Wonderful Thoughts & Learnings

What these innocent minds have to go through and do we have the time at all to observe and identify this?

This blog of mine is inspired by the happenings at home recently.

Couple of months ago the comment that featured in my daughter’s school dairy –was “she was unsettled and seems upset”. This continued for the next days too. That Friday I got a call from the school stating “she has been unsettled for the last one week. She is upset about some thing and is refusing to talk it out. Generally she is a very happy child, but unusually she has been secluding her self from the other kids, sits in a corner and sniffs / cries to self”. The school was curious to know of any change at home or anything happened @ home. I answered in the negative and then they told me to observe my daughter over the weekend and let them know if I find anything out of the blue.

This incident shook me up. That weekend we took all extra effort to make her happy and observe her. (It was indeed a tough thing to do from a mother’s POV – to observe her own child) But we could not find anything. Then the next week, she was pretty normal in school. Later on we kind of understood that she was upset because some kid bit her in school.(as that was the only period that she used to cry to go to school)

Similar thing happened last week @home. I was running around managing / doing activities / chores. My daughter must have observed my face being a bit agitated / tensed. She came to me and said – “Mommy sit here”. I sat, and then she said “Amma u ok, amma u ok?” With tears rolling down my eyes I realized my folly. That was when I became more conscious of the functioning of a child’s mind.

It made me really understand how this Absorbent Mind as described my Maria Montessori works. Many people believe that the most important period of life is the age of university studies, but actually not the period from birth to the age of six is the most important phase of life. For that is the time when man's intelligence itself, his greatest implement, is being formed. But not only aptitude; complete personality is formed then.

The absorbent mind is divided into two phases. The first phase is from birth to 3 years old and the second 3 – 6 years. In the first phase the young child
unknowingly or unconsciously acquires his basic abilities. The objective of the child during this period is to become independent from the adult for all his basic requirements. The child learns to speak, to walk, to gain control of his hands and to master his bodily functions. Apart from the physical developments during this phase, the child’s mind which is like a sponge looks out for all the information that it can absorb and this is the most important aspect of human life. This absorbency function of the mind does not happen to this extent anywhere later in life. This also explains why my daughter asked / is asking me circumstantial relevant questions as if she was watching me keenly.

With this extra sensitive pair of eyes and mind watching us always – what should we as parents do? Should we act as though nothing affects us – NO!!! We have all the freedom to express what ever can be publicly expressed in front of the child – but we need to treat the child as an adult in the environment and explain to the child why mommy or daddy is upset and there is really nothing to worry about. The child needs that extra assurance from a reliable source – the parents – that everything is fine. At the end of the day – it is an Innocent, soft mind and the responsibility of helping it turn to a healthy good mind is in our hands.