Creativity Lessons from Children
Kids are always amazing in their talent, they try different things without considering failure. They don't doubt their abilities. They observe their elders very closely and learn from them, but there are a lot of things which they teach us in our daily life. Do you know about that?
One day, I saw my one and half-year-old son, crawling and trying to climb up the stairs. The first thing that came into my mind was, to stop him by doing that and save him from any injury, but finally, I decided to let him climb and learn. There was a hurdle in front of the stairs, and I thought that he will quit and never try, but I was amazed when after three to four minutes of struggle, he managed to find a way to climb up the stairs. Now, the question arises, from where he got this idea? As no one did this in front of him, before.
There are some amazing facts to answer this question. We need to consider that young child learn in quite different ways. They learn by comparing physical experiences, interactions with their family members, and their own feelings. They have this ability by birth to respond to such small challenges. The evidence for the hypothesis is that newborns spent most of their early time asleep so they can't learn everything from their surroundings, so sometimes they behave by using their abilities which they have by birth.
Let's take our psychologist's opinion. Most psychologists believe and accept the traditional thesis that a newborn baby's mind is a blank paper, on which we gradually impress our own experiences. Language is a prerequisite for abstract thought, is a part of this traditional theory, and without language, a baby can not know how to learn. This was an old concept. It is now known by most Psychologists that very young children are competent, active agents of their own by birth.
There was another traditional theory that young children lack the ability to form complex ideas, which is also not accepted by most psychologists. They believe that young children have the ability to give new and complex ideas. It purely depends upon their level of interest. In their interesting activity, they can amaze you by using their skills. So we can't say that young children can't form complex ideas.
Now coming towards the question, that how children teach their elders or how elders can get new ideas from children? The answer to this question is very interesting.
Most of the time we respond to the situation as per predefined solutions which we learned in our life. That can be said one's experience. Children don't have much experience to respond. They act purely depending upon their own skills. That is also said a learning and growing process. They use their brain and come up with a new idea to respond to the challenge, that might be the wrong approach, but that will be a brand new idea. That idea actually gives us a lesson to decide whether this solution is acceptable for the safe learning process of our child or not. That's my learning, and we learn through this process in our daily routine.
There are a lot of other things which we can learn from children and make them a part of our experience like,
children don't have a fear of anything until we make them frightened.
They never stop learning, that might be right or wrong.
They are always honest and naturally never lie.
They don't worry about tomorrow, as they don't store.
They always show their emotions and don't hide anything.
These are a few examples of the simplicity of children. To teach our children, it is very important how to learn from our children first. How good we will be learning from them, that much stronger we will be teaching them. It is so simple, Do not involve your children in your activities, be a part of their activities. That's the way to understand their needs. That's the way to learn and teach.