Dirt is for walking – Touch The Future

The worst thing that’s happened, parents are always talking about park dates. We’re going to go to the park. Already at school, it’s almost the end of the year and parents are setting up park dates. We’re going to meet at the park. You know we wouldn’t think of meeting at home where kids could really wallow in what, the dirt, the sand, the mud, dig, play, take things apart, because we have this idea in our heads of what our homes are supposed to look like and certainly they wouldn’t look like anything we’d allow kids to do that. So we’d rather meet at the park. But there’s nothing really we can move around at the park, nothing that we can change.

Things to think about

How often do you take children to places where there is no set playground to play?
Do you invite children to your home and not worry about the mess?
How have parks changed since you were a child?
How is your outside space for children? Are they allowed to be outdoors and what tools do they have access to when exploring?

Highlights from Playful Wisdom
by Michael Mendizza featuring Bev Bos and Joseph Chilton Pearce

As each age and stage of development unfolds, it is our gift and great challenge to become as our children are and relate accordingly. A child at six weeks is nothing at all like the child of eighteen months or two years old will be. This demands a moment-by-moment attunement, a recalibration of our sensory, emotional and intellectual state, to attune to the child. And this implies a fundamental transformation of our identity at that moment. We can’t be really present and identifying with some cultural role at the same moment, be attuned to who and what that child is right now. Not doing so means that I am not paying attention, not really relating, not earning and renewing the child’s trust and respect upon which their entire life will rest. Some people meditate, practice mindfulness, chant or any number of other so-called spiritual practices. On close examination all these have a common root—to shut up, extinguish and clear away all the self-generated smog in our heads and to wake up to the sights, sounds, colors and so much more this miracle called a child has to offer. Being with children help us remember who we really are.

We live in a world that doesn’t know how to be with kids. There was a mother and her little kid who’s barely walking, walking down the sidewalk, and the little girl stepped off into the dirt and the mother said, “Oh no, no, no, dirt is not for walking in. The sidewalk is for walking on.” No, no, no, dirt is for walking on, it’s much easier on your knees and your legs and has uneven surfaces. The brain needs uneven surfaces. It’s amazing how far off we’ve gotten but it’s that public place that we’ve put children. What I notice too is that, and is it the worst thing that’s happened, parents are always talking about park dates. We’re going to go to the park. Already at school, it’s almost the end of the year and parents are setting up park dates. We’re going to meet at the park. You know we wouldn’t think of meeting at home where kids could really wallow in what, the dirt, the sand, the mud, dig, play, take things apart, because we have this idea in our heads of wh

at our homes are supposed to look like and certainly they wouldn’t look like anything we’d allow kids to do that. So we’d rather meet at the park. But there’s nothing really we can move around at the park, nothing that we can change. What happens at the park I have really, I think, and I think my parents know what kids can and cannot do. They can’t share. They can’t take turns. I think that my parents understand that but then they get out, they go to a public place where the rest of the people don’t understand that, and so then they’re always fraught with anxiety because they’ve got to explain these kinds of things to other people. What keeps parents from just inviting people over to their house and just letting it go?

I don’t know whether it’s the kind of houses we’re building today, whether it’s there aren’t any yards, or we don’t understand. When I was a child we had neighbors who all had four or five kids, we all met around the kitchen table. We had coffee and the kids dug holes in the back yard and played. There’s a piece missing now. We have to meet at the park. We have park dates. And then we complain about the park because there really isn’t all that much to do. Up and down the slide. Maybe swing for awhile. But for it to be real for children and authentic it has to be able to be changed and to be moved and we’ve just gotten so far away from that.