Greetings,
GreenMount Community,
In a past newsletter I
referred to a “Buddha Day” during which we take the time to be the learner in
our interactions with our children. I
hope you have had the opportunity to do that.
On Saturday, I found myself very much
the learner as we spent the day with our newest grandson in New Haven,
Connecticut. He’s just seven-months-old,
but provided us with an amazing demonstration of how quickly the learning
process takes place at very young ages.
Not having seen him since Christmas, you can imagine how much he has
grown in that time. Of course, he is a
genius and has surpassed all the child development milestones for a person his
age – of course!
But honestly, it was so amazing to
see how he has progressed in just three months.
I watched as he tried over and over to grab a 4”x 4” wooden floor sample
while at the same time untangling his legs from under himself so that he could
get better leverage to complete the task.
The little hands tried in vain to pick up the sample, but were just too
small to grasp it. He also hasn’t
figured out how to incorporate his other hand to provide a fulcrum so that he
can get under the piece with the other hand.
As he taught me his problem-solving techniques, I observed that this
little guy is decidedly right-handed – so far.
In the end, he found that sliding the piece along the floor was just as
much fun as picking it up, and he repeated that activity until mastery apparently
led to boredom, at which point he moved on to another task.
This time, he crawled into the
kitchen and attempted to open the refrigerator.
Evidently, he has learned that one can pull the door at a certain spot
and direct his energy to the left and the door will open. He has also apparently learned that the
shelves on the door make excellent handholds in order to get up one his
feet. From that position he has access
to numerous things that rattle and clank when he moves them around. But perhaps the best thing I learned about
him in refrigerator mode was that he can solve the problem of removing a pot
that is blocked by other containers in front of it. Naturally, he was supervised by his “Poppy”
while working on these tasks and I held some plastic bottles in front of the
pot so that he could not actually yank the pot and its contents onto the
floor. He became somewhat frustrated
with this situation, and he tried to solve the problem by simply exerting more
force on the pot. Finally, when that didn’t
work, he actually attempted to move the obstacles in front of the pot by
pushing them aside!
Think about it. I actually witnessed learning happening. Pathways were established in his brain that
will be reinforced every time he realizes that he must move something out of
the way of something else. What a
miracle this learning process is. And if
we watch our children carefully and pay attention to what they are doing, we can
watch the learning happen. Then they
become the teachers. Happy learning!
Cheers,
Steve
