Included in the rigid rhythms of today’s life, our children are becoming more and more absent-minded, states the educator and philosopher Jacques de Coulomb. How to help your child? Teach him to turn to his inner world, to live an inner life.
Modern children are less and less able to concentrate, they strive to receive only new things and impressions, which, however, soon cease to captivate them … This description may seem too negative, although child psychologists, educators and parents daily note that in general it corresponds to reality. What’s to blame? The very structure of our (and therefore their) life today — social, family, school, in which we almost always give priority to our external activities to the detriment of what is happening inside us. Parents, seeking to accelerate the development of their child, from an early age include him in the mode of overload. “Most children now live as if outside their own “I”, – says Jacques de Coulon (Jacques de Coulon). – Both at school and at home, they are constantly moving from one type of activity to another, not devoting a single minute to themselves. External stimuli flood all their internal space!” The philosopher and educator is concerned about what is happening, because today more and more children suffer from attention disorders. Children who are overly oriented to the outside world also face a more serious danger: they become victims of all kinds of addictions much more easily. If a child is too much influenced by external influences, he is not able to harmoniously develop his inner world. But it is precisely at the expense of the internal resources of his personality that he learns to be independent.
“The inner world is not an abstraction, it is our reality, a necessary condition for our development,” Jacques de Coulomb clarifies. — This is the spiritual space that allows the child to be alone with himself, without suffering from boredom or anxiety. In it, he creates, fantasizes, feels, reflects and learns throughout his life, as a unique and self-aware person. The teacher reminds: education should guide the child to independence, prepare for freedom. “Our consumer society is result-oriented, it induces a person mainly to two actions: “to have” and “to do”. Most of the subjects taught in school leave out both the body and the imagination of the child — what, in fact, is himself. Therefore, it is the parents who should daily take care of the development of his inner world.
- Julia Gippenreiter: «Follow the child and help him grow»
see example
“How can parents show the child the importance of his inner world if they themselves are focused exclusively on the outer world?” — puts the question of Jacques de Coulomb. The life of a modern family goes on against the backdrop of successive television programs, under the conversations of the material plane (work, leisure, acquisitions); guests come and go, but there is no time left for deeper communication. In such an environment, it is difficult for us to touch our own «I». The child needs to learn to enjoy the time he spends alone with himself, at rest. And also from activities that expand his inner space: he can dream, read, listen to music, draw, or just sit, doing nothing. But for this it is necessary … that his family regularly and with pleasure spend time in the same way!
Become aware of your body
“When a person lives outside his own body, he loses touch with himself,” emphasizes Jacques de Coulomb. “At a desk or in front of a computer screen, children are disconnected from their bodily sensations.” As a result, they absorb information only intellectually. Also detrimental are those leisure activities in which the body is used mechanically as a tool to get results. “That’s why, in addition to traditional physical exercises and games that you have to win, children should also be offered those that involve any of the five senses,” advises Jacques de Coulomb. “You can walk barefoot, knead the dough with your hands, listen to music with your eyes closed, inhale a pleasant aroma, slowly taste fruits …” Therefore, before sitting down for lessons, the child can be offered to sit for a minute or two with his eyes closed, listening to his breathing and sensations own body. By coming into contact with his bodily sensations, the child gets to know himself, begins to perceive himself as an active actor and trust himself.
develop imagination
“You shouldn’t consider TV as the source of all troubles — just remember that the picture chains, and the word frees,” advises Jacques de Coulomb. A child can listen to a fairy tale with his eyes closed, make a fancy dress, invent fairy-tale characters, listen to a musical passage… All these activities, if you regularly pay attention to them (on weekends or on holidays), turn him from an ordinary consumer of leisure into a creator of new images and worlds . The power of his imagination will allow him to get away from boredom or feelings of anxiety when he is alone, which means it will protect him from addictions. Active imagination makes the mind flexible and inquisitive — because it pushes the boundaries of the world known to us, allows us to make discoveries, invent.
But in order to express themselves, to create freely and with pleasure, the child must feel that these activities are not offered to him for the sake of «improving his skills» and, therefore, he is not threatened with evaluation. Doing what you are doing now with pleasure is the best strategy.
Allow yourself to be idle
In today’s life, the cult of activity dominates. We have come a long way from the philosopher Michel Montaigne, who believed that idleness is “not only natural, but also the most brilliant of occupations” *. From the very first years of life, our children are subjected to strong pressure in this sense, especially from their parents. “We forget that pressure is logically followed by depression,” warns Jacques de Coulomb. He reminds that in order to build their personality and become independent, children need the experience of not doing. Parents, adults should not overload their children, stuffing them with active leisure along with school assignments … with the sole purpose of reducing their own anxiety. Being bored, wandering around, dreaming about something — all these options for “idleness” are actually productive. The body and mind relax, resting from external stimuli. Without receiving information from the outside, the child experiences the experience of «separation», separation from the outside, and, consequently, independence, an experience sometimes difficult, but necessary. It is in these free, unfilled moments that he can come into contact with his true needs and desires, and not their substitutes.
* M. Montaigne «Experiments». Eksmo, 2009.