All I can say Gem is yes, yes and yes. You write so beautifully about children as precious and unique individuals and so much of this chimes with me. I notice with my grandchildren's school reports how they tend to say - this is going really well and that needs to improve - as if they know where the child needs to be. As if there is a blueprint for each year group. I don't like that!
Thank you so much, Davina. I’m so glad the piece landed for you, and that means a lot to me. Yes, such a good, simple, everyday example you mention there. These kinds of judgements are often taken at face value, yet, as you point out, can be quite different when we stop and examine the assumptions underneath them. The system can so easily favour standardisation over individualisation.
Hi. I have been of an African safari for a month and so am a bit tardy in responding. Renewed and reenergized I return though unsure as to how I want to proceed in Substack. Nevertheless, it is a joy to read your insights and wisdom. Stimulating and so enjoyable.
Both whole and emergent is a way of living, and profoundly potent in participating in a child's way of organizing their world. (It is also a key precept in spiritual philosophy.) It mitigates the top down way many relate children, including especially most child developmentalists.
As always, you relate your own direct experience and the arsing self reflections from it. It feels authentic, and thus much appreciated. Yet I find myself yearning to learn how this has fundamentally changed you. I recognize the greater openness, and questioning, and curiosity implicit throughout. But then you refer to attitudes and behaviors--time, patience, relationship protection, etc., needed for nurturing whole children. And then the "tension" with modern life.
But isn't something more fundamental happening for you? Something that allows the natural joy, love, and admiration to be recognized, to be known, in all moments with children? Most parents would agree with the delightful litany of children's capacities and qualities you list. What has changed, dare I say emerged in you? Is it only experience and reflection? Is it a shift in self-knowledge and consequent world view?
I ask as there may be something there for me, and other readers to learn. Some inner freedom from objectionifcation, some deep trust to ask "what is a child" often, and perhaps some reorganizing of our own childhoods so that we can see that wounds and hurts were culturally imposed because our attempts to live the qualities you compassion, etc., were movements of well-being trying to come forth and not because we did something "wrong, bad, or shameful."
Thank you, Ba — and welcome back, it sounds like an amazing trip. I think you’re asking about the layer underneath the layer here. There has been a much deeper personal shift for me over time, but The Natural Learning Path is really my attempt to explore what happens when those deeper ideas meet ordinary family life, professional experience and the systems we live within. I spent much of my 20s and early 30s exploring my own childhood wounds, and becoming a parent dramatically changed and deepened that work. I think it has left me more open, curious and willing to question what I think I see.
This question stayed with me. We often treat children as people we're getting ready for real life, when they're already living it. My kids were tapping to pay for things before I'd explained what money was. They weren't waiting to be taught. I was the one catching up.
All I can say Gem is yes, yes and yes. You write so beautifully about children as precious and unique individuals and so much of this chimes with me. I notice with my grandchildren's school reports how they tend to say - this is going really well and that needs to improve - as if they know where the child needs to be. As if there is a blueprint for each year group. I don't like that!
Thank you so much, Davina. I’m so glad the piece landed for you, and that means a lot to me. Yes, such a good, simple, everyday example you mention there. These kinds of judgements are often taken at face value, yet, as you point out, can be quite different when we stop and examine the assumptions underneath them. The system can so easily favour standardisation over individualisation.
Hi. I have been of an African safari for a month and so am a bit tardy in responding. Renewed and reenergized I return though unsure as to how I want to proceed in Substack. Nevertheless, it is a joy to read your insights and wisdom. Stimulating and so enjoyable.
Both whole and emergent is a way of living, and profoundly potent in participating in a child's way of organizing their world. (It is also a key precept in spiritual philosophy.) It mitigates the top down way many relate children, including especially most child developmentalists.
As always, you relate your own direct experience and the arsing self reflections from it. It feels authentic, and thus much appreciated. Yet I find myself yearning to learn how this has fundamentally changed you. I recognize the greater openness, and questioning, and curiosity implicit throughout. But then you refer to attitudes and behaviors--time, patience, relationship protection, etc., needed for nurturing whole children. And then the "tension" with modern life.
But isn't something more fundamental happening for you? Something that allows the natural joy, love, and admiration to be recognized, to be known, in all moments with children? Most parents would agree with the delightful litany of children's capacities and qualities you list. What has changed, dare I say emerged in you? Is it only experience and reflection? Is it a shift in self-knowledge and consequent world view?
I ask as there may be something there for me, and other readers to learn. Some inner freedom from objectionifcation, some deep trust to ask "what is a child" often, and perhaps some reorganizing of our own childhoods so that we can see that wounds and hurts were culturally imposed because our attempts to live the qualities you compassion, etc., were movements of well-being trying to come forth and not because we did something "wrong, bad, or shameful."
Thank you, Ba — and welcome back, it sounds like an amazing trip. I think you’re asking about the layer underneath the layer here. There has been a much deeper personal shift for me over time, but The Natural Learning Path is really my attempt to explore what happens when those deeper ideas meet ordinary family life, professional experience and the systems we live within. I spent much of my 20s and early 30s exploring my own childhood wounds, and becoming a parent dramatically changed and deepened that work. I think it has left me more open, curious and willing to question what I think I see.
This question stayed with me. We often treat children as people we're getting ready for real life, when they're already living it. My kids were tapping to pay for things before I'd explained what money was. They weren't waiting to be taught. I was the one catching up.