Acknowledge the Self

5. Acknowledge the Self

notsalmon.com/2012/10/17/why-people-self-sabotage-their-happiness/

Oh Boy.  This one is complex for me.  The first stumbling block for me is using the word 'Always.'  I struggle with anything that has no margin for error.  Humans are born to err.  It seems to be our task from toddlers falling down to CEOs crashing down.  Humans are not always loving, peaceful, and certainly not always forgiving.  Part of the terror of my childhood was the possiblitity I would make the slighest mistake.  KavinCoach was quite surpised at the extremely high levels of anxiety I felt over the simplest mistakes.  He spent a lot of time reviewing this concept that part of the human condition was to not 'always' be anything.  I will, however, acknowledge that I am not defined by my past or other people.  I acknowledge that I define myself.  I started counseling clueless of this self knowledge.  I did have a clue that people have no understanding of the nature of children.  I wanted to be a good mother, by my definition.  I started out by studying about children.  I tried experiments to test my theory.  (I did come to the conclusion that a first born child quite likely deserves some compensation for being the first guinea pig.)  When our oldest son was still in a high chair, he leaned over and dropped his spoon.  He thought it terribly funny.  I heard how short a child's attention span was so I decided to play drop-the-spoon until he was tired of it.  After 45 minutes, I could stand no more and got him out of his chair to do something else.  Mind you in the entire 45 minutes, he did not cease dropping the spoon or finding it very funny.  I learned that adults have a very short attention span and children honestly tell you that they are not interested in the first place.  In my studies, I came across a book by Maria Montessori.  Most of the writings about her focus on her use of manipulatives to open a child's exploration.  She taught me several things.  She pointed out that most people raise their child through punishment.  A child does something, the parent doesn't like it, so punishes the child to extinguish the behavior.  Maria suggested that if you plan to give a child a dresser drawer to put clothes in then it was the responsiblity of the adult to teach the child to open and close the drawers properly.  Her description of children totally blew me away; as I recall she suggested that children were wanting to mimic adults, cheerful, giving, hard working, cooperative, and many other things that describe the exact opposite of 3 foot monsters that TV and some cultures imply.  I read some of the later books about her and never again found the quote that I felt was so mind shaking.  I tried to follow her concepts but mostly dropped back into ways than I learned, unfortunately.   

A few of her quotes that I like: http://www.sweetwatermontessori.com/Quotes.htm

"Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants - doing nothing but living and walking about came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning: Would you not think I was romancing? Well just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child's way of learning. This is the path he follows. He learns everything without knowing he is learning it, and in doing so passes little from the unconscious to the conscious, treading always in the paths of joy and love."

" Social grace, inner discipline and joy. These are the birthright of the human being who has been allowed to develop essential human qualities. "

" Our aim is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his innermost core. "

" A child needs freedom within limits. "
" No one can be free if he is not independent... "
" The children have shown love of work which no one suspected to be in them, and a calm and an orderliness in their movements, which surpassing the limits of correctness have entered into those of 'grace.' The spontaneous discipline and obedience which is seen in the whole class, constituted the most striking results of our method. "
" The secret of good teaching is to regard the child's intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination. "
" A child is mysterious and powerful; And contains within himself the secret of human nature. "      

I am very enthusiastic about Maria.  She taught starting around 1907.  I believe that she set the foundation of radical editucational changes.  I acknowledge that I like this self that Maria describes, curious, hardworking, independent, intelligent with a birthright of joy. I acknowledge I am capable of being that self.