This is genius
Hello my dear reader! ;-)
I’m going to go straight to the grain…
YOUR CHILD IS A GENIUS! EVERY CHILD IS.
As good as all children’s brains operate at about 98% genius level.
If you saw Einstein sitting at a desk, working concentratedly on an experiment. Would you interrupt him? I hope not …
When you see a child playing, exploring, solving a problem, contemplating, observing - it’s a genius at work! So, don’t interrupt!
All you need to do is give the basic needs: love, shelter, nutrition, clothes, protection from serious harm or death. And one more thing:
Freedom
Let your genius child all the freedom she needs to explore the world around her.
Let your baby crawl around, let your toddler walk freely, let your kid run. Don’t holt her back unless something life-threatening is about it happen. The emphasis is on ‘about to happen‘. Not when you imagine the 10 things that could happen, when she’s 5m ahead or behind you on the sidewalk, or when she’s playing with a stick, or when standing in front of a stray cat.
Of course you need to be around because accidents can happen, often caused by external means. It’s our job as parents to keep our children safe, but not to over-protecting them.
Human’s are born with a protection instinct, even babies have it, believe it or not. There are studies that show that crawling babies stop at an edge from which a fall would be fatal. Our instincts keep us from killing ourselves.
Other studies show that when adults stay away from playgrounds, way less accidents happen to the kids playing there.
Kids are safer WITHOUT YOU, figure that!
It’s not always easy to let go of your fears, concerns and worries about what might happen and separate our past experiences from our children’s life but it’s so important to do this because otherwise you reduce those 98% of genius-brain bit by bit until only 2% are left in their early 20. That’s what happens to most people…
Let children do what they want to do. There’s a reason behind it and they learn with every step. Stop doing things for them because you’re taking away learning lessons and you take away another percent of their genius mind by doing so.
I KNOW it’s not that easy but we have to make an effort… Here are a couple of examples of things I f**ed up in my kid’s early years that I’m now trying to reverse:
Lima was chopping food, cooking rice, eggs, meat and more before she turned 2. Now she only does it occasionally but is getting back into it.
Bo decided to stop wearing a nappy at 18 months old, used the toilet, wiping herself. Now she wants me to wipe her because I interfered too often.
Babies, toddlers, little children and big kids are competent and capable at any age and almost everything you give them to chance to try out freely, with help when they ask for it.
I invite you to reflect on what you’ve been keeping your child from doing and why.
Then, I’d like you to take a big breath and decide which areas of your kid’s life you’re going to step away from, from now on to let your child take back her power and start doing it from now on, if she wants to.
What do you think? Any worries, questions or experiences you’d like to share?
I’d love to hear them.
