Do children need a safe environment?

Do children need a safe environment?

Modern parents care about the safety of the child in a way that their predecessors did not. And this prevents children from getting the bodily experience necessary for health and survival that is not conveyed through words and instructions. Why don’t safe conditions actually guarantee safety?

We try to make sure that the child does not face potential threats — but is it good for him? The world around is not a playroom with soft walls. And children are absolutely helpless in critical situations, because they do not have the skills to handle fire, ideas about the variability of nature, they do not even know how their own yard is arranged. Why does it happen and what to believe: eyes, a map or your own body?

Do children need a safe space?

It is believed that children expect from us, adults, that we will provide them with safety. But are they really looking forward to it? In the period from one to five, the child constantly tests us for strength, constantly violates the boundaries. There are seminars and trainings about this — parents are taught what boundaries children need and what they don’t need — this is such a hot topic.

All this makes me personally doubt that children expect safety from their parents. Children rather expect that in which case the parent can protect, support, cure, console. But a child usually doesn’t expect a safe space from a parent. It is rather what we are shaping, it is a secondary effect from the impact of society.

Jean Ledloff in How to Raise a Happy Child. The principle of continuity” describes his impressions of the upbringing methods used by the South American Indians of the Yekuana tribe. Their children crawl among machetes, sit next to a burning hearth. From the age of two, they already have their own bows and sharp arrows. Girls have their own graters, on which they rub tapioca.

Parents do not protect children from dangerous places, including high and deep pits. A baby can sit next to the pit and not fall into it. And adults do not have the thought that the child will fall into this hole. Children cannot be taught this on purpose, but children can learn safe behavior themselves.

Think about how you feel when your foot falls into the hole. Immediately the vestibular apparatus begins to work, the spirit is a little breathtaking — and we level the balance. For an adult, this is literally a brief moment. After all, we already know from experience that now everything will be fine, but for a child this is a very strong feeling.

Even when the child is still sleeping in the crib, sooner or later he will definitely check the edge with a pen or a leg. He understands: there is empty space, there he has no support. A bunch appears in his head: since he does not see what is there, and at the same time the arm and leg do not feel support, then there is no need to step there.

At the level of the body, this is a very obvious imprinted experience for him, and he will not fall. Each bodily experience is recorded by the child at the level of bodily sensations as important. If at an early age he rolled out of bed, fell, then he will definitely remember it. And be more careful next time.

Sometimes you watch very small, infants — they, oddly enough, do not fall out of bed and very quickly begin to descend from it with their buttocks forward. And it’s very interesting. He does not see the edge of the bed with his eyes, but he seems to “know” where the edge is with his feet and booty. There is no visual picture, and the body knows what to do.

Neural connections won’t line up without experience

“Fear is the best teacher” is the phrase of one of my friends, the teacher of the somatic movement method, Moshe Feldenkrais. If small children are a little scared, there is nothing to worry about. They got a little scared, dealt with the situation and moved on.

Whether we like it or not, we must understand the significance of microtraumas. The experience of negative sensations, a negative encounter with reality and teaches the child to act in one way or another. How will he decide what to do or not to do if he has no experience of unpleasant sensations?

A lot depends on how the adult behaves. If he is frightened because the child was frightened, then the child notices the following: “To be frightened is significant for the parent. He pays attention to me when I’m scared. So you have to do it!» And the children no longer think that something needs to be overcome — and learn. A chain of emotional and physical reactions is launched, which in the end simply prevents the child from getting his experience.

If a parent is literally numb at the thought that a child will get hurt, this is definitely a story for a therapist. Because this is most likely a symptom of the trauma that he himself once received. And now he «throws» it on his child. But the child has nothing to do with it! He is entitled to his injuries.

Fear can be dealt with in different ways. Someone takes a sedative, someone meditates, someone goes in for extreme sports to overcome them. But the most important thing is to face your trauma and work through it. Trauma prevents you from seeing reality with an open mind. And working with traumatic experience removes this bias, frees from it and makes it possible to see and perceive the world freely.

As for parental boredom, let us recall the ekuan from Ledloff’s book and stories from the French film Babies: if a child lags behind his mother, she does not drag him by the hand, does not help him walk, does not encourage, does not teach, does not give devaluing comments. Just waiting for the baby to get to her. She knows that sooner or later it will happen.

It is clear that such a strategy is in conflict with the modern world. How are we? “What are you doing there, stuck, or what? Raise your legs, go faster!» There is no time for anything, there is only work to be done. You have to get to the playground — I will finally sit down there and I won’t drag myself like a turtle.

It’s hard to wait — it’s easier to pick up! And easier — to whom? Us, here and now. And then what? The child is growing up, now he is already five years old, and he says: “Mom, on the hands!” “You have grown, everyone, walk with your feet!” And he hasn’t been training all this time. Muscles are not developed, there are no skills. He might just be in pain. And he also knows: Mom is terribly bored — waiting, slowing down. He understands that he will face her boredom. The child cannot say: “I cringe when you are bored and irritated. I have apathy, my legs become cast iron.

We ourselves are so scared, and sometimes bored, that we cannot be near a child who is learning his life. We supposedly need to make a montage, cut out the piece where he tries. Instead, we want to put the equipment, give ready-made instructions.

And what happens in this case to the neural connections that should be formed as a result of the experience gained and in the future help the child make decisions? We just cut them out.

He would have built them there himself in the most effective way, at the same time he would have upgraded a bunch of abilities and skills — and he would have known what danger is, what security is at the level of the body. At the level of the arms, legs, eyes, back, neck. And so — we «taught». Did you teach?

The picture changes

We recently laughed with a friend. Friends gathered in the field to practice yoga. I say, how is it — in the field? In the same place, the grass is prickly, the sun burns. Wasps buzz, bite horseflies. What is yoga in the field? And then — you can’t take a selfie, the sun is on one side, then on the other. These are all beautiful pictures that have nothing to do with life. What we see and what is in reality are very different. This is the gap between the real world and visual perception.

The child and I cooked according to the recipe, and he says: “Mom, you are not doing it that way, the book says differently.” But anything can be written in a book, but we do it with our hands. That is, the printed word is much more highly valued than the bodily experience that a person gains. And this is the problem of the verbal — and now also very technological — world.

“Don’t trust your hands, don’t trust your legs, don’t trust your bodily experience. After all, it is written in the book … ”- this is how we were taught, and now we are raising children in the same paradigm. But what a book, what a picture in front of us sometimes has little to do with reality.

For example, we look at the water and think that there is nothing down there. We rely on our vision, and therefore unpleasant and even terrible things can happen next.

Friends rested near the same river for several years in a row. Diving, swimming. Once again they arrived, someone from the company fled — and «fish» into the water. And head to stone … Thank God, there were no serious injuries, but it hurt, unpleasant. We do not take into account that the river is alive. She changes from year to year. The stones are moving, the banks are sliding. And this should be remembered — for both adults and children.

Don’t teach but let learn

How to develop in a child an attentive attitude to the world around? Here are some simple ways that are suitable for both toddlers and older children.

«Now you’re in charge.» The simplest thing that comes to mind is to change roles with the child during a walk, to transfer control to him. We go out into the street, we go to the park or to the center — and we say: “Now you are driving. I don’t know the way.» Our goal is to give the child independence, to make him feel like the main thing. He understands that this is a game that the parent will save, if anything. But children are the best at playing, and they are happy to take the lead. And they begin to move, explore the world.

Cossack robbers. Older children are well taught to play this game. The parent can sit on the bench and just watch what is happening. Many people remember the meaning of the game from childhood: two teams, one must run away, and the other must catch opponents. Children are looking for detours to hide. They leave marks for orientation on the ground. This means that they read it in some way — and a map of the district is formed in their head.

Children, playing such a simple and almost forgotten game, pump a bunch of skills. Dexterity, speed, the ability to predict the actions of another and overcome obstacles. They need to negotiate among themselves and look for effective strategies. They begin to see very well, feel the surrounding space — and dispose of it. That is, they literally master the territory.

What grows under your feet? There are many plants around us, even in the conditions of the city. Which one is friend and which one is foe? “Dear children, we went out onto the lawn. Let’s see which plants are useful and which are harmful. You can just download the application about plants — walk and recognize. We don’t approach the wolf’s bast, we don’t eat red elderberry, the hogweed leaves traces for a year — we don’t touch it.

I don’t want to scare parents and children, but forewarned is forearmed! Walking, playing, studying the environment, children understand: “Aha, the world is alive! Interesting!» And they begin to build a relationship with him. The world gives us signals. And we can react to them and also become alive. And when we understand that the world is alive, we are alive, we begin to show interest. We awaken the explorer in ourselves and are ready to meet different people.

Safe Behavior vs Danger Behavior: What’s the Difference?

When we focus on looking for or focusing on security, then we are looking for a place where we will feel good. We are looking for comfort, tranquility, convenience. And if the focus is on danger, these are the situations where we need to recognize it and avoid it. Even our muscles behave differently in these situations.

When we talk about comfort, convenience, calmness, our body begins to straighten out, as if air appears inside. In extreme situations, we shrink, gather, concentrate. If in the first situation we are building relationships with the world, then in the second we are building boundaries. These are two fundamentally different stories. We can say that safe behavior is a life strategy. And behavior in extreme situations is a survival strategy. This is the difference.

Of course, it is necessary to pump the skills of behavior in an extreme situation, at least once a year to undergo special training. We have fire extinguishers everywhere. Does anyone know how to use them?

We at the Natural School work with children from the age of three. And we teach just such things: how to handle a fire extinguisher, what to do if you are in the water, being dressed. We show how oil burns and what happens when we extinguish burning oil in a pan — this is a show. (Burning oil must be covered with a lid.) We conduct experiments in safe conditions and see what happens.

In general, the whole story about safe behavior or about actions in extreme situations grows out of the fact that we are afraid of injuries, pain. Ultimately, we are afraid of death. And this is a natural fear. We would not have survived without him. But is it possible to live life avoiding it?

In the book Roni, the Robber’s Daughter, the father tells the main character that the abyss is dangerous, the river and mountains are too. She asks: “How will I cope?” Well, the father answers, somehow master it. And she mastered.

“In order to be more afraid, you need to be close to danger,” the girl decided. And she was close to danger. Jumped over the seething rivers, climbed the mountains. Jumped over the abyss. Lived. This story is close to me.

Body and technology

“The map is not the territory,” said scientist Alfred Korzybski. If the map is well written, then it becomes an assistant in the development of the area. But still they are different things.

In the modern world, reality is no longer something that you can touch with your hands and feet, feel with your body. This is what is drawn on the screen of a computer or smartphone, shown in the diagrams. And this is the problem of modern man! Technology rules us — and we are used to it. But the body continues to give us signals.

Very often we find ourselves in dangerous situations that we do not consider as such. We do not regard as a danger riding in electric trains, in cars. But just 200 years ago, you couldn’t even sit on a horse if you hadn’t ridden it. And this is the paradox: our body actually feels all this, reads the situation as extreme.

But we convince him: there is nothing dangerous in it. We do it in many ways. In an airplane, there is a floor under our feet, we feel it, which means it’s not dangerous. The train has a floor — it’s not dangerous. We are standing. And the fact that this floor is moving at an amazing speed is unimportant.

But the body still reacts. And the only way we can help ourselves is to honestly say, “It’s really dangerous here. But now I’m helping my body not shrink from danger. And I go to read a book, watch a movie, listen to music. I am consciously in a controlled dissociation because I am aware that I am in dangerous territory.”

If a person honestly says this to himself, he will be able to group himself, and danger will not be a surprise for him. He will be ready for her. And his body too.