An Inadvertent Lesson From My Nephew
Allowing him to take his time, and giving him the opportunity to try to do things however he wants to is very interesting. He seems to just fiddle around sometimes, and really make no progression towards completing his task whatsoever, and I have always sort of disregarded his meticulous attempts to accomplish what seems impossible as foolish, and silly child's play. But the other day, when we were hanging out in my living room, I just sat and paid attention to him doing his own thing, taking all the time in the world, and then after a while, he just looked up at me, and asked a pretty well articulated, and deep question.
"How come some people are different sizes than other people? Like that boy who was 5 years old at the skatepark. Why was he shorter than me, and I'm 4?"
I looked at him, pretty astonished, and thought to myself, "Shawn... sometimes your most profound thoughts come to you when you are doing mundane physical tasks, like washing the dishes, or putting away the shoes. How can you have never, up until now, realized that this kid is not solely fixated, mentally and physically, on trying to put a square in a circular window?" What I mean to point out, is that all the while, while my nephew tinkers, and tests, and seems to be just wasting everyone's time for the sake of wasting everyone's time, he is actually, at least on occasion, having deep thoughts, and reasoning through things, and forming questions about the things that he has been reasoning about. And that's just great.
It was my first instinct when my wife and I got some alone time to just blurt out how fantastic an experience it was to give my nephew time to do what he wanted to do, and then for him to ask me a totally unrelated question. What made his question so great was his furrowed brow, his deep concern, and his actual intrigue about what he was asking me. And after I responded with what I found to be a suitable answer, he stopped tinkering, and we had an eye-to-eye conversation about how certain things work, and why certain things don't work, and why things seem to be necessarily that way.
We talked about how a person's size can depend on the sizes of their parents, and how it may have some to do with what kinds of food one eats, and the drinks one drinks. I even mentioned how it may have a lot to do with what parts of the world each person lives in, and the kinds of things people do when our bodies are still growing. It was a very fun dialogue, because each time I answered a question, or did my best to shed some light on the things I believe to be true, my nephew would eagerly formulate further questions so as to attain a greater understanding of the things we were discussing.
I can't really express how excited I am to have experienced my nephew's thoughtful process of reflection, reasoning, and discussion. What's most exciting is how completely unaware I was of the process he was going through, and that I now know a little more about him, just because I paid attention, and refrained from being the person who decides what we do with our time together, and how.
Though it has only been a few days since this all happened, I have already began practicing more patience when dealing with all people. And I am finding that people will often sit in the steering wheel of the adventure-ship we share, and guide me all around their universe of thought and concern. And I am just loving it. My 4-year-old nephew has helped me to transform into a person who is more okay with other people holding the reigns, and I still laugh at how incredibly unexpected the transformation was.
Posted in DemEd in Real LifePhilosophy of Education on Jul 06, 2010 - 07:51 PM
As of late, I have been observing what it is like to maintain a high level of patience with my 4-year-old nephew. For example, he can sometimes take a very long time to complete a task that he knows how to do, because he is trying different methods. And sometimes, his experimental process can be a nuisance, depending on what kind of time frame we have to spend with each other. If we need to be at the park down the road to meet up with his parents at 3pm, and he needs to get his shoes on in the next 3 minutes, or else we will be late, then his efforts to successfully throw his flip flops onto his feet can be straining on whoever is responsible for him. But lately I have been allotting a lot of unplanned time when hanging out with him, and letting him lead our adventures in his own way.Allowing him to take his time, and giving him the opportunity to try to do things however he wants to is very interesting. He seems to just fiddle around sometimes, and really make no progression towards completing his task whatsoever, and I have always sort of disregarded his meticulous attempts to accomplish what seems impossible as foolish, and silly child's play. But the other day, when we were hanging out in my living room, I just sat and paid attention to him doing his own thing, taking all the time in the world, and then after a while, he just looked up at me, and asked a pretty well articulated, and deep question.
"How come some people are different sizes than other people? Like that boy who was 5 years old at the skatepark. Why was he shorter than me, and I'm 4?"
I looked at him, pretty astonished, and thought to myself, "Shawn... sometimes your most profound thoughts come to you when you are doing mundane physical tasks, like washing the dishes, or putting away the shoes. How can you have never, up until now, realized that this kid is not solely fixated, mentally and physically, on trying to put a square in a circular window?" What I mean to point out, is that all the while, while my nephew tinkers, and tests, and seems to be just wasting everyone's time for the sake of wasting everyone's time, he is actually, at least on occasion, having deep thoughts, and reasoning through things, and forming questions about the things that he has been reasoning about. And that's just great.
It was my first instinct when my wife and I got some alone time to just blurt out how fantastic an experience it was to give my nephew time to do what he wanted to do, and then for him to ask me a totally unrelated question. What made his question so great was his furrowed brow, his deep concern, and his actual intrigue about what he was asking me. And after I responded with what I found to be a suitable answer, he stopped tinkering, and we had an eye-to-eye conversation about how certain things work, and why certain things don't work, and why things seem to be necessarily that way.
We talked about how a person's size can depend on the sizes of their parents, and how it may have some to do with what kinds of food one eats, and the drinks one drinks. I even mentioned how it may have a lot to do with what parts of the world each person lives in, and the kinds of things people do when our bodies are still growing. It was a very fun dialogue, because each time I answered a question, or did my best to shed some light on the things I believe to be true, my nephew would eagerly formulate further questions so as to attain a greater understanding of the things we were discussing.
I can't really express how excited I am to have experienced my nephew's thoughtful process of reflection, reasoning, and discussion. What's most exciting is how completely unaware I was of the process he was going through, and that I now know a little more about him, just because I paid attention, and refrained from being the person who decides what we do with our time together, and how.
Though it has only been a few days since this all happened, I have already began practicing more patience when dealing with all people. And I am finding that people will often sit in the steering wheel of the adventure-ship we share, and guide me all around their universe of thought and concern. And I am just loving it. My 4-year-old nephew has helped me to transform into a person who is more okay with other people holding the reigns, and I still laugh at how incredibly unexpected the transformation was.
Tags for this entry:
learning,
understanding,
young minds,
patience
