Building a strong foundation
Good morning my friends!
This week I’ve been coming across and learning about the importance of a strong foundation and this is what I’m focussing on at the moment. Building the foundation for APTB.
How you do one thing is how you do everything - this phrase has been with me for a long time. I think I first read it 15 years ago in a book by T. Harv Eker. When it comes to a strong foundation you can see this in every aspect of life:
It starts in babyhood when parents love and nurture their child, giving him everything he needs which means, love and attention, not toys and other gadgets that the toy industry wants us to believe we need to raise good and intelligent children.
When the bond between parents and a child is strong, the foundation is almost unshakable, a bit like a tree - the stronger the roots, the more flexible and unbreakable the tree becomes.
Kids who have a solid connection to their parents because they have received more love than others turn out to be more balanced and self-confident adults than people who didn’t experience solid bonding in their childhood, studies show.
Another analogy is the child that has the freedom to discover things for himself and work things out without constant unwanted support and interference. A tree that doesn’t receive regular water supply from humans reaches out its roots deeper into the ground to look for ground water making it stronger.
When you let children try things when they feel ready to do them and don’t interfere or push unless it’s a matter of life and death, they learn quicker and become more self-confident. This is sometimes easier said than done because parents do worry about their children’s wellbeing and safety and think that if they don’t say something the children will get hurt, fall behind or worse - die - but in most cases this isn’t true. Quite the opposite… the more adults interfere in child play the more kids get injured, studies show (and I don’t need to explain that forcing someone to learn something they’re not interested in is a complete waste of time and energy)
Nonetheless, freedom is what APTB is all about… letting kids explore the world around them freely without pressure or interference. And that’s why it’s important to build this foundation as strong as possible so that children will always have the liberty to go their own way.
Therefore, I’m working on
finding the right people - staff and families - who respect our values
training the people well who will work at APTB so that the principles are clear and will be implemented the right way
having a guideline of what to do when things/people go off track to keep the principles in place
I’ll be using Henry Readhead from Summerhill School and their service of helping start-ups like ours as a source of consultation. I’m also studying the Sudbury Valley School system to get some inspiration, apart from using my problem-solving skills and always remaining open to trying and failing and trying something else. This is the beauty about a project like APTB… we will gather, see what ideas, projects and issues will appear and work together to come up with solutions. Mistakes are there to learn from and with all those cool kids around we’ll have a plethora of brainstorming ideas swirling all around us to get results ;-)
So, that’s the plan. I’ll keep you posted, as always.
