Little Sponge
I’ve been teaching young children for a while now and it amazes me how much they absorb. They are paying more attention than I first thought, and they take in everything that the people they look up to do. The fact that children aged between five and six can have a full conversation with me in their third language has got me thinking about whether our expectations of our children, particularly in the West, are lower than they should be. Some may say that parents in the East push their children too hard and that they don’t have time to be kids. But they are looking to the future and giving their children the best opportunities to be successful. I understand both points of view and I feel that a mixture between the two might be the sweet spot. I’m not a parent and so I haven’t experienced the challenges of raising children, but I feel that children don’t get given the intellectual respect they may need to flourish as an individual.
I came across the term Childism which is defined in the book, Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl as "a prejudice against children on the ground of a belief that they are property and can (or even should) be controlled, enslaved, or removed to serve adult needs." I believe part of this definition to be true. While children still have a lot to learn, creating an environment that encourages and facilitates learning seems better than the approach we have now. Many articles suggest we should speak to our children as adults - no one likes to be patronised and simplifying your language for your child could limit the language they learn.
Children’s constant asking of “Why?” seems like a good place to start. Eric Weinstein had his son, Zev (15), on his podcast and they discuss parenting a child with learning disabilities and whether Zev has novel approaches to parenting a gen z child. As soon as Zev started talking, I could tell that he was smart and when I found out that he was understanding string theory at the age of three it blew my mind. I found this episode fascinating and I would recommend it to everyone. Zev is extremely intelligent, just like his father, but I get the feeling that this isn’t just down to genes but parenting too. Zev was very appreciative of the way Eric spoke to him when he was around 3 years old, and this meant answering Zev’s “why’s” with honest complex answers. Zev was trusted to understand these complex theories when overhearing his dad at work and if Eric ever didn’t know the answer he would go and research it with him so they could learn together. This seemed to instil a sense of curiosity that Zev still has today. At fifteen years old he is very learned, but not because he was forced to, but because he wanted to. I understand that everyone is different, and some may not be as curious as others, but I feel that the sense of curiosity is in a lot of children at a very young age, and they lose it when they are considered to be annoying. They may associate curiosity with angering their parents and that it’s not a good thing. Curiosity is so important and no one should feel disheartened for wanting to learn more.
Taimur Abdaal is very interested in this topic too and he discussed it in length with his brother Ali over two episodes on their podcast a while ago. They discuss an interesting essay by Quill Kukla called ‘Taking children's autonomy seriously as a parent’. The main points of the essay are that we don’t treat children the same as other human beings. We tend to discount their testimonies purely because of their age and we restrict what they can do to a much greater extent than we would with other people’s lives. Quill argues that “children’s autonomy rights are as strong and central to their flourishing as anyone else’s". She suggests that there are two underlying ideologies:
· We see children as “not full people”
· It’s the parent’s responsibility to create a specific type of person
The brothers speak about these issues at length and asked friends to recall times they felt like they weren’t respected or heard. Many could vividly remember times they felt like they had been disrespected and how these experiences could have affected the way they are as adults. Kukla argues that "it's deeply woven into our productivity culture that we treat children as products and that we measure our own success by how well we create what we set out to create". A lot of pressure is put on children to perform in ways that parents see fit as they are a representation of them. Children may be prevented from pursuing things that they want to do because it doesn’t fit into societal norms. These reasons may not be clear to the child which could have harmful long-term mental effects.
These are just ideas, theories and things I’ve learnt recently as I enjoy thinking about this particular topic. I’m constantly reminded about it when walking past parents and their children and overhearing the different parenting tactics. I know it must be a completely different experience actually raising children and I don’t mean to say that I know how to do it. I plan on becoming a parent and learning as much as I can beforehand seem like the best approach to raising my children to be the best they can possibly be the way they want to do it. I still have a lot to learn, and these ramblings are just the surface of my constant curiosity about the topic. Hopefully, this got people thinking and I’d love to hear your views and whether I’ve got it completely wrong.