Once upon a time, there was a small little girl who used to stay in a city in a small little house. It was a fast city but the life of this little girl was untouched by the fast pace.
She used to wake up in her own sweet world taking ages to brush her teeth while adjusting her frilly green color frock which was her favorite. While she brushed her teeth, her focus was on the lace of her frock as she admired herself and her frock. She was very happy living her life. Then she would eat the most delicious food in the world cooked by her mom. She used to play and play with her younger sister-sometimes fighting with her and sometimes laughing with her. Sometimes she would help her mom and at most times she used to be lost in her own sweet world of imagination and creativity. She had the most amazing time with her parents sharing about every little thing that happened with her -some of which was real and some were made up.
She had a lovely life where nature was her best friend and she would live in its lap. She would play under the mango trees, almond trees, jamun, guava and mulberry trees. Her favorite time used to be searching for the fallen almonds, fallen jamun, or mulberry and to clean them up with her dress and pop it into her mouth and just relish it.
Playing in the big playgrounds and running till she was exhausted used to feel like heaven to her. Getting wet in the rain, jumping in the puddles, smelling of the mud drinking the rainwater as she too drank it by opening her mouth under the wide vast blue sky made her feel divine.
Her house was old and it would leak in the rains as she kept the many buckets in her house under the leaking roof. That too was a game for her. She would study while keeping an eye on which bucket was full of water and draw all that she saw and colored them with her own colors. She was a very happy soul living each and every moment.
She slowly learned to navigate away from her safe little house onto the roads and buy things that she wanted. Those were the orange candies, the mint candies, and the yummy jeera golis. She learned how to calculate and do maths.
And then slowly she grew up and the foundation work of learning was laid by engaging in all the lovely activities and experiencing them first hand. She was ready to enter into the teenage and the adult world which was ready to embrace her with its challenges and gifts. Because she loved her childhood, so very much, she decided to just play all through her life and start working with kids rather PLAYING with them.
And one day she began a mother. This little girl realized that that was the most important and precious moment of her life.
And then she looked forward to doing the very same things that she did as a child. She was ready to take the blanket of childhood on her and her son and get absorbed into her own self. But then, things had changed.
New machines and things were invented. Her son’s kids didn't want to play with the mud or in the playgrounds – they were scared of allergies and about getting dirty. She was ridiculed for allowing her son do the silly stuff that she did as a child.
Most of the things that she had done during her childhood were to be seen on handheld devices. Most of the things that she smelled, touched and tasted were to be seen on youtube. She was all confused holding her son’s hand and flowing against the tide trying to give him the same beautiful experience trying to make him fall in love with nature. But deep down, she knew intellectually for which she was qualified and instinctually that the experience is needed and things needed to be felt rather than intellectualized.
Ideas need to come naturally to kids and there is no “one size fits all” approach to these little beings. Every parent was trying to fit a circular peg into a square hole. Kids were made to do things which were not their inclination but reading, writing, concepts, and grades were important...
She was unhappy to see the divorce between nature and these kids. There was no time for these little ones and most of them were put in for “babysitting” or handheld devices became their dangerous babysitters.
The experiences that she got every day which made beautiful, strong and rich connections in her brain were given once in a while to these little kids.
Everyone called this as the evolution and they wanted her to flow and grow with it. But this girl kept telling them -we are mammals. We have mammary glands and the way we are different from the reptiles is that we take care of our young ones by giving them emotional support and by connecting with them.We stay together and share our pains and sorrows with each other. That is how evolution happens -she tried to explain from reptiles to mammals to human BEings.
But all in vain...
As young mammals, children also needed the same common things -love, emotional connect and support and REAL EXPERIENCE. Feelings are very important still and these need to be understood and acknowledged by the caregiver especially in the first seven years of a child’s life. We have not updated as a physical body and our brain still needs to get charged and connections need to be formed by participating in real life experiences.
She is still trying to PLAY with these little kids while the little kids are getting shaped into mini-adults and most of the skills are developed in a lab or classes only rather than in nature too...
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