TIME TO GROW {Clouder}
There is a current trend towards ‘kid-pushing,’ in which the child becomes an early competitive unit whose learning is accelerated in order to keep up with others in the ‘real world.’ This is based on faulty science and media hysteria and can actually be to the child’s detriment by nurturing a premature sense of failure. A baby’s brain does not need extra stimulation, as the currently prevailing reductionist view of human nature suggests. A simple game, song or story leaves open and strengthens the capacities for imagination, creativity, empathy, wonder and fun that are far more important for the growing child as a foundation for future lifelong learning.
—Christopher Clouder and Janni Nicol, Creative Play for Your Baby
Don’t you hate it when someone travels forward in time and steals your great idea for a book? {Elizabeth Goudge does this to me all the time.} The fact that this book was published years before I penned my first draft, does not shake my conviction that the paragraph quoted above was lifted from my little )manuscript Come With Me. Ah, well.
In the vein of ‘stimulating’ a baby’s intelligence, here is a post from Janet Landsbury: ‘Baby Interrupted: 7 Ways to Build Your Child’s Focus and Attention Span,’ with a really lovely movie to accompany it.
• time to play with sunshine •
March 4, 2014