Guiding development: The
following article is a more complete description of what I can often only share
in part with parents and educators I encounter. It
is advice about the subtle ways in which we accidentally rush
children's development academically, physically, socially, and
spiritually, and put them at risk of not reaching their
potentials as human beings. Everyone who is around
children can benefit
children
and themselves
by learning
to observe and appreciate the innate wisdom within the developing human
being.
Today, children grow up within
very different
physical and social environments than they are designed to develop
in. Thus, it is harder for the self-developing capacities of the child to find
the right outer experiences and social milieu to reinforce optimal inner experience. The more one
adjusts the experience of the child to the child's developmental
needs, the better one begins to see this unfolding for its genius,
and the more one feels
hesitant to interfere very much with it or to try to direct
or rush
it.
Teaching astronomy to children
by
Marcie Matthews
Vernal equinox,
means spring's
equal night,
and refers to the astrological start of spring when day and
night are of equal length all over the earth. This equal night
happens exactly twice per year, and is referred to as autumnal
equinox in the fall. During both equinoxes, the earth's constant tilt
toward north in the direction of the North Star, Polaris, along
with its orbital position, make for an exciting moment when
both
northern and southern hemispheres are, relative to one another,
equidistant from the sun. At all other times of year, the earth's
axis is tilted either toward or away from the sun, so that
one hemispheres is nearer and one is farther away,
establishing
summer
or winter and relatively longer or shorter days.
Learning
comes best from the inside out:
We
can often only fully comprehend such complex concepts when adults,
and then, in a gesture of enthusiasm and kindness, may try to
explain them to the little folks in our midst. It is very hard for us
grown-ups to resist today's modern
mission to introduce children to concepts or skills as soon as
possible to give them an edge or in order to share with them our
eureka experiences. However, when children are asked to grapple
with notions whose complexity reaches well beyond their current
imaginative powers, develop skills beyond their
physical
abilities, or understand moral notions that do not
take into account
their maturity levels, it can make them feel anxious, rather
than confident, about learning and maturing. It can also interfere
with learning in a similar vein as has been demonstrated in identical
twin research studies whereby one twin, who is deliberately
taught to do something such as climb stairs, eventually falls behind
in that skill as compared to the twin who learns it through experience.
In other words, well -intentioned hurrying can limit abilities later. Indeed rushing development
is never advisable, but especially worrisome during infancy. For
example, friends of mine who had dutifully towed
their baby and eventually toddler everywhere they went in
order to properly expose her to new experience (promoted by child
development experts during the 1990's to promote early speech - falsely
conected to higher potential), caused their child to
indeed speak very early. Her first
sentence was famously; "When go home?"Another mystery and
depth of human development is that it requires important
pauses and even brief
regressions when the developing person's whole inner self is
reorganizing.
Fancy
talk'n may develop ahead of fancy think'n:
One
of the most common reasons for unintentional
rushing of children's development comes because of the amazing
ability most children have to learn language if provided the opportunity - but don't let their
language abilities fool you! Young children often acquire complex
language skills before they can understand complex ideas. Because of
this, we adults and older children easily fall into the trap
of conversing with young children as if we expect them to
understand complex concepts or the ups-n-downs and ins-n-outs of
life in a mature manner. In addition, young children are
sometimes very observant and their intuitive wisdom can be uncanny,
but we should not mistake these tender abilities for
adult
reasoning. If we do overestimate their
reasoning, we can easily fall into unfairly reprimanding
them if
one day they seem to know better and the next day they prove not
to - in truth they often never knew better.
In addition,
because children's language can make them sound like "old souls,"
we may rely on young children as confidants or
expect them to make too many decisions on their own.
It might feel as
if it imparts respect, but it is better to rely more on modeling
moral behavior and decision-making and let children learn
quietly about right and wrong by our example, not necessarily through
expectation, logical debate, or explaination.
In
older cultures,
renowned for their strong but gentle ways with children,
adults recognize when taking a young child by the
hand or
picking them up and leading them toward positive activities and away
from inciting, confusing, or hurtful ones, is better than explaining
or requiring them to behave according to adult logical or
moral
understandings.
If
one
does need to explain things to a child around age 6 or younger, in
general let answers and experiences be
wrapped in beautiful
stories, which they can visualize and relate to, and that lack
what might be for them harsh realities.
Early
learning with a stress on one subject may slow learning in other
subjects and learning in general:
"But
they ask for it!" Yes, they do. It is easy to also be led astray
by little children themselves as to their readiness for learning
certain things: At very young ages they pick up notions about the
relative importance society or a significant other places on
"getting" certain things or acquiring certain skills, and
children may impatiently request help. An obvious example is young
children's engaging in sports or other competitive activities,
organized by adults, to live out the adults' needs for success in
things that they themselves would love to be better at.
Yes,
young children often seem to
quickly adjust and look forward to the adult-like organized activity
or learning, but remember that dogs used for fighting quickly learn
to love it, underneath however is an animal afraid of its own shadow. One of the most
prevalent examples of a disproportionate learning focus is the current culture around early reading. Society's attitudes
toward
early literacy,
narrowly defined as reading and writing, provoke both anticipation and
anxiety. Reading and writing are indeed important
skills,
but they are less essential to development of later literacy than
exposure
to a rich, repetitive oral tradition,
involving open-ended conversation and listening to and repeating
rhymes, stories, jokes, songs,
and games, and should be stressed in early education only if oral
language is lacking or children are not read many storybooks at home. Longitudinal studies done at Harvard
have shown literacy abilities by age 14 are most significantly effected
by the quality (and interestingly not quantity) of conversation
children engage in with care givers. Text-based literacy requires the simultaneous application of dozens of mental skills,
and once
learned it is then utilized constantly, audibly effecting
speech, and possibly reducing frequency and intensity of other types of
experience. Literacy education's dominance during young childhood
surely hinders
balanced development of the senses, beginning the modern tendency for humans to be too visually centered, like predators.
If you feel anxious about
your child's being ready for future academic or career success focus on
using richer language and using bigger words with them, and remember
the old
adage: "Once children begin to read, they stop reading from the
book of nature."
The
pitfalls of the "Why" stage:
Concerning
children's self-developing efforts, you might quip again that: "Well,
they are always asking why." Young children do go through "why" stages, but they are practicing the
language of thinking, as much or more than they are needing to abstract about reality.
Also, sometimes what they are really wanting is conversation or interaction rather than actually wanting to
know the whole darn complicated truth about everything. Sometimes
persistent "whys?" are simply a verbal form of fiddling
with a caregiver's hair or earlobe. Of course children want
to begin to see the connections between things, but the best
response
may
be a
story that relates aspects of reality within the context of the
child's developing mental framework. In other words, answering their
persistent whys should be a challenge for us to sensitively and humorously weave
increasing doses of reality into their imaginative world in a
way that fortifies it without toppling it.
The child is always right - in a way - at least we should let them feel they are
Along
with asking questions, children may act on their own out of their developing conceptualizations and frequently try explaining
their
own ideas about the way the world works. They are beginning to
practice finding answers on their own and, of equal importance, learn the language of
thinking. Practice in using their own words to explain ideas is the externalization of an inner activity that forms a
two-way dynamic; actually fortifying the ability to think. In
this way developing the "language of thinking" often precedes actually
understanding things. Ideally, adults should listen and respond to young
children's ideas while avoiding pointing out the gaping holes in the
logic (unless safety is an issue). Focus on introducing new language by
gently or playfully
rephrasing a young child's ideas in a slightly more sophisticated
way, as if we are asking a question we don't quite know the answer to
ourselves. In this way we are modelling the language of thinking and
encouraging creative pondering: both vital areas for developing
cognitive and metacognitive abilities later. Insisting on all
the
facts being straight during this process
can easily get in the way of a child's learning to think things
through on their own. If it helps, try to
think of listening to your child's reasoning as
explaying,
rather than explaining. Caregivers
who are confident that children will one day be very
bright, leave more space for children to be technically
wrong, fully expecting that children will eventually figure
everything out.
If
a child is overly concerned with
understanding everything, it can be a warning sign that they are
feeling stressed in
general about life and their ability to control their experience. There
is a correlation between over-intellectualizing and heightened anxiety. Remember:
possibly the single greatest contributor to
a higher IQ, as opposed to superficial smarts, is confidence in one's
ability to figure things out, and human confidence is fragile: correcting a
child's understandings too much can diminish
confidence in thinking and undermine the child's developing abilities.
Children
mistake the earth for a part of heaven:
Another
aspect of early childhood
requiring sensitivity and patience, is how to best
handle the connection young children have, or seem to have,
depending on one's beliefs, to the divine. Indeed little children
seem to happily mistake the earth for a sort of heaven populated by
adults and teens whom they mistake for enlightened spiritual beings -
"Who, me, deity? - no way!" Ironically, it is adults who often find
that
children seem, or are, nearer to the spiritual realm. We need to
honor these capacities and neither make too much, nor too little, of
them. Unfortunately, young
children's comments and questions usually attest to a wisdom that
will soon go
underground for much of their childhoods and young adulthoods. According to anthroposophical understandings, this
happens in order for them to reach a stage whereby
they will come
to rely almost purely on logic, devoid of much intuition, to solve problems.
Human development then proceeds further and, hopefully, as mature adults,
we
have learned to use intuition and intellect in concert with one another, otherwise known as, true intelligence.
To help
children feel protected by
the forces of goodness, we should strive to
minimize irreverent or materialistic experience or
conversation
around them:
Think
about the proverbial village that it would take to raise a child. It would be
ideally, in most ways, an old-fashioned village, if we were to
manifest it as best we could in our own children's lives.
It
would be simple and reverent of nature,
culture, and the spiritual or communal, rather than distorted by the
influence from the modern, materialistic, marketplace world. As an
antidote to the irreverence that abounds everywhere, children
can strongly benefit from a spiritual or religious practice
and
education at home or within a community.
Caregiver
or community led spiritual
experience, celebrations, stories, and rites of passage, will help
children connect with what is right and good and provide stories
about superheroes and superpowers that surpass the
commercially
created ones. Here again delaying learning to decode language by just a
year or two protects young children from media and advertisements, as
well as bumper stickers and T-shirts.
Around age nine children often
go through a
crisis of disenchantment when they become aware that not all adults
are good and wise and that they themselves are not in some sort of
heaven anymore. This should be as gentle a transition as possible, but because
we are often excited to see our children finally "wake up"
we again may unintentionally and prematurely push them to jumping
from age 9 to 27. Replacement of children's heavenly or
magical
interpretations of life should be a slow process.
Overstimulation
in general, and video stimulation specifically, causes hormonal,
neurological, and emotional changes:
Concerning
children's enthusiasm toward modern culture
you
may cry
once
again;
"But, they ask for it!" Yes, and with noisy tantrums if it
is denied. We human beings are drawn toward
what frightens
or stimulates or especially overstimulates
us. In ancient times there must have been natural checks and balances
on the availability of the outrageous, but in today's world our
innate drives cause us to be our own worst enemies. Somehow, within
our inborn desire to seek out novelty and adventure within a natural
landscape may lie the increasing
threat of society's demise. To satisfy our unlimited desires for
stimulation, we may indeed be traumatizing ourselves or at the very least dulling our perceptive abilities. To save ourselves we need to continue efforts
to reconsider what sort
of cultural experience and "landscapes" we expose children,
and ourselves, to.
What
the
world appears to be and to value on the outside fortunately or
unfortunately quickly becomes what our children's nervous systems,
bodies, and psyches adapt to. In choosing appropriate experiences
for children, Rudolf Steiner spoke about
learning
to decipher for children the
difference between fantasy and
the
fantastic.
Fantasy
involves imaginative stories told
orally, through theatre, or through books, and or activities that
connect experiences of nature or culture with values and ideas that
promote a beautiful, loving, and sustainable connection to the world.
With fantasy
there can be elements of surprise, adventure, and a
contrast
of light and dark, but it is kept securely in check and only there to accentuate the story.
Fantasy experiences should involve using the imagination actively
through mostly
listening, not passively through
mostly watching. When in the mid 90's Switzerland gave in to pressures to allow
the big European networks to televise within their borders, they did it
knowing that studies show it
would reduce the age of puberty on average by 1.5 years, thus lowering
the IQs of its citizens due to loss of playtime. And yes, it doesn't
take that
much television viewing per week to have that effect plus other
detrimental ones on the developing brain.
Try to observe a child's deeper
reactions to experiences
and stimuli: What for instance
is their mood and energy afterward or the next day or days? It is
superior to use the years before they are 15 or 16 to strengthen
their connection to what is old-fashioned and
nature-based, and limit experience with modern media. Try not to worry about them not being cool n'
media-hip when they are teens - eventual exposure to all things
modern is inevitable and awareness of such things ultimately
necessary. In their later teens or early twenties, if you have aimed
for fantasy not the fantastic, your children will strike other
children or young adults as truly
hip
- able to make fun and not just consume it, and able to
stand up to political, peer, and marketplace pressures. How to help them
be cool
in a healthy way?
Children can become plenty "cool" from working steadily with hands, head, and
heart together to serve others and to create their own fun.
Thank
you for your kind attention so far. So, finally, back to
astronomy....
It
is wonderful to explain to children younger than age 11 or 12 that vernal
is derived from the Latin ver meaning spring, while autumnal
relates to fall, equi
equal,
and nox
night, and to say; "Today, is a special day: Day and night are
of equal length!" telling them a nature or folk story about this or if they are older letting
them count the seconds down to
sunset,
or noting setting times of consecutive sunsets to observe the
trend, but to explain in detail without corresponding experience is abstracting for them, rather
than letting them have real experience and some day enjoying constructing
understanding themselves with minimal assistance, when
they are ready. Through observation and the arts strive to learn along
with them about why the seasons and sunset and sunrise are so beautiful
and at midday go ahead and rejoice in the sun at its zenith!
» » » » » » » » » »
The
harmonious
integration of the senses, emotions, and thinking: All of these aspects of the
developing child should evolve in concert with one another - with the
child as the head conductor! We adults are here to listen,
and bring refreshments, decide when its
playtime,
break time, and work time, as well
as guide, challenge, cheer, and occasionally correct. But mostly, we
are to patiently and lovingly support the unfolding rhythm, dynamic,
and beauty of a child's individual song as she or he gradually joins the world's
chorus.
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Woods
Play Day Camp 
rfect
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