Be Curious About Your Child
Be curious about your child.
Our children are curious by nature. Always exploring. Always asking questions. Always tinkering. Always communicating with us. What can their interests tell us? What can their behaviour tell us? What can their movements tell us?
The children who attend Wonder & Awe Forest Play are imaginative, kind, adventurous, & fun! Is this a pre-requisite for attendance? Of course not, but what I do find is that the children complement each other. Many of the children do not know each other when they first attend a program or a day camp experience. They can be a bit nervous and quiet. And that is okay because we follow an unhurried rhythm that welcomes this. Typically, there is at least one child who has been here before and they are comfortable and familiar with the routines and the play. These children often give the “new” children permission to become curious about everything that is offered to them here. When the children are curious, they ask questions, they develop new skills, they take risks, they become brave.
The images above show curious children. What were your initial thoughts when you looked at what they were doing? Did you have concern? Worry? Wonder?
The image on the left shows two boys using an upside milk crate as a table. They decided to hammer coloured chalk through the holes in the crate. If this happened at a traditional daycare or school, you might hear an educator say something like, “What are you doing? That chalk is for drawing with. You’re wasting it! And where did you find those hammers? You’re going to wreck that crate. Where did all the balls go that were in that crate? You should know better!” Is that educator curious about what the boys decided to do? No. That educator is only concerned about the materials being used for the purpose they deemed them to be for. My response is different. My response is one of curiousity. “Wow, Look at that! Tell me what you’re doing.” “Oh, you wanted to see if you could fit the chalk through the holes. Is that working?” “I wonder what it’s going to look like when you move the crate?” “I think it will look like a piece of colourful art.” “No one else has thought to do this before…what a great idea!” Do you notice a difference?
The second image is of two girls who are holding bows that they made. They worked hard creating them. Finding the right sticks with just the right bend. Finding rope. Tying the rope onto the sticks. And that’s when their imaginative play began. If this happened at a traditional daycare or school (let’s be honest, this wouldn’t because many children are told they cannot pick up sticks because they are dangerous), you might hear an educator say something like, “Put those sticks down. You can hurt yourself!” Is that educator curious about what the girls decided to do? No. My response is different. My response is one of curiousity, observation and listening. As I listen to their imaginative play, I hear something very different than what I was expecting. The girls prior to this built a stick shelter and covered it with conifer boughs. Making bows was a continuation of that. The girls were warriors. They were preparing for a battle. The early settlers were coming to take their land and they had to defend it. This was their home. They weren’t going to let them have it. My response to this was silence. I didn’t need to interject my own thoughts or ideas into their play at all. They were giving voice to an injustice that they maybe had recently learned about. They were reinforcing concepts through play because they were curious about what it might have felt like to be an Indigenous person who was threatened with having their home and Land taken from them.
My invitation to you is to become curious about your child as they play. Observe. Listen. Based on their play, you can then decide whether to ask questions or to remain silent. What are you noticing about your child’s play? What are you noticing about your child?
