WHAT CHILDREN KNOW THAT YOU’VE FORGOTTEN

November 30, 2007

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Possibility is infinite

Children arrive into a world without limits, so strong is the vision they hold of what they want or need. From the very beginning when their needs were fundamental, they have lived by the credo ‘ask and you will receive’. This result is so consistent that it defines their understanding of the world in early life.

If they are not receiving, the problem is that they are not wanting enough, so they crank up the dial on the want-meter. They do NOT abandon hope. They do NOT waver in their needs with thoughts of ‘I may as well give up’ or ‘I really didn’t want it that much anyhow’.

What children NEVER say to themselves

‘I must be wanting the wrong thing’ or, MOST importantly, ‘Life doesn’t really work that way’ are ludicrous ideas to them because life has never worked that way for as long as they can remember. They haven’t started dividing reality into little pieces and filing them into drawers in their mental filing cabinet prelabeled Possible and Impossible.

This alone is the biggest difference between children and adults. It is also the most prevalent excuse that adults use for not going after what they want.

Barricades are made of thin air

Princess Bogdana

Children are NOT rooted in the possible. They see the world as they want it to be and do not know or care about the obstacles that stand between them and their desires. They assume with confidence that the impediments will just have to get out of the way because they always have.

Why not? Anything is possible in their world, barriers have always been a bit unpredictable, so best to assume they’re very elastic, very fluid, there is no rhyme or reason as to which ones can be dismantled with ease and which ones can’t.

Do not inflict your restrictions on others

While there is no need to indulge their every whim, we must not teach them our fears. I’m not talking about the child that is having a fit at the store because you refuse to buy her a DVD she wants. Let her find ways of contributing to the household so she can earn the DVD. I do not mean the child who wants to jump off the roof in the belief that he can bounce; in their world without limits, they also see themselves as immortal and it is a parent’s responsibility to keep them safe.

I am thinking more of the child who wants to be an NHL hockey player, a published author when he’s 15, a computer kid who plans to work at Google or start his own company. It is absolutely unfair of parents and teachers to impose their own limitation systems on their children.

Imagination is one of the greatest gifts that we are born with. It distinguishes our species. Often, those who have little or none left use their energy to diminish a child’s wonder. They impose their narrow and uninspired convictions on them.

Why have so many grownups shut down their imagination’s willingness to ascend to new heights and just enjoy gliding up there? Why have they tied it to their perception of reality? Have I done that? I desperately hope not. I ask myself every single day and correct myself hard when I think that I’ve allowed it to happen.

Possible and Impossible are false

I meet a lot of kids who don’t’ know where the spoons are in their house, though they’ve lived there for 10 years. This is because they’re not looking for spoons. They’re watching their world as the movie running inside their head. It only shows what they want to see and think about.

Can you conceive of the freedom of living in a world where ‘how it could be’ and ‘how it is’ are the same? They ask funny questions – why aren’t there jellyfish in a swimming pool? The question is not ridiculous to them because they are not confined to what is real.

Aly cat roar

‘Real life’ does not exist

Your ‘real’ and my ‘real’ are not the same. There is no person, situation, or physical appearance that I see the way you do. Nobody’s ‘real’ is the same as anyone else’s. The fact is that there is no ‘real’ except what you created for yourself.

Don’t start your children off with your shutters on their windows. Their lives will be richer, and their hurdles smaller, if they can envision any possibility to be ‘real’.

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Happiness