Research and personal experiences of so many parents and adults involved with children have proven time and again that children learn through experiences. While this knowing this helped us work around AJ’s requirements as she was growing, there was a missing link to this equation that made some of our efforts fruitless.
AJ enjoys her outdoors environment. She absolutely enjoys exploring the spaces and engaging in endless physical activity! However, there was one thing she never did – use her hands to play with the mud. We tried everything – enjoyed playing in the mud ourselves; had her walk past children who were playing in the mud; gave her gardening tools, a bucket, a cup as sand toys to play; but nothing worked. It felt like we had done something wrong, probably the pandemic didn’t allow us to introduce her to playing with mud at the ‘right age’, probably another adult in the environment made her feel mud on the hands was not ok or all the cleaning we had to do during the pandemic made her feel that was the norm! A year passed and AJ never played with mud. Although the anxiety was long gone, every time we went to the park, we hoped to see her indulge in playing with the mud!
A year later and 145 kilometres away from home, the unexpected happened! We were in Mysuru for a holiday and one leisurely evening we decide to go to The Hobby Place to indulge her in some painting time. While the minimum age limit for this place for 5 years, they were more than happy to accommodate AJ for the evening while AJ’s Dad decided to try his hand at the potter’s wheel. AJ finished her painting and decided she wanted to go to her Dad. She found her Dad at the potter’s wheel and stopped to observe the lady working next to him. Fifteen minutes later she finally breaks from her observation (in my opinion, meditation), walks to her Dad, takes his hand off the wheel and confidently says ‘I’ll do’. Twenty minutes in and accepting help only when she thought she needed it, she made a bowl!
Finally, we found the missing link. AJ decided to work with mud through observation and applying that in a constructive experience through purposeful work. In our mud story ‘purposeful’ and ‘constructive’ were the missing links. It suddenly occurred to us that she has bee doing this all through!
Here is what we learnt from AJ this time!
Children learn through observation, exploration, and constructive experience through purposeful work! Undermining a child’s ability by giving them pretentious toys will only make them feel looked down upon and hampers their natural course of development.
The need to learn is inherently present in a child. In the primitive world learning is a survival instinct. Hence, learning is an instinct present in the child.
Any interference from adults in the environment in the form of redirection, force or push hampers a child’s learning instinct. Children are explorers! They learn something when they feel the need for it and not from the guidance of an adult. Hence it is extremely important to create an environment that facilitates the child’s curiosity and exploration.
Help! Another urge that adults have, is to constantly offer help to children. This also hampers with their learning instinct. Never help children unless they ask for it. Unsolicited help negatively impacts their courage (to try something new), creativity (problem solving ability), and confidence (to face the consequences)!
Normalise failure and imperfection. Failure is also a learning experience. They learn one way not to do something. Learning is not about the result or the outcome, it is simply an experiential journey!
Let them observe, explore, create and experience life – that is the most natural way they learn!
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