Gift your summer to your child
Dream, Dance and Develop
It was the last day of academic year and the teacher was soliciting the children’s summer plans.
The boy in last row was slow in getting up, his voice deliberate, “Mam, this summer vacations I just want to dream.” While his peers giggled, the teacher smiled, “Rajat, Can I also join you, for I haven’t done this, in good measure, for a long time.
Most of us take life too seriously. We are most of the time planning, doing, achieving. Even our dreams have lost their surreality and are more of schemes, or goals. More unfortunately we take away from children their core ability to dream. We want results from our children, not some beady eyed fantasies. We convert their flights of fantasies into production machines.
Play this game today and if you like it, play the whole of summer holidays, or whole life :)
Waiting for our train, I asked the two children with me, “If you have one full train coach just for you - what all will the coach have inside it - go ahead dream your dream coach”. What ensued was one hour of rich and sweet thoughts. Albeit mostly fantasies were shared, the next day the girl came back to me and said, “Uncle I got to know myself better yesterday - and it was lot of fun. Today I am thinking about my dream car!” But the most fun aspect was that we all dreamed - including me.
Enjoy many dreaming-themes - What's your dream holiday, or dream book, dream dinner, dream day - even dream daddy :-)
A childless king was looking for a suitable heir. Most candidates talked about their abilities to do, to achieve. At last a little boy came up to the king and said, in a fairly emphatic manner, “I can Dance!” You could hear a bout of scornful chuckles in the court. The king hushed the court. The boy continued, “Sire, I can also DO, but most importantly I can dance. Dance with dreams, ideas, thoughts, my beliefs, perspectives, and with my ego. I can dance with my emotions, with happiness, with sorrow, with jealousy. I can dance with life.”
To ‘play’, to ‘dance’ is an ability all of us had, but few have retained as we are made to grow older, to become adults.
Dancing is different from dreaming. Dancing is doing, playing with what one has or gets. Dancing is action filled full of energy and vigor. Dancing is not just accepting, but playing with that acceptance, or maybe because we play with reality we are able to accept it. Either ways, it's about living silly, loving everybody, enjoying each moment. Its about being unstuck, its about finding ding-ga-ling-ga-ling in all that life serves.
My 66 year old uncle came to my house and rang the bell. The bell chimed a sweet melody. Charmed, he exclaimed to his sister (my mother) “what a wonderful door bell”. My mother familiar with her brother’s ‘playfulness’ remarked - “it makes a different sound every-time”. “Really!” he jumped up and for the next 10 minutes was exploring and exclaiming the door bell. What he taught me was that he was not ringing the bell, he was ringing his life - with glee!
Just the other day we challenged each other on who would find the most interesting way to have an orange. One child held the orange up in her left hand, poked it with the blunt end of the spoon. The juice trickled down her left hand and the attempt was to lick the juice off her elbow.
Oh! what a mess we created of oranges, and of ourselves. Try it … on your deathbed, you will remember such a mess much more than all the right things you ever did in your life!
Click here to see one of my childhood advertisement that underlines the fact the life is habba - begging you to celebrate it!
Please pleeeese pleasssse pleaaaaase - do not take away this amazing ability all children seem to innately have (After working with more 4000 children in the last 16 years - you can have my word that ALL have this ability).
Many of us adults, instead of learning from kids, try to teach them the right way of not enjoying life. Most of us take life too seriously. (Have I said this before?). Its time to not just let go children, to let grow also - just the way they were designed to grow, as dancers!
A jeweller had many craftsman working for him, but one elderly guy almost always produced more + his pieces were the most exquisite. When inquired about his secret, He replied, “When I make something I do not try to make the result nice or speed efficient. I only focus on enjoying doing the job”
Most children do things not for results but because somewhere the task attracted them. Its we who start filling them with expectations, quality of results, importance of outcomes and in the process kill the joy of development.
I was playing this game of tennis with my father. When we returned home my mom asked casually, “Who won?” My father replied, “In the first set his foot-work won and my forehand lost but in the next my serve won and his volleys won and in the third …..”
Do this favour to your child - get a large carton box and write in big letters on it, “DON’T CARE”. Now whenever you or your child does something and people start analysing / judging it - jump and either put the ‘job” in the box or simply stand inside the box and scream -Don’t care!
When i was a kid, my summer holidays were two months of dreaming, dancing and developing. I am sure so was yours. Its your turn to give “your kind of childhood” to your child too. If not for the whole year - at least during the holidays.
As for me, three decades later, my life is still full of dreaming, dancing and developing.
--Ratnesh Mathur
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amable is what we believe
in.
(watch a presentation here).
Events and updates
1. Come for a small workshop,
which also orients you to the
approach of our summer program - on this Saturday
on 29th March (11:30 to 1:00 pm). Register
here for the free
workshop @ our Indiranagar
Center. For summer camp options (Half day, full day, residential, weekly options) click here.
2. We are a community now! Welcoming amable Beyond Horizon (Bangalore, Whitefield) and amable Swayam (Ahmedabad). Connect with individual centres if you are interested in summer program for 3 to 14 year olds at specified locations and preschool for your 2 to 5 yr olds. Contact details here.
3. Train the Trainer: TTT is our flagship experiential workshop for parents and teachers who are keen to understand children better. Online batch starting in April , in-person/online batch in July. Schedule and Registration.
4. Aarohi orientation on May 3rd, Saturday 11 to 1 pm. Explore Organic education where child learns by self, for self. Register
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