Do It the Right Way!!

Many years ago I taught at a child care center in a small town in Livingston County.  It was located in an old school building and featured a playground that was designed for older children.  One of the children in my care, who was four years old at the time, wanted very badly to use the large steel slides, but he was very afraid of them.  For days he watched the other children climb the ladder, slide down, run to the back of the slide, and climb back up again.  Periodically he would manage to climb the ladder, but he would reach the top and I would have to climb up and help him down.  Still, he watched that slide every day.  One day he found his solution: slowly he climbed to the top, looked down, carefully turned around on the platform at the top, carefully laid down on his stomach, and slid to the bottom.  He stood up and turned around with a triumphant smile on his face - he was so proud of what he had accomplished!  What was the first thing that he heard from a teacher?  "Daniel, go down the slide the RIGHT way."  Immediately the smile was gone, the sense of pride and accomplishment was gone, his head was down, and tears were in his eyes.  (Needless to say, that teacher had a very short career in child care - or at least in mine!).

Now fast forward to the present.  The three year old room received a new building set made up of brightly colored plastic balls, rods, flat pieces, and accordion pieces, each of which had a magnet on each end in order to connect the magnet ends to construct three dimensional structures.  While the children were building, one little guy took one of the accordion pieces and walked around the room with it.  First he worked and worked with the piece at a table until he got it to balance on its ends.  After experimenting with this for a while, he walked around the room and put the piece against the wall.  What a discovery! At the corner of the wall, he let go of the piece and it stuck to the wall!  He moved around the room putting the piece against the wall and letting go.  Every time that he put it on the flat wall the piece fell to the floor, but when he put it on the corner, the piece stayed put.  Soon the other children were sticking their pieces to the wall, also.

Now, the three year old teacher had not planned a balancing, wall-sticking project.  She had planed a building project where the children and teachers could admire and discuss their structures.  Why did she not yell at the child to "use the toy the RIGHT way"?  Because this teacher knew and understood how young children learn.  She remembered that Bev Bos teaches that, "If it isn't in the hand, the heart, it isn't in the brain".  She knew that learning to balance that piece would lead to physical problem solving.  She knew that sticking the magnet to the beading in the corner of the wall would lead to a greater understanding of magnets than doing ditto sheets would ever accomplish.  She understood that when a child is excited about a new discovery it is easy to crush that child and make him feel stupid and worthless.  That is why the first person was a babysitter and the second one is a teacher.

It is so easy to hurt a child who has learned something exciting.  Whether we are parents, grandparents, or teachers, we need to remember what is important in life - having things done our way all of the time or helping our children to grow and develop to their fullest potential.