Heads up: This post is 14 years old. My thinking may have evolved since then — read it with that in mind.
Aug 5th
Today, we went to a birthday party at ART JAM, a kinda snobbish painting studio in an expensive mall! Like, why let your kids paint at home when you can pay 10 times at much to come paint at ART JAM and feel like an artist? Anyways, it was actually a great event! L was asleep when we arrived so we let him sleep, when he woke up, we let him wander around before he finally showed interests in what everybody else was doing – painting! We helped him get some paint (he chose the colors) and then just let him do whatever with the brushes, sponges and paint. (Except we had to stop him from painting on the window! Not too much anyway :)
While we were walking around with L, I saw other parents helping their young children paint and it reminded me of a blog post I read about “Why Not Draw For A Child?”, it gave an example about a family who went camping and while all the other parents help their children paint and in the process made the children lose interests in painting, they just let their child do it by herself. She spent hours painting and afterwards was extremely fond of her own creation.
But that’s not the main story today. The main story is about a young boy whom I recognized to be a cute, sweet natured baby before. I haven’t seen him for a long time and now, he has turned into a mad kid! His facial expression is almost always mad, and he runs around like a mad man! I don’t know how other parents think of this kid but when I see how his family’s helper constantly stop him from doing anything, I picture him as a bird in a cage, trying hard to break out.
Here’s an example of one of the things the boy was stopped from doing. The shop uses metal bars with painting hung on them to act as dividers between outside and inside. The space between the bars are large enough for little children to slip through. Naturally, kids see that they can pass through it rather than using the door to enter into the other space! They love that stuff and instinctively will try going through these “gateways” to different spaces. There’s no harm in letting them climb through the bars but his helper tried to stop him from doing so! Immediately the boy growls back, dashed for the opening and jumped through like mad!
It’s so painful for me to see all these domestic helpers, working for what’s basically slave wages, while both parents have to work to sustain the family in this crazy economy and are forced to forego the most important time in their kids’ lives and leave them in the hands on the helpers! The helpers’ priority is to keep the children from harm, so they constantly stop the kids from doing anything! I honestly don’t blame the helper, but I do feel sorry for everyone involved! What has our world turned into? Aren’t family the most important thing in our lives? This is something that needs to be changed! It’s part of the reason why I’m doing this, I imagine a future where parents can band together to raise their kids, and we only have to work 4 days a week so then we can take turns at being the caretaker. I think our lives will be so much better that way!
One other story happened to L. While he was happily climbing and jumping through the bars repeatedly, mom kept telling him to be careful, and then one time, she hold L’s arm while he was about to jump. This caused L to lose his timing and balance and his leg bumped into a metal stand when he landed! He cried.
I could easily see that other parents might say “See, I told you to be careful” to the kid at this point, but I told my wife it was because of her interference that caused L to get hurt! I’ve always trusted L to sense his own ability and dangers, I’ve witnessed him consistently making careful evaluations before he tries something new! So I know that he’s capable of climbing and jumping through those bars no problem! My wife and I don’t agree on these safety issues… and actually some other RIE ways of parenting. It has caused some arguments between us, and I think addressing these differences is an important topic for many of us! May be that’s a post when I successfully deal with the problems.