The first place to be – nature

Twenty years ago one of the things I said in every workshop is that children were going public too soon. A child doesn’t need to be public. The expectations are that they will behave and don’t embarrass me. We don’t want them to do what’s natural. To run full bore. To yell or to weep or to, it’s a sense of delight that children have. And when you watch children and you watch how they’re dressed now, the things that people buy for them and the expectations is it’s not child-like. What it is – is miniature adults.

Things to think about

What outdoor spaces do you have for children that allow them to experience nature? Are they more designed by adults or is the natural world preserved?
How do you feel when you are in public with a child who is having strong feelings? How can you support that child without concern for others perceptions?
Do you educate the parents in your program about appropriate clothing for children? How and what do you tell them?
Do you allow for children to be barefoot in your care? Is it limited in anyway?
What principles are core to your program that allow for children to develop at their own pace? How do you keep the children young?
What do you do to make sure children feel a sense of belonging?

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

I remember reading that a child’s basic nature is etched by age five or six. Some speculate that we are mostly cooked by age three. I know for certain that our basic nature – are we safe, do we trust, do we feel our feelings and needs are appreciated and respected, is the world scary or a wonderland, are we kind or not – is formed while most fathers are rather distant, certainly by a child’s first or second year. Being a parent is the most important and difficult challenge we will ever face. It demands the highest qualities and capacities we can express every day, every minute, because someone is watching and becoming what they see and experience. A parent and educators first challenge is to do no harm. The second is to anticipate and meet every moment of every day in a way that opens, uplifts and expands our child’s limitless potentials. Doing no harm means meeting the challenges we face in ways that model the very best qualities that humanity has to offer, with playful care, a soft touch and a full heart. If this is what very young children experience – this is what they will become.

One of the things that I know about children is that the first place they need to be is in nature. It’s in the outside. It’s in the sand, the dirt and the water and the leaves and spinning and running, and running full bore. And that’s what I don’t see any more. What I see is they’re programmed. When you see children, 20 years ago, maybe 25 years ago one of the things that I always said in every workshop I did is that what I saw is that children were going public too soon. You know a child doesn’t need to be public.

So the expectations are is that they will behave and don’t embarrass me when you’re the adult with me. We don’t want them to embarrass us. We don’t want them to do what’s natural. To run. To run full bore. To yell or to weep or to, it’s a sense of delight that children have. And when you watch children and you watch how they’re dressed now, the things that people buy for them and the expectations is it’s not child-like. What it is is miniature adults. What I see, it’s such an interesting thing is when you look you see 80 year olds dressed like 16 year olds and you see 3 year olds dressed like 16 year olds. So nobody wants to be old but nobody wants the young to be really young either. The first thing that you notice when you come to our place is you notice that the kids don’t have shoes on. That’s the most natural thing in the world. It’s interesting to me, a little boy who started this school just in January came in and he said to me, “When do the lessons start?” Sally and I both, my co-teacher and I both looked at each other with kind of a, we kind of took a deep breath and Sally said to him, “Outside. The lessons start outside.” And he went outside and the minute he saw the sand and the dirt and the water and all the shovels and the wagons and hose, she didn’t have to say anything else. He’s never asked again about the lessons. And I kind of think that that’s what adults expect.

You know most of us, one of the issues for me is, and it’s even more now than it ever has been, most adults have childhood amnesia. You do not, except through story, when people tell you stories about what you did, you don’t remember being 3. You don’t remember being 2. You might remember a little bit about being 4. So what we remember is perhaps our struggles. How hard it was. How people didn’t seem to understand us. Sometimes it’s the trouble we got in to. So we don’t remember being 3 and 4. So when we come in to a program what we’re thinking about is what we did later on and our struggle and we want it to be different for our child, not understanding what little kids really need to develop that sense of self.

That’s the thing that you have to have in the beginning, is that sense of self, that sense of belonging, understanding that. It didn’t take the little boy 30 seconds to know that no matter what somebody has said before, the lessons, the ABC’s, the this or that. It doesn’t take kids very long to go deep and to understand that. But I think parents struggle with it more because they feel left behind.