Nature not plastic – Touch The Future

They would have been better off with a great big huge pile of rocks, a whole bunch of red clay, then all of this stuff, but I don’t know, where does this come from? Has a whole generation of kids, maybe more than a generation, forgotten what’s really, really important? It was a moment. As I got in the car to leave, we had a wonderful time. I laughed. It was really, the kid, I had probably read eight stories to him. I sang songs. But as I left it brought tears to my eyes because what’s real? What’s authentic? That wasn’t real at all. I can’t imagine growing up in a home like that. I think the reason people do that is because there are victims of advertising.

Things to think about

When you look at your classroom or home environment for children, is there too much?
What can be changed to make the child’s environment more real and less manufactured?
Do you know how to reduce the plastic toys in children’s lives? Have you fallen victim to advertising?
Toys are tools for learning and must be 90% child and only 10% toy. How much of your space for children fits that criteria? How many of your toys can be taken apart or changed by the child?
How much of the natural world is brought indoors for children to explore?

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

One of the great challenges for us adulterated-adults is to enter into and become as little children. To relate to children or, for that matter, any living thing, we must silently attune to their state of being. Instead, most often, we expect them to conform to who and what we are. That’s crazy, impossible. Relating means shared meaning. To share in the meaning with a child experience I must become, at least empathically, who that child is and act from that. Then and only then will she trust and respect the relationship. As the intellectual-verbal habits of mind slow down and even end, our sense perceptions grow more present and intense. The light appears brighter. The deafening roar of the motorcycle and smell of diesel exhaust take center stage. These are always there but we don’t notice them. How can we lead our children into dominion over themselves and their world without the trust and respect shared meaning implies? We can punish and reward, bribe and explain, twist behavior to meet our expectations, but all these deny who the flowering child is this moment. How can they trust someone who doesn’t see and respect who they are?

We have an auction every year where we raise funds for the school. It’s one of the ways we have of raising money. I donate a couple things. We donate a concert. I also donate an evening at home with the child, a beautiful afghan made by a woman who is 90 years old and I go to this home and I sing songs and I read as many books as the child wants me to read in an evening. And these are parents who are in the school and I know they care about me and I know they care about the philosophy. I know they believe the philosophy and it was almost more than I could bear when I saw all of the plastic. It was a room that is bigger than you can imagine, filled with plastic stuff for kids. Plastic fruit, plastic food, plastic this and plastic that.

There was nothing real, nothing really authentic in that house. It just took my breath away. Now these are people who believe in me. They would have been better off with a great big huge pile of rocks, a whole bunch of red clay, then all of this stuff, but I don’t know, where does this come from? Has a whole generation of kids, maybe more than a generation, forgotten what’s really, really important? It was a moment. As I got in the car to leave, we had a wonderful time. I laughed. It was really, the kid, I had probably read eight stories to him. I sang songs. But as I left it brought tears to my eyes because what’s real? What’s authentic? That wasn’t real at all. I can’t imagine growing up in a home like that. I think the reason people do that is because there’s victims of advertising. I would like to make it really, really, really clear, I think a certain amount of toys are really important otherwise you feel too needy. A million blocks would be too many. All math concepts are worked out in blocks. I really want kids to have particular toys. I bought my kids toys but there’s a line there. Can I take this and can I change it? Can I adapt it? Can I make it my own? Those kinds of things are important. It’s important to have things to throw. It’s important to have things that you can fly.

None of this could be changed or adapted. The fact that we would have plastic food is just, and there it is out there. I have to tell you that about a year ago I went to a toy store just to kind of see what was available and thinking about my grandchildren, what could I, it was the holidays so what would I buy? Almost every toy was connected to learning something. The minute you get into that place, that’s how it happens. You’ve got to play around with things and take them apart and make them your own if they’re going to be meaningful. Well that’s the last thing people want kids to do with a toy that costs that much money, that can only be, buttons can be pushed. We just simply, we’ve gone too far past knowing. We didn’t have those kinds of childhoods and we don’t know how to do it for our children.