DEVELOPMENT Comes From A Resting Point

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Adults who intensively develop a child are like Carlson, who planted a seed. He dug it up all the time to see if it had sprouted?

In fact, children grow, learn and develop not because we pull them by the ears, but simply because they are children. It is in them. In order for a child to want to know everything, no special techniques are needed, he just needs to be interesting and not afraid.

It's okay when everything is fine with the parents. When they love when they are around, when you are good to them. If a child is lonely, rejected, if he is afraid of parental anger and disappointment, he cannot develop. All the mental powers go into coping with attachment anxiety. As psychologists say, affect inhibits intelligence. The limbic system revolts, and does not allow the upper (cortical) brain to function normally. What kind of cognitive activity is there?

And if a child is calm about his relationship with his parents, he immediately turns his back on them, and faces the world, and goes to explore it

Such an experiment was carried out. A mother with a preschool child was invited to an office full of all kinds of educational games and, in general, interesting and obscure gizmos. Then the experimenter apologized, said that he needed to move away for a very short time and suggested that he feel "at home" in the office, said that he could "see what we have here for now." And he left. But not far away, and behind the wall, where there was a special mirror, on the one hand as a mirror, on the other - transparent, it is often used for psychological experiments.

Through the window-mirror, he watched what the mother and child were doing.

There were four main types of behavior:

1. Mom threateningly hissed at the child so that he “sat still, did not touch anything,” and the two of them waited motionlessly for the specialist's return. If the child tried to take something, his mother pulled him back.

2. Mom took a magazine out of her bag and plunged into reading, did not pay attention to the child. He, gradually becoming bolder, began to take, examine, twist, etc.

3. Mom enthusiastically told the child: "Look, what good games!" And she began to show the child and explain how to play them.

4. Mom, forgetting about the child, passionately grabbed one game, then another and tried to understand what it was and why. The child by itself also grabbed and examined everything.

Then the psychologist returned to the room and carried out, using a special technique, testing the level of cognitive activity in the child.

Before reading any further, try to guess which children from which group did the best?

The highest rates were in children of inquisitive mothers from group 4. Everything here worked for cognition: mom was nearby, she explores everything herself, the child turns on imitation, he is calm and fun, and the process is in full swing.

Then there were children of mothers from group 2. They did not set an example, but with their presence and calmness they ensured safety, and nature took its toll.

And much worse results were for those children who were prohibited from everything, and those who were led.

If a child lives in a mentally and spiritually rich, interesting, intriguing environment, if the parents themselves are interested in everything, if they have smart and interesting friends with whom they communicate with children, if they have an interesting and beloved job that they talk about at home, they there is no need to develop anything strenuously in a child. Following and the natural need to learn will do their job - everything will develop beautifully by itself, you will not be able to hold back.

The only thing that is important to watch out for is to make sure that the child is not scared in his relationship with you and in the world in general. Cognitive activity does not tolerate severe and prolonged stress. If a child is very bad, scared, lonely, he has no time for new knowledge.

Everyone, probably, had to observe: here the child is all out for a walk - embodied cognitive activity. He observes a caterpillar, a sparrow, a cat. But from time to time he glances at Mom on the bench. And suddenly my mother was gone! Has gone somewhere! That's it, instantly cognitive activity collapses, and until the mother is found and calms down, the child has no time for caterpillars.

Now, imagine that mom is gone for a very, very long time. Or even completely. What will happen to curiosity? This is well known to adoptive parents, who find it very difficult to rehabilitate in this respect children who have spent a long time in the state house. But this also happens with domestic children, for example, if there are conflicts in the house, parents scandal, someone in the family suffers from alcoholism or simply has a difficult, hot-tempered character, if the child is constantly afraid of condemnation, rejection, or fears that it will not live up to expectations, the parents will be disappointed, upset, ill, etc.

I really like the formulation of Gordon Newfeld: "Development comes from a point of rest." The way it is. Moreover, both in children and adults. This is how we humans are made: as soon as our basic needs are satisfied, as soon as we feel comfortable and calm, we immediately become unbearable to learn or do anything new.

It turns out that a lot of things are needed for a child to develop well and his cognitive activity to flourish. You need the love of parents, a good atmosphere in the house, security, trust. So that they do not pull, do not forbid and so that they do not lead all the time. But so that at the same time, surprises, adventures and moderate stresses are kept in the child's life and not in cotton wool. And all this, of course, requires a lot of work, although not at all in the sense in which parents think, from morning to evening engaged in the "development" of the child.