Your Child Learns Naturally

As I watch
my one-year-old grandson Sebastian engage with his world, I am awestruck by his
focus, intensity, enjoyment and creativity to learn. He loves taking lids on
and off containers (for up to 15 minutes with one container!), opening drawers
and pulling things out (re-arranging them!), and watering plants with our
watering jug.

After many
months of getting stronger physically and learning effective ways to use his
body, he is walking much more than he crawls.

Children
naturally have a strong passion and ability to learn. We trust this process
when they are young children. They learn to walk and crawl and talk by watching
us and experimentation. We never assume they need us to “teach” them. We trust
their innate desire and ability to master these skills. We don’t sit them down
at a desk with textbooks and instruction sheets and attempt to teach them to
talk or to walk.

Yet
something changes in our perspective as your children grow older. As a culture
we believe we need those desks, textbooks, and instruction sheets if they are
to learn and succeed in life.  We begin
to impose structure and limitations, should’s and have-to’s on our children,
rather than trusting their natural joy, love and ability to learn by following
their own internal drives and knowing.

Public
education is a rather modern creation, beginning in the 1850’s for all children
ages 5 – 16. Before this, children learned by being in life and by observing
the people around this. Prior to schools, children learned to read, write and so
math in the same way they learned to crawl and walk. The establishment of
public schools in the much of the Western society occurred as a political
decision to train factory workers to do repetitive, thought-less activities and
to follow instructions.

Children pay
a price for this structure. By third grade, research shows children have lost
their natural curiosity and love of learning. Instead they learn to follow
instructions and to learn what they are told and in what time frame whether
they like it or are interested or not.

I observe
Sebastian and he doesn’t learn this way. I may have what I perceive as a cool
idea of what he could learn right now. If it relates and connects to him, he’ll
spend a long time focusing on it, exploring and experimenting. However, if it
doesn’t, he’s off and on to something else, perhaps opening and closing the
sliding closet doors. My challenge as a grandmother to this wonderful boy is to
observe him, see what fascinates and interests him and to offer him objects and
experiences that connect with his interests right now.

Children
listen to themselves and naturally know what they want to learn and are ready
to learn. They know how to figure things out for themselves and have an
internal drive to learn about and master their environment. Our most important
role is to support them in that.

We need to
get back on track with how children naturally learn if they are to excel and
express their greatest gifts and talents.