My wife is away on an overnight work trip with her team, so it is just going to be Smallsteps and I in the evening, which doesn't happen too often, yet we always have fun. Despite us always having fun, she gets upset before my wife leaves that she isn't going to be home with us, as like many kids,
Smallsteps loves her Mummy more.
I don't take it personally. Much.
For tonight though, since we have a kitchen available, I thought we could have something she hasn't tried before to eat, fresh mangoes. She doesn't know about this yet, but I am pretty sure she will like them.
While these kinds of fruits are often available in the stores these days, they are generally not very good when I have bought them (especially considering the price), but these ones looked pretty good for once and smell great. After living in the tropics of Australia for almost a decade, I become accustomed to being spoiled for choice in regards to quality fresh fruit, as well as seafood, which I miss a lot.
Spoiled.
Seems to be the word of the week at the moment, as it has come up several times in very different conversations. This morning, it was a client talking about how he hopes his grandchild won't be spoiled by their father (his son), because at least in his opinion, the child can do what they want and there are essentially no other activities other than screens. Obviously this is common now for many, but like my client, I am "old-fashioned" and think kids need to build the practical basics.
When I mention some of the activities I do with Smallsteps to parents, it is quite often that I hear the "but children have to have fun too" comments, under the assumption that Smallsteps isn't having fun learning. It is common these days apparently, that people connect consumer entertainment as fun, and learning as not fun - no matter what the kids actually think of these things.
For example, a couple days ago Smallsteps and I spent an hour and a half talking about percentages and fractions, using various things we had around us to illustrate the ideas. It was fantastic and we were laughing so much over things, and seeing her eyes light up as she understand things, was amazing. She had a ball and while she isn't going to be an engineer any time soon, it is about process.
When kids learn from television, essentially they are learning from the facts that they then repeat from memory, but not the processes to apply and adjust them on the fly. It is like learning the entire contents of a dictionary, yet still being unable to speak the language - like the 2015 French Scrabble champion. And, I believe that learning these processes in the formative and younger ages, affects the ability to both learn and apply them in the future.
I think that this could be part of the difference where there are some people who are "book smart" but have low practical ability, compared to those who are both able to learn and apply what they have learned in a wide and often creative array of applications.
For us at least, the time we spend together doing these things is not lesson time, it is quality time, and Smallsteps laps it up, she loves it. While she knows she is learning as we speak about it, I don't think she realizes there are lessons, rather it is more just "rules of the game".
She is spoiled.
As an adult, I wish I was given this kind of attention from my parents, as perhaps I would have been a more motivated student. Not to pass tests, but to learn the basics so that when I was free to do as I chose, I would choose to learn more by applying what I know and fleshing it out through trial and error. Instead, I lived the life of the stereotypical, uninspired, middle-of-the-road student, only there because I had to be and had nothing better to do.
It is no wonder most parents think learning is not fun.
It is a projection judgement, where their experience is clouding their opinion, and they make the assumption that because they didn't find learning fun, no one finds learning fun. And, I see it in some of Smallsteps' friends, where the songs they sing and the topics they reference, are all from the shows they watch. They spend their childhoods speaking other people's words and I think that this leads to them not ever being able to find their own voice.
We all project onto our children though and due to them being from us and learning from us, there is always going to be some degree of reflection of us in them, which is why we should be careful with what we illustrate. Make a child feel that learning is not fun,
and they will learn not to learn.
Taraz
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