16th of December 2019
Category: Parenting
This video is showing Ephraim cutting through liver sausage. Ephraim is 2 years old. “Knife, Fork, Scissors, Light are not for small children“ is a saying in German (in German it rhymes). One of many old stupid sayings.
The question is if you want to help a child become a skillful and empowered being or if you want to create a slave.
Ephraim can use knife and scissors, helps me cooking, has experience with fire and experience in height. I do not ask Ephraim to do all of this, I just let him be a part of our life, instead of creating a different “children life “for him.
Ephraim wants to experience as much as he can, he gets angry when I do not let him do things by himself but help him too much.
Children come to this world and want to experience. A parent should not be a hindrance for the child to have experience but help the child. There are moments when children get lazy and think they cannot do something, this is when a parent can encourage them to try a bit more or to try it together with the parent.
Many parents don’t understand a fundamental truth:
A child comes to this world with ZERO experience. What you think is obvious (things fall to the ground. Water is liquid) is NOT obvious to the child. It needs to experience it. And it needs to experience the most essential things several times, things you do not even think of so basic are they. It needs to touch everything, take everything into its hand, find out how everything works. Parents want to control everything and stop the child from having experience because they lack patience and don’t realize how meaningful the simple experiences are.
Parents are too afraid, mostly because their physical understanding of the world is minimal. They cannot see how safe a child is, or they don’t trust their reflexes to catch the child. Scared parents are the worst for the child.
If you develop clarity about risk and danger, the child will trust you if you say something is dangerous. For some parents, just about everything is dangerous.
Children want to experience this world. Parents can help them with this. Let children do. Use “no “with caution.
Joseph Bartz
2019-01-17
Joseph Bartz