Heads up: This post is 14 years old. My thinking may have evolved since then — read it with that in mind.
Sorry about this late blog post, I just came back from Cambodia for the first Startup Weekend SE Asia Organizer Summit.
Before I left for Cambodia, we had our first parent organized Reggio playgroup in my apartment in Prince Edward on the 23rd of June. I was lucky enough to have found a Reggio Emilia educator, Sarah, who is also a mother and has been teaching with the Reggio Emilia Approach for over 6 years. Like me, Sarah worries about her own 2.5 yr old boy C’s education, so we both have good reasons to do the “parent organized playgroups”. This post is my first “diary” post for documenting the “relationships” in the playgroup.
We didn’t have anything planned out. Sarah said she could bring some watercolor and clay. The plan was to just let them play, go to the park and have lunch together.
We started off with painting on wet paper, L had never tried painting with watercolor before, we could see he was completely absorbed in it, following what C and Sarah demonstrate! We also had the clay out, which C tore into pieces and L tried painting on. This was a behavior Sarah had never seen before, perhaps because L has never had hands on play with clay or soil before, he is afraid to touch it with his bare hands, hence he used the paint brush to interact with it.
C went around to explore our apartment and found some books he’s like to see, he signaled his mom to see if it was ok to take a book out. I gave him the permission and he took one out and started to read. L is normally not too interested in the books but he followed C’s lead and picked out a few books himself.
After clean up, we went to a nearby restaurant to have lunch, one incident taught me the biggest lesson of the day. C tipped over a flower arrangement and caused the waitresses to come over and tell him “No!”, while Sarah expressed her frustrations at what happened. C felt sad and went underneath the table to cry. Rather than “fixing the problem” to get the child to stop crying, Sarah acknowledged C’s feelings, that he was sad he couldn’t play with the flowers, and asked if he needed to cuddle. C came back up to hug his mom and then he was all fine again!
After lunch, we walked to a soccer field. L ran to show C the flags, they collaborated to play with the exercise machines in the playground designed for seniors. They also got a soccer ball which L threw into the bush and couldn’t get it back, he tried to get C to help him pick up the ball but C was busy playing with the exercise machines. It was interesting to see that L got distracted and played with C on the machines, but the ball remained on the back of his mind and he tried several times to get C to follow him to where the ball was. Finally, C noticed L was signaling to him about “Ball!” (L’s favorite word) C was tall enough to see the ball, he was hesitant for a second there but decided to plunge into the bush! After he got one foot in and knew it was safe, he took another step and retrieved the ball.
When the owner of the ball took it back and left, both C and L chased after it. While I explained to L that the ball belonged to the other girl and tried to “fix the problem” by telling L that we’ll bring our own ball next time, Sarah once again just acknowledged C’s feelings, “yes, I like that ball too…” This was the biggest lesson for me – don’t solve their problems! Just acknowledge their feelings and let them deal with the problems themselves. I’ve heard and read about this before, but this was the first time I saw someone put it into action. As a Dad / guy, we tend to want to just “solve the problems” and move on! Seeing Sarah acknowledges C’s feelings taught me to allow L to deal with and internalize his problems himself.