Listen to thisWill your work with children be a time of beginnings or of endings? A time of making connections or of severing relationships? Will their time with you be a time of addition and multiplication, or a time of subtraction and division? A time of growing or shrinkings? A time of rainbows or of quicksand? Will your journey together be one of “No Frills” “No Stops” “No Detours” “Do it My Way”– or will you take the scenic route? Will you brake for animals, autumn colours, ideas, surprises, poetry, serendipity?
What will you and your kids make happen together; how will you shape your time together? Whatever you choose to enrich with imagination, wonder, attention or other ways of looking, becomes part of the reality of a child – and is for a little while filled with magic.
Enriching
What can you share with your kids? How will you provide a safe place for
them where they feel free to explore and pursue the “sweet smell of
success”? The children will be waiting, waiting for something special to
happen to them, and for that precious time that you might have with
them, you can offer something that they will remember for the rest of
their lives. Believe that you can do something beautiful in their lives,
and that they can grow beyond the hurt and pain and rejection of their
past – and they will surprise you; they will amaze you.
Safety first
Your children will only grow with you if they feel safe. They will only
learn to see the beauty of their world when they are safe from the
humiliation, the put downs, the harsh criticism and being ignored. They
will trust you with their feelings only if they feel that you value
their ideas, that you will not betray them, that you will protect their
dignity as fiercely as the wild protect their young. Mauree Applegate
warns, “A child will no sooner turn out the pockets of his mind to one
he does not trust than a shy boy will turn out the treasures of his
pockets to a stranger. He has so many wonderings, questions, fears and
dreams – and so few adult friends with whom he can share them”. Virginia
Tanner reports: “the child of four seems to possess tremendous creative
energy, but by the age of nine seems to have it so diminished that it is
no longer a source of rich fulfilment. Could it be that through ... lack
of vision, hours of unguided television, stereotyped toys, we are
stifling the very thing that will bring them their richest moments of
happiness?”
Starting with you
Reach for the things that have become important in your life. Get in
touch with your deepest feelings and concerns, your strengths and
weaknesses, and cut through the layers of inhibition, programmed
responses, and stereotyped answers. Be willing, yourself, to experiment
with new ideas – even at the risk of their failing – and ask yourself
questions. Never stop asking, never stop looking, and giving, and
communicating. You can share the wonder of your world, and in so doing,
help your children to find the wonder of theirs. The challenge we will
face in our work with children will not be to “make everything better” but to help them to look beyond the obvious, and to face their world
with renewed hope and courage. It will be our task to challenge them to
think, wonder, imagine and express their own questions, answers and
ideas – without tension or fear. Remember, beauty is not seen when one
is afraid. All people search their world for what is important to them.
They see what they want. A tired child looks for a place to rest, a
lonely child looks for a friend. In other words, when children are
physically well, when they feel safe, and sense that they belong, they
are ready to see their world, and then develop a sense of appreciation
for it.
Some guidelines
Children gain an appreciation of beauty and a feeling of wonder – by
doing things. This means sensing, feeling and responding. We cannot
force children to see beauty as we might do; we can only give them the
opportunities. We can sensitise them to the splendour of a sunset, to
the rhythm in rainfall, to the expressions in someone’s face – but how
they perceive these things is personal to each individual. Opportunities
for aesthetic experiences enrich life for any child. It does not matter
whether an activity is useful for anything else; at times, doing
something for the sake of doing it is enough. Children find things
exciting for many different reasons: it might be because things are
colourful, different, changing, moving, wierd, etc. When planning a
stimulating activity for children in order to increase their aesthetic
appreciation, ask yourself the following questions:
Can they experience it with more than one sense?
Can they interact with it?
Is it interesting for them?
Is it colourful?
Is it rewarding “fun, adventurous, exciting, intriguing?
Is there an element or serendipity or surprise about it? Often the most meaningful learning takes place in those unanticipated surprise moments which occur in the midst of the humdrum of the day.
If you are open and flexible, and responsive to the children and their needs and interests, you will discover many opportunities for meaningful discovery. Teach your children to SEE life. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye". Teach children to OBSERVE. We can’t appreciate or sympathise until we learn to SEE. We can’t empathise or understand until we learn to LISTEN. We can’t forget ourselves until we learn to notice others.
First step
The first step toward sensitivity is observing. There are things to be
learned from everything we see; and metaphors for life everywhere we
look. Russian novelist Dostoevski said: “Love all of God's creations,
both the whole, and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of
light. Love each separate thing." American botanist George Washington
Carver said: “I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting
station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if only we will
listen.” You don’t necessarily have to go to a national park or a vast
forest, of climb a high mountain to experience nature. We don’t have to
look very hard to find nature. We just have to look hard to really see
it.
Walk ... then talk
Start with things. Take a walk with your kids and see what you
can observe together. Try to notice things you have never seen before.
Think and talk about why they are the way they are. Look for comparisons
to make between what you see and some aspect of your life. Our childen
have missed so much. When other children were learning about things,
ours were often preoccupied with the uncertainties, the fears and the
losses in their lives. Now, with less experience and less time, they
have to catch up. They have to make increasingly difficult decisions in
life without knowing enough and without understanding enough. We start
with inanimate things, but soon enough they must be able to see and
understand the more complex phenomena of people. Unlike nature, the
important and meaningful things in people lie beneath the surface and it
takes more than sharp eyes to see them.
Awareness of people
“When you look at rocks or trees or mountains they stay put and invite
you to spend as long as you like looking and understanding. People don’t stand still at all. They move, their emotions change, their needs
evolve, and they may intentionally not show you on the outside what they
are feeling on the inside.” But we can teach our children to see people – to become aware of others. Wilfred Peterson attempted to define
awareness as: identifying yourself with the hopes, dreams, fears and
longings of others. It is learning to interpret the thoughts, feelings
and moods of others through their words, tones, inflections, facial
expressions and movements. It is stretching the range of eye and ear. It
is taking time to look and listen and comprehend. And Maltbie Babcock
said, “Life is what we are alive to. It is not length but breadth. To be
alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making and not to
goodness, kindness, purity, love, God, history, poetry, music, flowers,
stars and eternal hope – is to be all but dead."
Communicate
“The second flame in the universe is the flame of language. People look
for each other with words of fire, and a tongue of fire that stammers is
better than a head full of brains that is silent.” – (From a Chassidic
tale) Again, begin with yourself. You are vital in encouraging free,
natural and easy communication. You are a role model, a prompter, a
helper, an audience. Your response to the child's utterances will
encourage or inhibit the free flow of communication. Share yourself with
your children. Share your favourite book, food, word, song, something,
anything “because sharing gives the message that you care enough and
are willing to give of yourself and your life.
Emphasise the good
Encourage Happy Talk times by helping youngsters to get in touch with
the things that are right and good in their world. Make time for them to
give themselves completely to listening experiences: play music to them,
read to them, and help them to hear the colour and brightness of music,
the melody of words. Help them compile a list of their “most beautiful
words” and their “most hated words”. Give them a “feeling” vocabulary
with which to express their inner thoughts. If your own mind is filled
with wonder and the joy of life, then your work with children will
reflect that enriching attitude. You will be able, then, to encourage,
to teach, to guide. You will be able to learn again to see the world
with the eyes of a child.
Benefits of sensitivity
Children (and adults) gain more insight into their world and thus become
more sensitive to others. Children are more likely to become
self-learners, because they experience the joy of discovery. Life is
more exciting when one has the capacity to be puzzled and surprised.
Children are more tolerant when they have learned that there are many
possible ways of seeing and doing things. Children become more
independent when they have learnt to think and ask questions. People who
are open to and appreciative of beauty be come exciting to be with, and
to learn from and share with.
Give children opportunities to experience with all of their senses, to get in touch with their inner world – butterflies in the tummy, the lump in the throat, the glow of pleasure in achievement – and finally to see beyond the obvious with their eyes and their hearts.
References
Creative Activities for Young Children 3rd Edition, Mary Mayesky, Donald Neuman & Raymond Wlodkowski, Delmar Publishers Inc., New York. (1985)
Teaching Children Sensitivity, Linda & Richard Eyre, Ballantine Books, New York, (1987)
Teaching Language Arts Creatively. Mimi Brodsky Chenfeld, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, Orlando Florida (1987)
The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Piper Books Ltd, London (1974)
