My niece Shannon, who is 6, drew this for me on my birthday last month. She is a precocious, artistic soul. I find myself wondering, if I had children, how would I raise them?
I’ve been thinking about formal education recently. As my friend Sean Rasmussen is fond of saying, we don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing. Over the past 2 years during which I’ve been focusing on personal growth, I’ve become aware of when I learned what – that I studied grammar when I was 7 years old, swimming at 8, piano at 10, calculus and physics at 13, the Bible at 15, Joyce and Flaubert at 18. Along the way I also learned thrift, fear of disapproval, shyness, competitiveness along with respect for intelligence, filial piety, racial tolerance.
But I didn’t learn about basic human psychology – not systematically anyway – until, well, a few years ago. Now I’m fascinated by the work of Erickson, Csikszentmihalyi et al.
And I didn’t learn about financial literacy – I had, again, no systematic schooling in taxation, markets, derivatives until I made the deliberate effort of studying equity options.
Our schooling emphasizes academic and specialized knowledge over and above self-knowledge like the psychology of emotion, motivation, perception, personality and the unconscious mind.
As Napoleon Hill wryly put it, “Specialized knowledge is amongst the most plentiful, and the cheapest forms of service which may be had! If you doubt this consult the payroll of any university.”
If I had a child, I believe I would opt for home-schooling. I would find a community of home-schooled children for him/her to grow up with. Let’s say I have a boy, whom I will name Luke. Luke will have an upbringing of the highest consciousness I can muster. I will allow Luke to learn the difference between love and fear from an early age. Luke will know about the rapport he can create with his unconscious mind. And that emotions can be mastered if he wishes. He can learn how to analyze motivations, his own and those of others.
So even though I don’t see Shannon – or her brother Cameron, younger by 3 years – that often, I’m aware that my behavior makes an impression on her.
Children model themselves on whatever they see, imprinted by whatever stimulus and feedback they get. If I live my life as the adult I want to be, then Shannon and Cameron will receive this attitude from me without me having to try hard; I just have to live the values I espouse.
When around children, I try to remember that they are learning from you all the time. Therefore I aim to be a child’s best teacher and coach.
