Five Things To Do For The Child Inside You
Image by qwrrty
For the past few days I have been staying with a single mother I know with two children (4.5 and 7). It was quite an experience and I feel I have learnt some things from it.
1. Our world is hostile to children. From the size of all the stuff in our world, to the rigidity of timetabling, we simply don’t organise ourselves to accommodate children and their needs. We have tables sized for adults and then spend years telling children to sit properly at things which weren’t designed for them. We want children to stop playing on schedule (that different children have different rhythms is not taken into account). Why isn’t it common for families to have furniture that could be adjusted as children grow? - it can’t be that hard to design. After the youngest years (where we have high chairs) the needs of children are simply forgotten. The result is on-going conflict with children (this is unpleasant for both children and adults).
There is much rhetoric about ‘family values’ and how children are the future, and how important they are. The whole way our society is organised shows this to be a lie. One of the great gurus of the twentieth century, Krishnamurti, once said, “We say we love children, but wars still exist.” This is perhaps the extreme of this situation but it makes the point well.
2. Children live in the here and now. The ‘here and now’ is a big theme in the self-improvement field. If you wish to know how easy you find it to live in the here and now, all you have to do is spend a day with a seven and four year old. Their ability to focus on what they are doing is extraordinary. And can be quite a challenge to adults who want them to shift their focus to accommodate the adult world’s timetable. If you stop playing the game they soon let you know.
Adults have a longer time horizon than children - we’ve lived longer, so this isn’t surprising. Adults plan and prepare (this is good and makes life easier for children as well as adults) but this often means we do things with ‘our mind on something else’ and we often miss the magic of that being in the present moment can bring.
3. Children have enormous vitality. A good test of fitness is keeping up with a 4.5 and 7 year old. And they need ways to expend it. We aren’t good at helping children direct their energy constructively - helping them find alternatives when they can’t do what they want when they want (usually right here right now!), having areas that are safe for them, having activities that are designed for them that can be done without lots of preparation.
4. “Fun” is strange. When I try to find other words for “fun” I come up empty. It is certainly not planned and scheduled. It is hard to explain what it is except to say “childlike”. There can be rules. It is done for its own sake - fun isn’t to get us something else, it is it’s own reward.
5. Children can be remarkably smart at manipulating adults.
Thinking about this has led me to a thought experiment: imagining a world designed to accommodate children - not one where they dominate but one where their needs are taken account of. A world where children are safe most of the time. I suspect it would be different to our current society. My imagination is that there would be a wider variety of furniture. That our timetables would be less rigid (classes would be less regimented). There would need to be ways of getting around that are safe for pedestrians - cars would need to be less dominant in our cities and suburbs. Healthy food would be readily available and excessively fatty and sugary food would be rare. There would be places for children at every large meeting of adults - and the meetings wouldn’t go too long either.
It strikes me that this would be a better world for adults too. This seems strange, we’re adults after all - not children - aren’t we?
I think there are reasons why a world good for children is good for adults too. I think we all are children to some extent (we carry our childhood with us). I think part of the reason that we have designed a child unfriendly world is that we are uncomfortable with our vulnerability and our emotions (our childlikeness). We devise plans and schedules as if our thoughts and thinking were all that mattered - in meetings little attention can be given even to basic things like toilet breaks. Could we really design cities as harsh and hard and ugly as ours if we cared about children or were in touch with our childlikeness? I don’t think so.
In short, my time with my friend’s children leads me to make a plea to humanise our world.
How can we do this here and now, without needing the whole world to change first? Here are some places to start:
1. Spend time with kids when we can, doing what they want. If we can be hospitable and unhurried then spending time with kids can be delightful and refreshing.
2. When we spend time with kids, not thinking about other stuff. This may mean setting aside a particular amount of time and setting an automatic timer so we don’t have to keep checking the clock.
3. Include stuff in your life for the childlike part of you. It may be making mud pies or playing with sand at the beach, going exploring, a beautiful print on your wall, listening to particular sorts of music. Something that pleases the child inside you.
4. Loosen up scheduling as much as possible. An incident from the life of British comedian Ronnie Barker to make the point. He and a women who had a cold were walking to a rehearsal for a show they were both in. She remarked that she would perform even though she had a cold because, “The show must go on.” Ronnie Barker responded with words to the effect of, “Why? No one will die. Even if the show is cancelled it won’t be a huge deal for any member of the audience if they have to re-schedule. Even if they miss the show altogether, it’s not such a big deal.” It is all to easy for us to get tunnel vision about things having to happen and right on time too!
5. Do some things just because they are fun.
Is this a tall order? Yes. And how tall an order shows how hostile our world is to children. But doing even a little of any one of these things will make our lives more enjoyable.
I’d love to hear what you do for the childlike part of you. For me its things like: long warm baths, reading comic novels (if you haven’t discovered the writings of PG Wodehouse - especially Bertie and Jeeves - you owe it to yourself to. If you don’t like reading there are a series of DVD’s called ‘Jeeves and Wooster’.) just lying around daydreaming. What is it for you? Let me know in the comments.
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