, "Don't be unladylike" and "Nice girls don't wrestle, yell, get angry, or compete." We accept other people's judgments of what's okay behavior and disregard our own, all in the name of security.

Not that security isn't important; it is. Without security, both children and adults experience their energies diminished and fragmented by anxiety. We need to fit in, to feel that, to some degree at least, we belong. We need some predictability to keep the magnitude of decision-making within manageable limits. We need to know our survival isn't threatened before we are free to play. However, security without the fresh stimulation and joyfulness that comes through an open, experimental, playful mind will ultimately drive all but the most fearful to venture out of safe cubbyholes in search of that indefinable "more."

The fact that doing those things children do nurtures creativity is obvious. To confirm this, all you have to do is compare a group of people who are actively creative with a parallel group of people whose creativity is latent or inactive: You will find the creative group more concerned with what sparks their interest, more willing to take risks, more in tune with and responsive to their own personal rhythms and needs, more fanciful and inclined to honor and follow their dreams and fantasies, less concerned with being "right," more rebellious and non-conforming, and considerably more playful.

What determines whether a person retains these characteristics and talents or not? How can we who are parents at the moment help our children preserve and enhance this aliveness?

One major factor that I believe contributed to retaining my own creative abilities was my parents' unfailing support of any creative act that took my fancy. My father, while much the silent type, modeled creativity for me. He painted - one of his paintings hangs in my office today. He also built radios and hi-fi systems, striving always to make something that performed better than what you could buy. Often he succeeded. Even if the radio wasn't better, building it was good because it enabled him to experiment, an inherently good thing to do.

My mother provided the even more powerful verbal praise, encouragement, and support that most reinforced my creative behavior. She arranged for me to take singing lessons long before I was even aware that I had a voice worth training. When I came home with a good grade on a mechanical drawing exercise, she immediately bought me a drafting table. When I had the urge to build a reflecting telescope, she took me wherever I needed to go to get the pieces and parts. It didn't matter whether she understood the current project or not. She said sincerely that she thought I was wonderful to be doing something so clever and creative, and she supported me with concrete action.

You, parents, whose children are still young can do for them what my mother did for me, and what in turn I'm doing for my children, even though they are now grown. Tell them they are wonderful. Give help, but only when asked. Pay attention to the process, and let the end result be wonderful - just because your children did it. Ask them what they have learned, and applaud the learning. Tell them that finding out what doesn't work is just as important as anything.

John Bowels

/ From “Current ”, №27, 2003/

SET WORK

I. Say what is meant by:

sb’s pursuit of novelty and wonder, the life fully lived, to follow one’s interests, to prod and poke, to dismiss sth., to tend to one’s necessities, to follow one’s lead, to follow up on one’s dreams, to lay judgement on sth., a few tries, to spoof, hide and seek, to be hung up on sth., to experience one’s energies diminished and fragmented by anxiety, playful mind, latent, fanciful, to spark one’s interest, to enhance aliveness, to retain one’s creative abilities, a drafting table, the end result.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16