Teach Your Children Well

Do you like my new map thingy? Down there on the right. It shows little soundwaves coming out from where I am, and then other red dots where you are. Love it. If you click on it you can see details and graphs and all that stuff.

Leading on from my thoughts yesterday, I left this little tangent out, but we'll do it today.

As a child I wasn't comforted by the quirks of relatives, I was put off by them. That probably connects to the whole association thing, or in my case lack of it. The interesting aspect (well, it is to me) is why.

I think I realised very young, probably too young, that adults were fallible. I wasn't in awe of them no matter how much taller, louder, or "more important" they were, compared to me. I wasn't a cheeky child, I didn't "talk back", not in a rude way, and I want to make that very clear. I was polite and respectful. But I wasn't scared. So when I found a way to assert myself respectfully, I always took it. I stood my ground.

I had zero hero worship. I loved my family very much but I saw all their flaws. I don't ever remember not seeing their flaws. They weren't major flaws, you understand, very decent people really. Everybody was always kind to me, supportive, encouraging, I was very fortunate. But I wasn't fooled. Somehow I knew, right from the get go, that they were just....... older, and that was the only reason they were already privy to information I was still collecting. I was also aware that quite often, I was privy to more information than they were, because I read a lot.

So when I had a tooth extracted, and vomited all over the dentist, and he told me it was because I sat up too quickly, I knew he was full of shit, because I had read that anaesthesia can cause nausea. Nobody bothered to warn me of that, because I was only a child, but it came as no surprise to me.

I asked a lot of questions, and I often wasn't satisfied with the answers. I think on the whole people are more honest with children these days, but my own experiences certainly led to me being the type of parent and grandparent that I am. When a child asks me a question, he gets an honest and complete answer.

There is the idea that children are innocent, which is lovely, but they are not ignorant. They are little intellectual sponges ready to soak up all the data they can get. They rely on the people around them to provide this, and will seek any source available. Therefore if TV is used as a surrogate parent, that will be their source.

What they need, to achieve their full potential, is good teachers. This includes, but is not limited to, the professionals in schools. We all have the potential to be teachers in the broad sense; I wasn't the only child who saw the man behind the curtain, so we have to be aware of this.