The best education I can give to my little ones

Education is ultimately about teaching someone how to know something they don't know yet. Content is important, but more so is how to actually do learning and do it well. Content can be spoon fed or drizzled, hinted at or laid out. No matter what way it's done the capacity to imagine is the key to working out how to know something we don't fully know. It is the ability to conjure, guess, suppose and think about. We need it to ask questions about the future, to even assume there is a future. All of this is done drawing on images we store from the past, the memories and ideas we may have, that get thrown into a mix to form an image of something we have not fully experienced.This imagining capacity is the gateway to not just great creativity, but empathy, solving problems and becoming your potential. And all of that gives life meaning.

If this is the case then being able to imagine well seems to me to be of upmost importance. It is how my children become the best they can be, how they blossom. The question is how to cultivate the optimal state of imagining?

My respect of imagination has deepened my respect for children. It is they who imagine best. I watch my children spin worlds and experiences out of what seems like nothing to me, and then use this to make sense of their world. I watch Aziz Elan and Ruya Lilly play guitar on straws and leaves, run down the passage way with suitcases to catch the train, fly through the air with fairy wings no one else can see, slay dragons that resurrect themselves.

I am constantly pushed to imagine more, the capacity in me much stunted by my age and conditioning. In this push I have come up with a few images of what might make imagining easier. It is as any good work is, a work in progress.

Play more, make play the most important thing that happens

Again and again I read about how play is the ticket to most of the things we desire our children to develop, be it creativity, emotional awareness, fairness, kindness, bravery, self discipline, being self directed, having social skills. But I read little on the fuel of play, which is imagination. And being able to imagine whilst inborn has to be cultivated. It can grow and it can wither, just like the instinct to play.

Play is the best vehicle to imagine but not all play does that well. The best kind of play is open ended with a story to it. If the play gets too directed and the rules to set, the options to imagine become less. We want to make it more. If we let our children play as they want to, that naturally happens. This kind of play makes the teaching process the child's not the adults. It is defined by being something the child wants to do, has an intention about, and carries on as long as it is fun to the child. It might look like work to us or crazy repetition or useless activity. But only if we lack imagination ourselves.

But just leaving kids to play open ended is not what research suggests is always best. We can play a part in making the play a space to imagine further. We can guide the play and create fertile environments for the setting. We can tell stories that provide the soil of characters and plot lines. Beyond that facilitation the best thing to do is play alongside our little ones; let them lead the story with some prompts from us here and there; take time to create simple settings for context and ideas; make clearer stuff about this adult world which might seem strange and nonsensical. But most of all follow their lead with deepest support for what they might be trying to accomplish.

Use the hard moments everyday, use what is already happening

Imagination is magic, but it rests on the ordinary. All good stories, like myth and fairytales, spin on the axis of grit. The grit that we all roll around in daily, like getting attracted to someone or getting jealous, getting stuck or losing someone we love, wanting to boss people around or chasing after perfection and failing, facing scary people or finding places to hide away from them. And all these stories, if they are worth listening to and are actually interesting, show ways to confront the dragons we fear, become a good person, find people we love. I think it's through stories that we can imagine ourselves differently. We can be what we are not yet and become more. All these stories are archetypal. We all live this grit daily.

So use the hard moments everyday and make it a story that reaches out for a truth. Weave out the characters. Here is mama the angry ogre stamping her feet, here is the princess who is brave and bold and sometimes she falls, here is the bossy one who finds herself lonely, here is the scared child finding the best hiding place. By pulling apart the voices you get a grip on what's happening. And everyone gets to speak. Maybe your child will find a voice you have been searching for.

Use your feelings to find ways to imagine and get the payoff of empathy

The real magic of making life moments a story, is when you imagine into the voice you are not telling and scared to tell. You imagine into what it might feel like to be that bossy girl or jealous brother. Your use the feeling of what that is like to become something you are not already. We all know how it feels to be scared, hurt, angry, brave. Step into the feeling first and the character will come alive. Our feelings can animate the idea of something into real experience. That is empathy - feeling another's experience even though we might not fully understand it.

Imagination is the key to empathy. Without it we could never picture what it might be like to feel like someone else, especially when they have experiences different from us. We have to guess into others emotions. Insight into feeling seems to happen best when we can tell a story about it, but it doesn't become empathy until you get in your body. Screens don't cut it. No child can learn language from a screen or relationship skills. A screen can offer some vocab and indicators to look out for but it doesn't come close to real social awareness. Guiding a child in learning about their emotional world takes someone who has a capacity to do it for themselves, it takes shared emotional interaction. Mood indicator charts, pictures of faces expressing feelings and a lot of directed instruction on how children should express a feeling is easy. These methods are safe for the adult. It makes big people feel like they are in control, where control might be a panacea but will only lead to surface compliance. Controlling feelings just puts a lid on stuff it doesn't let the feelings become useful. It is far more optimal to imagine together what it might feel like to be that person and let the story happen. Issues get solved when you let the feeling unfold.

Simpler environments breed more imagination, so does changing the stage

Imagination can be inspired by props or killed by it. Less toys is always better, simple stuff that is open ended. Anything that can become more than one thing trumps a fancy gadget that has a pre determined plan. Pots and pans from the kitchen, a tea set, a basket to put stuff in, little suitcases, tents and cloths to create houses and towers and grocery stores, blocks to build, dolls to talk to, hats to take off and wings to fly. Although I can't carry much or hoard a ton of toys, I still fall into the trap of some toy that promises great things for my child's development and appeases my worry that I am being a good enough mama. Inevitably I always come back to the same stuff and it's usually defined by being closer to nature than robots.

Stories change scenes so it helps to change the environment. Less clutter gives more space for stuff to be moved and built, so the stage can shift. Getting into a different space is one of the fastest ways to force you to imagine because you inevitably meet something you didn't plan to. When a story gets stuck it needs an element of the unexpected. Things become unpredictable when you shift context and this kind of chaos is central to any good story. Travel, even just into the garden or around the block. Your child will naturally find the thing you didn't expect, they are looking out for it. Use the environment to broaden your stories, there is plenty of uncontrollable stuff out there to play with.

Repeat again and again, let children make it their own

We tend to think of imagination as a given. Maybe we think that some have more of it than others, but generally we assume we all have it and nothing further needs to be done about it. Except just like any muscle imaginative ability wilts when it is not practiced. You have to develop imagination, just like emotional awareness. They both are muscles adults tend to only exercise in challenging moments. We call upon our capacity to solve problems and resolve conflict without giving any thought to the work and exercise needed to have the muscle to do that stuff in the first place.

The best any to practice is to repeat, again and again. And young children love, they are passionate about, doing something again. Its so easy it just takes saying yes to their cries for more. I watch as Ruya wants the same book read night after night, or plays out the same scenario day after day. Aziz picks up his stones and places them, throws them and starts over. Just letting my children do what they do, letting their play happen in repeat, means they get to exercise their muscle.

Exercise can also be hard, it requires some stamina and discipline. The stamina of play happens when it continued to be fun. So my job is to facilitate that and to notice when the game is not fun anymore and try to show why that is so. Sometimes one child needs to go off alone and do it by themselves. Sometimes a little surprise is needed. Sometimes the game is just over but they can't stop repeating it and it's time for a snack. Noticing the flow and helping it along naturally paces the play, and if given half the chance children will often outpace us adults in their desire to work hard at their play.

Make space to get bored everyday, start with yourself

Boredom is by definition a state of not knowing what to do. And not knowing something is the best place to find yourself if you want to imagine something else. You can't be very imaginative when the rules of the game are fixed, or the activity is pre determined in content and time. You can't really imagine much when there is so much to do you have no headspace to think beyond getting through the task. That's the scenario of a lot of little people as they shuttle from one thing to the next in the spirit of providing more enrichment. Unfortunately the enrichment ends up to be too much, too fast and like strong fertilizer makes crops grow only one way. We end up with kids that can't think beyond the box they live in. I believe if I want to enrich my children I have to start with giving them space to work out how to enrich themselves, and find what kind of treasure gets them excited.

Boredom is the most exquisite of states because it lets you anticipate. You have to wait for something to appear and in that space ideas build, pictures in your head form about what might happen. You imagine into what is not yet there. You are forced into a pause and imagination thrives in spaces and idle moments. We all know our best ideas come from when we are not focused on trying to solve the problem.

Letting boredom exist is more than just getting that it's valuable. We have to dump the expectations we have come to ingest about needing to provide the best day ever, needing to be a parent who gives a lot to our children and proving the worth of our parenting job by the events scheduled on the calendar. If we dump this bullshit guilt we can free ourselves too of trying to be something. Then we can also imagine differently into the kind of mother and father we really want to be. We can get bored a little with our children and see what happens.

Usually if I let myself get bored, which is the first step into letting my child be bored, then I am beautifully surprised by what they come up with. It's usually much more interesting than what I had in mind, and much more appropriate for what they needed then. I'm not saying trash all events, but balance the pre determined with a serious dose of open ended.

But be aware when children's time is already over scheduled and we suddenly give them free space they often have no idea what to do, and look to us. More so than ever now they will also look for a screen to entertain them. Let them get frustrated firmly and gently. Sometimes being so boring yourself will compel your child to look elsewhere, and they will always find something eventually.