Going with the Flow

I started confusing my children's tastebuds for the real and true when they were just little babies.

It's true. I didn't know any better.

I bought them all sorts of bright shiny plastic toys that made all sorts of loud noises and shined pretty bright lights at them. I thought, "Oooh, this toy will stimulate their mind. My child will be so smart for being exposed to so many colors and sounds!" That's what the toy manufacturers wanted me to think - and it worked - I thought it.

I remember one particularly annoying toy. When my babies would kick it (they were too young to sit up) some loud plastic things would roll around and "classical" music played.  Poor things. That must have been so tiring for their sensitive little bodies.

It didn't end there. As they got older, I bought more things to "keep their minds busy".   I bought Leapster products, books with buttons, battery-operated train sets (children don't even have to pull their trains around anymore!), and anything I thought would "educate" them.  Why not? I figured that as long as they were learning something, it was a good toy. In fact, I thought that I was stimulating their minds and helping them thrive. That's what the toy manufacturers wanted me to believe. And I did.

What where my babies really learning as they tapped on a drum and it sung the ABCs for them? They were learning to like bright lights, loud sounds and to need stimulation.  They learned to look for the next thrill instead of exploring the world as it really is.  What was I thinking?  I wasn't.  I was just going with the flow (going with the cultural flow used to work okay for people, unfortunately - in these days - cultural flow leads to unhappiness or even despair).

I am aware that childhood experts recommend that children get exposed to different colors, sounds, and textures.  They've done studies where kids only have blank white walls to look at and kids who have pretty colors on their walls.  The brains of the kids with colors developed better.  Obviously.

Arthur Henry King (Who, I am learning, was an extremely well educated, well read, well travelled, and very experienced man) had an amazing perspective on truth and reality.  Here is what he said about what children need to see:

The eye sees form and color ---lines, angles, and curves; shades, tints, hues.  Plastic objects are made in molds, and these molds produce approximate lines and depths; they smooth everything out.  The colors of plastic are often a searing contrast with the delicate colors of the natural environment.  A child reared on the strong colors of substitute materials will not respond to finer shades.

Hmmm. I didn't think about the fact that maybe I was desensitizing my children. I was thinking about stimulating them.  Going outside and seeing the wondrous colors in nature is what their brains needed- not some bright, plastic noisy toy.  Wouldn't you agree that the same might hold true for textures?

Before they even hear or see properly, children touch fabrics, toys, room surfaces, human hands and cheeks, themselves.  All this touching may form either a rich experience or the experience of mere uniformity.  Synthetic fibers produce a great variety of textiles, but they are more uniform in texture.  Wool, cotton, linen, silk and velvet need to be felt in their variety.  Plastic toys are safe and cheap, but they are smooth; they don't feel like wood or metal or textile

No wonder my children gravitated to the wooden spoons and my metal car keys! They were fed up with plastic and loved to touch something different! Instead I filled their life with more artificial stuff because they were growing bored of the other artificial stuff. Would you think this holds true for the sounds that they are exposed to?

 At Little Miss' piano lesson the other day, her teacher played a chord for me. Then he played some notes that were not a "true" chord. He asked me if I could tell the difference. I could. Barely. He said that many people can not tell the difference between the two "chords" these days because Jazz music started messing with the chords to make new sounds, and popular music has followed suit. As a result, we can't hear a proper chord when it is played. From Arthur Henry King:

Young children flinch at loud noises, but in modern society they soon learn to endure and then to enjoy excessive decibels. Loud noise, however, prevents the development of discriminative refinement. Our civilization shouts so loud that the value of a whisper is forgotten.

A pretty profound statement, considering that when God speaks to us, He whispers to our spirits. I also have to add what he said next. It is so powerful and so true and so forgotten.

Continuous background noise --- from the radio or television, for example ---discourages the development of perception and discrimination. Something that is there the whole time no longer draws proper attention: it dulls; it becomes a kind of drug; it floats us sluggishly along. It is like a stream of dirty, lukewarm water --- a kind of inferior bath taken disgustingly in common. Whatever encourages our inattention diminishes our ability to make wise choices because, of all the things that are required to make wise choices, a delicate and sensitive attention is the most important.

"Whatever encourages our inattention..." Our inattention to what? To truth, to beauty, to the reality that is all around us begging for us to notice it! DISTRACTIONS - whether they be too much clothes, too many kitchen appliances, too many toys, too many books, too many art materials, too much of any good thing (and of course any of the bad)- encourages our inattention.  Not to mention, it takes our time to take care of it, to clean it up, to use it, etc.

I can't explain adequately how beautiful life has become as we've made these changes.  We've always been a good family - trying to do what was right.   I was too busy seeing how else to enrich our lives that I didn't stop to think that they were already enriched - I just had to remove the stuff that kept us from noticing!  I see so much more now.

It's interesting, I read the book that these quotes came from about 2 years ago.  I read it and thought, "This is true.  This makes sense.  I need to go get more of the real kinds of things - some real art, some real plants, some velvet and silk for my babies..."  I do still want some of those things, but I failed to see the real point of the message - get rid of the fake!  I wasn't ready for it yet.  I hadn't stopped to question some of my basic assumptions.  I was still going with the flow.

How about you?