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Children Learn By Getting Down And Dirty
The human race has survived because we nurture our children for so many years. The danger lies in our becoming so over-protective that while stunting the natural curiosity of our youngsters, we stop their development on many different levels. There is no hard and fast rule as to what explorations we should allow or prohibit. Every parent struggles with this fine balance using his own set of criteria. Just look at how we treat our newborns.
Frail newborns need protection from infection. Parents feel a sense of security when they provide a baby bath, special bath linens and all the baby cleaning products which appear in babies’ nurseries world wide. The idea of using the regular bathroom towels and facecloths never enters their minds. Sometimes these concerns become so important to parents that they lose all common sense about it. They focus only on the negative notion of germs targeting their child. They forget that children must build up some resistance to bacteria in order to survive.
When should you start letting your infant use the common family household linens? Sooner rather than later, to be brief. The minor germs contained in these cloths are exactly what a developing immune system needs. Doctors now urge the use of regular soap around the home and workplace. Why don’t they encourage the use of the popular germ killing soaps? It is because the immune system gets stronger with every germ it encounters. It learns how to fight them
Everyone agrees that the marketplace has provided some essential tools for the care of young children in the last twenty years. It is hard to imagine a nursery without baby safety monitors or baby gates to ensure that parents can keep close tabs on baby’s activities. The availability of an electric breast pump enables today’s working moms to provide baby’s ideal food, at all times. Baby car seats are saving lives daily, as are helmets and other safety equipment.
But parents must know that as the child grows, he has to tackle his environment with a little less regulation in order to learn by his mistakes. There is no use expecting children to learn what their limits are if they never get to make decisions. We must allow them to make mistakes.
No child will be permanently damaged by being temporarily rebuffed by his environment. He will learn to confront the problem. Then he has a chance to discover how to overcome it.
It is time to allow Junior to try climbing that back yard tree. Stick around and stay close. Encourage his efforts to conquer the climb. It will be worth patching up a skinned knee if he learns to test branch strength before going out on a limb.