The magical child

My daughter is magical. She has an amazing ability that no matter how annoying she is, you can't help but love her. I think most parents feel this about their children. But, that is not what makes her magical.

Children are completely innocent and ultimately curious. This combination means that they are not bound by the normal constraints of an adult. They do not need to worry about political correctness or how they look doing something and they don't worry about what someone thinks of them. This frees them to explore the world unhindered until something teaches them that limitations do exist.

My daughter seems to be one child who is a little less unbounded than many and she is about as stubborn as they come and when she wants to do something, she will repeat it until she gets it the way she wants it. But as said, there are limitations.

Some of these limitations are natural and physical like her ability to balance or climb and some are human rule based like the things her parents would prefer her to do or not do. When it comes to making life easier for ourselves as parents, we have failed quite miserably as we do our best to let her explore without our preferences getting imposed.

The challenge in my opinion is finding the balance where a child is able to safely learn the natural limitations reality imposes without conflating the human ones as natural. In my view, the difference between the natural rules is that it allows for a maximisation of possibilities whereas the human ones are a reduction from that point.

As adults, many of our limitations are self-imposed by a set of rules and values that we have taken on-board and into our programming. We then use this often blind rule book to evaluate and navigate our world. Those that are the most creative play by a different set of rules or perhaps, a lower set.

Children not having these rules are able to create their actions and thoughts without a rule book at all. When my daughter dances, she dances freely and does not care if anyone is watching. She learned to spin yesterday and spun until she was dizzy and fell over. She laughed so much while her eyes and body came to terms with the new feelings. Today she was spinning, but not until dizzy. She seems to have made a note in her book.

As children grow, the rule book gets heavier and heavier and more and more influenced by external sources who want everyone to conform to a certain kind of behavioural set. A culture, a belief system, a political side all get pushed upon them through implicit and explicit means. This leads to a population of people who are more similar in 'nature' but have less diversified thinking to solve problems faced.

School is likely the biggest killer of creativity history has ever known as children are subjected to a one-size policy with hurdles that are set regardless of height. A child is encouraged to 'do well' at tasks regardless of their interest or even the practicality of the tasks at all. They are then measured to make sure they are cookie cutter representations of society.

The next killer of creativity is the entertainment media where people are continually absorbed into consumptive entertainment rather than developmental entertainment. The mass nature of these sources means large cross-sections of the world are pulled into the vortex of similarity, and this is happening at ever younger ages.

Our formative years are vital in the development of our adult selves and we are continually organising a world for our children based on linear learning and pre-formed activity. Children are less and less exposed to the experience of being free, free meaning, having nothing to do.

No child is bored anymore as there is a phone app to keep them busy in the trolley at the market, a new toy to flash and make sounds to entertain their eyes and ears and a whole lot of various activity babysitters for sports, dance, music. These things are not bad in small doses but, they cannot be the main course in my opinion.

It is in these formative years that children build their appetite for the future, create the rule set of many values and habits, and keep or lose their curious mind to explore and the creativity to solve. All children have a sense of wonder at the world until they are told the rules. It is the ones that keep looking regardless of the lessons that discover the various forms of beauty and solutions others have denied.

My role as a parent is to keep her alive, fed, happy and not destroy her abilities to build herself. This means making the space for her to explore, not filling the space for her to consume. I am hoping to not screw up and break her mind so that I can save her sense of curiosity so if she chooses, she can use her magical abilities to move mountains.

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]

My daughter teaches me more about life than any book, teacher or person ever has. She is magical because at times, I am more stubborn than a mountain.