Adults can provide a harmonizing balance of care and encouragement in the form of:-

• Personal interaction : Compassion

Boundaries

Authenticity

• A safe physical environment with freedom to : Explore

Experiment

Creatively manipulate environmental resources

• A socially interactive environment whereby free play, creativity and child-directed learning are positively supported through : –

Sharing and caring

Reflective and complimentary interaction

Independence and co-operative play.

• The Keys to Empowerment
• Each individual’s learning potential is acknowledged and encouraged.
• All knowledge is subject to Personal Experience.
• Choice is fundamental to every individual.
• Authentic creativity is essential to natural play and learning.
• Compassionate understanding comes from co-operative sharing.
• Trust, gratitude and appreciation are embraced within a positive attitude

Creative freedoms

Those adults who hold a position of authority and pastoral care over others, especially children and teenagers, may need to establish a more conscious assessment of how and what and when they take responsibility for:-

Boundaries,

Supporting materials and environments

Natural consequences.

 

The author presents the following areas of consideration as fundamental and therefore supportive to any adult role of responsibility.

 

Empowered authenticity

Emotional honesty that avoids a projection of external expectations or demands and/or primitive survival issues. For example you have had an upset with your partner and there is a remaining level of emotional upset. When you are asked if you are upset you could explain that you have emotional feelings that are disturbing your sense of happiness and will therefore need some time to process and establish a personal recovery

New sciences and new levels of thinking can encourage and inspire higher levels of awareness through a nurturing of supportive scaffolding within the practicalities of our everyday living. Working on small easy steps and simple steady improvements, can anchor our efforts to seed new growth within the harmony of Highest Good and our individual capacity to live, love and learn together. Simple structures of communication can deeply nurture seeds of encouragement for meaningful experiences and the accompanying sweetness of personal empowerment. It is the very nature of this simple and successful scaffolding that wisely supports our future happiness and evolution into higher realms of consciousness.

Boundaries are an essential part of the adult carer’s role. The boundaries may relate to

• Safety;
• Positive learning experience;
• Empowering social behaviour.

Boundaries need to be Authentic and Meaningful  – related to aspects of living

Boundaries coming from – Genuine Involvement – an illustration of doing your best

Boundaries create a way for you to Come to a New Place Within Yourself-an example of the art of being.

Our fullest potential is present within the very essence of our being from which we express our original nature, the very essence of positive and joyful living. The diagram below presents a simplified consideration of how we can express the sweetness of our unique potential out into to the world around us.

 

The Eastwood ‘Creative Parenting’ approach is founded upon the adult’s responsibility to ‘Change the Environment not the Behaviour……..’ This phrase presents that children’s behaviour and learning can be enhanced by the adults ability to use the environment to secure positive boundaries that encourage appropriate behaviour and positive learning experiences. This approach successfully eliminates the need to enforce disciplinary measures over negative behaviour, frustration and learning defeats.

For example if children are fighting over a toy the adult takes hold of the toy and secures it within their care. The children then either address how to play together with the toy and convince the adult to return the toy. Alternatively if the fighting was more desirable than playing with the toy co-operatively the toy will be forgotten. If a child wants to smash up toys then the adult may organise an appropriate ‘you can smash it up’ job. The old fairground games illustrate acceptable versions of games that might otherwise be seen as anti-social behaviour – the coconut stall, the wet sponge throwing, bumper cars etc. Creative Parenting is about finding a ‘yes’ rather than a ‘No’ response held within appropriate boundaries of safety and co-operative social behaviour.

It is easier  to use the environment, e.g. social example,  gentle guidance, positive associated experiences, to avoid or dissolve bad habits and/or anti-social behaviour in young children (3-7) than to organise disciplines to correct behaviour in later years, when it is hard work and is difficult to ensure improvements.

Adults have responsibility for scaffolding boundaries for their children. The nature of these boundaries is likely to influence the young child’s growing conscious discernment. Without boundaries young children can be overwhelmed by behaviour patterns and the weight of associated experiences, feelings, fears, and anxieties.

For example a little girl would slap or hit people when she felt unsafe with their mood or behaviour.  This action did not appear to involve genuine aggression or any specific desire to hurt or provoke retaliation.  However, she often got defensive and aggressive responses, which exceeded the intensity of her own behaviour.  Thus, this Antisocial Behaviour was creating examples of aggressive social interaction and encouraging the young child to feel she needed to be able to develop levels of aggression and defence that would protect her in the future.  Her level of cognitive development was not able to consider all the related elements of her situation at this young age her responses were limited to a simple survival level. Incidentally, this little girl’s cosy, comfortable, intimate sharing time with her family (adults and older children) was normally whilst they were sitting down watching films on TV.

A child rarely consciously pre-meditates negative attitudes or unsafe behaviour.  However, anti-social behaviour may become a learned attention seeking activity.  It is important to the child is given help to find  the desire to behave more socially, then the adult and child can work towards organizing strategies that will help the child establish positive social interaction.

A practical example: observed by the author: A child wanting to operate the tailgate on a van. He repeatedly pushed the button without adult consent. This created a dangerous situation for the adults unloading and would, for most adults, not be considered a suitable way for the child to help in the process of unloading the van. However, a more successful solution could possibly have been organised as follows.

Adults to child: “if I says STOP can you stop the tailgate from moving?”

Child: “Yes!”

They do a step by step test run on STOP and GO using the tail lift control buttons.

Adult: “would you like to operate the tailgate according to my instructions and help the adults unload the van?”

Now the risk of accidents is minimised and if that child fails to do what is asked correctly then he is given a different environment or a further chance when an adult is available to facilitate 1 to 1 supervision. This supervision would need to also accommodate changing the environment in ways that would help the child to work with the adults needs successfully.  The supervising adult could also facilitate that the child stepped back and away from the control buttons after the STOP command, and only stepped forward again when asked to operate the GO button in response to the GO command.

Coordinating the child’s movement with the actions creates an environment that helps the child to avoid playing with the buttons in a way that is unsafe. If child under supervision is unable to focus on the task safely the supervising adult is there to take the child away into another area or activity where he can find a more suitable activity. This example also illustrates the responsibility to establish a suitable space for a child’s play in order to avoid possibly dangerous circumstances for all concerned.

For example a child wanted to operates a tailgate on a removal lorry and he repeatedly pushes the button when the adults are unloading.

In her peace message Amma (Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi Geneva 2002) spoke the following words “What everyone needs is peace, but the majority want to be king. No one wants to be a servant. How then can there be peace? Won’t there be war and conflict? A true servant is the real King. Isn’t the milk from the black cow, and the white cow, and the brown cow, white? Similarly the essence in every person is the same. Peace and contentment are the same for everyone. Those who desire them should work together.”

Only through the power of unconditional love can we hope to provide an abundance of creative opportunity for personal empowerment and self-directed learning.

Creativity and co-operative interaction are the foundations of learning. Multisensory integration creates depth and richness to our interaction with the world around us through the heart and soul-spirit. Thus when multi-sensory information is framed within areas of creative freedom and passionate interaction learning can be experienced as personal discovery within an infinite future potential for meaningful expansion.

Creativity, multisensory learning, aesthetic appreciation and divergent thinking plus some heart magic, are born when ideas, feelings and experiences flow togerther like the water within a stream, where an infinite freedom is contanined within the boundaryies of the geographical terain and the earthly laws of physics.

As the daylight dissipates the darkness of the night

The sun’s rays shine across the land,

My soul leaps in the hand of the Lord’s goodness.

As we share in the light of this new day

Our gratitude and reverence for work and play.

We give thanks for the divine grace that shines within us,

Our individual personalities that enrich our sharing,

And the joy of creativity that guides our learning together.