Some time ago, Mama de Lola illustrated this scene of a girl dressed “on Sunday” in the park asking her mother for permission to play (and get dirty) with the other children she receives in response to “only if you don't get stained”.
Osho, in a magnificent book entitled The child's book (which I am reading these days), explains a similar situation:
“The mother was preparing Pedrito to go to a party. When he finished combing his hair and putting on his shirt collar, he said: - Go now, son! Have fun ... and behave yourself! - Please, mom! - Pedro said -. Before I leave, decide on one of the two! ”
These two situations make me wonder how far we let children be children.
"Let the children be children." This phrase may seem redundant, however it is easy to explain if we focus on the informal definition of child.
What is a child?
The R.A.E. He says that a child is one "who is in childhood", "who has few years" and "who has little experience".
This is a formal definition that anyone could do just by observing and exchanging a few words with a child, however, the informal definition could be very different:
- A child is a person with few years, with little experience in general but with a much higher energy and vitality to adults.
- A child is a tiny person, much smaller than older people, although with a huge heart, able to smile when someone smiles at them and cry when they see someone cry. Over time, by contacting the reality of adults, he loses the ability to be empathic.
- A child is a person with a desire to learn that they never finish, wanting to discover the world and the surrounding environment through their eyesight, their touch, their smell, their taste and their hearing. Over time, for different reasons, many lose the desire to learn.
- A child is a person who does not mind staining, falling, getting up, running when everyone is standing and standing when everyone is running, because He doesn't care what others think of him. Over time, the need to be accepted by the rest causes him to stop being himself and behave as others expect of him.
- A child is a person capable of telling the truth without being unchanged ("I don't like being with you") and being surprised when asked to lie ("Pedrito, thanks and say that you liked it a lot"). Over time, he learns not to tell the truth, at the risk of not doing it when he should ("I better shut up and don't get in trouble") and learn to lie, too often ("I'm glad to see you", "I I call and we stay ”,“ thank you very much, I liked it a lot ”,“ no, if it doesn't bother me ”, etc.)
- A child is, in short, a person who needs to do everything that defines him informally (running, staining, smearing of sand, putting it in his mouth, climbing on the swings through places that are not intended for it, saying what he thinks and Feel innocent and honest, etc.) because it's his way of learning.
Losing childhoods
For all that I have commented, I feel sorry when I see situations like the one in the illustration and when I see quiet, submissive children, educated in obedience (almost blind) and with little power and little desire to act for themselves.
This is how the years go by and childhoods are being lost, doing what others tell them they must do to be clean, polite and good and to act as adult mini-people.
Children have to be children and act as such. If we don't let them enjoy innocence, freedom, games, land, environment and life around them when they are little, when the hell will they behave like children?
Every day I am more convinced that people who have not enjoyed their childhood reach adulthood with a strange feeling of emptiness. Something like a "something is missing" that is often solved by living childhood when it does not play (and evidencing a special lack of responsibility and a desire to burn cartridges somewhat worrying).
Do children have to do what they want?
Many readers will be putting their hands to their heads thinking that this post reiterates the message that says children have to be able to do everything they want.
In part it is true, but with nuances, of course. A child has to be able to choose his path in life, which is theirs, and we parents must be at their side to advise and to redirect those actions and situations that may be dangerous or harmful to them or the rest.
Children have to play, they have to get stained, they have to know their surroundings from their own I and not from ours and they have to err to learn.
Our role, as Khalil Gibran once said in the book "The Prophet", is to accompany the trip:
You can give them your love, but not your thoughts, because they have their own thoughts.You can house their bodies, but not their souls, because their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, even in dreams.
You can, by far, look like them, but do not try to make them similar to you, because life does not recede, nor stagnate in yesterday.
Clean and beautiful clothes is our wish
From the illustration of Mama de Lola another conclusion can be drawn: we love that our children go well handsome, with beautiful clothes, and some mothers pass on that desire, which is their own, to their children.
How many times have we heard our mother: "Be careful, do not stain, that these pants have cost me very expensive" and similar phrases that cause children to feel guilty if they get dirty or fall, when in fact they would have to respond "Well, mom, I bought some sweatpants on sale, I don't care”.
