Growing up!

The importance of our early learnings

Tom is three years old and has learnt that his mother keeps a jar of biscuits on the kitchen bench top, too high for him to reach.  One day, he decides that he wants a biscuit and his mother is elsewhere in the house.  Tom pushes a chair from the kitchen table to the bench and then climbs up to where he can reach the biscuit jar. With some difficulty, and after several attempts, he gets the top off the jar and pulls out a biscuit in triumph and takes a first bite.  Still with the biscuit clutched in one hand, Tom puts the top back on the jar, climbs down and pushes the chair back to the table and then sits on the floor and enjoys his biscuit.

Tom has demonstrated an important set of capabilities that develop typically from about 2 to 5 years.  This is the sequence of: making an autonomous decision, initiating an action or project, following through despite setbacks, completing and celebrating.

James Nairn - Lady at Silverstream - 1892

If these can fully develop then they will be important capabilities throughout life to get things done.

If these capabilities are repressed, and they are in many children, then later in life adults who have developed the capacity to see the bigger picture and set long-term goals will have difficulty in initiating projects to reach their goals or in completing them or in being able to celebrate rather than feeling empty when a goal is reached.

Providing the environment that allows young people to fully explore their capabilities is so important for a full and productive life.

It is up to us as adults to create these conditions.

The Red Brain Blue Brain Reading Club is live and in week 5.  Download a copy of the ebook and follow a loosely structured 9-week process to get to grips with managing your red brain.  You can join at any time.

John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation. At the core of this work is the practice of encounter.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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