Isn’t it wise to learn from our children?

Tinjdad, Morocco – Being born in a certain environment makes people eager to understand it, and adapt to it.

There is always a reciprocal interaction and relationship between people and their environment, and among people themselves. These relationships enable people to understand their environments, life problems, and allow them to relate to others. Yet, the older people get, the more those strategies and traits decrease; whereas kids, especially in the sensory stage, have some effective strategies that allow them to learn as easily and fast as possible.

However, adults often look down upon children. Kids are considered less knowledgeable, less skillful, and do not know much about life. Hence, many people try to guide kids’ lives, and show them how to be safe, and that they should take the same path as their elders. Yet, kids have the most important things that others often lose as they get older.

Kids have valuable strategies and traits that allow them to discover the world as fast and easy as possible, and they also learn in a very flexible way without many difficulties. It’s worth mentioning the Picasso quote, “I spent all my life learning, as a kid, how to paint.” This quote might stand for the fact that to learn or to do something, we should always consider ourselves less knowledgeable, less skillful, but kids are eager to question and share stories and have high curiosity and enthusiasm, and so on.

To start, questioning is a strategy that is used frequently by kids.  Children always ask questions about every new thing they perceive by their senses. This technique is one of the effective policies of getting information, and it lets kids always meet their needs and interests. What makes this strategy very vital is the fact that children ask as many questions as they can, within a very short period without being shy or embarrassed. They can keep asking questions even if they are turned down and not listened to. Kids insist on practicing questioning rather than receiving answers.

At this point, I see that adults can maintain this strategy and be kids forever. Adults should always have kids’ mentality and keep asking questions about everything in life so that they can be creative, productive and more knowledgeable. They should sometimes prevent their cognitive monitor and give freedom for them to discover as much knowledge as they can. Additionally, Adults should not be embarrassed by asking questions, or by admitting that they do not know. A proverb says: we should keep asking questions because it’s good to be stupid for a while than stupid forever; though, I do not agree with it because I see that there is no stupid question in the world, yet we may come across some stupid answers.

Furthermore, sharing with others such experiences and ideas helps kids increase their imagination, and benefit from each other.  It’s always good when someone talks and recounts about his or her adventures and experiences so that others can benefit, or rather get more information about them. Kids recount their simple daily life adventures or games, which are hardly games for children. Thus, this technique lets kids share their plans, ideas, and attitudes and so on with others. It gives them room to develop their experiences and enhance their self-esteem.

In addition, kids never look at their acts as mistakes, they take them as great achievements, but adults try to explain them later on by reinforcing or punishing them; nevertheless, the important thing is the fact that they do mistakes and learn from their mistakes. They do not fear being wrong. I would like to mention that one of my small cousins took shampoo and poured it all on the ground in order to discover what color it was. It was funny, but expressive. We sometimes should lose very simple staffs in order to discover more important things.

This technique is much more important for adults as well. Sharing knowledge with others can only contribute to the enhancing of the knowledge of both sides. It is only knowledge and skills that do not decrease when shared. As an illustration, if two people exchange two apples, each one of them will still have just one apple, but if they exchange two ideas, each one will still have two ideas. Here, I would like also to underline that having the share button on facebook is a great and clever idea because it will help people understand that sharing things with others is a great technique and value that will contribute to developing of knowledge, skills, and cultures in the world. Therefore, after experiences and adventures, it is good to share them with others so that everyone can benefit from them. Skills and knowledge should not be individualized, but shared.

In addition, adults should always be curious and courageous, and not fear being wrong. The important thing is to do something, not the results of it. When we experience something we learn if it’s good, and we learn twice if it’s wrong because we know that, for example, the first solution is wrong or not suitable, and then there must be another alternative. In learning process, nothing learnt is negative.

Besides questioning and sharing, kids are also known as being enthusiastic and only doing the things they love. Kids hardly ever do something they do not love. They always like to do things they are interested in, and things that meet their learning style and intelligence. As a result, this makes kids love and be proud of themselves. But, education might have a great impact on them later on.

However, I see that adults should not lose this trait. They should always try to discover their learning style and do things they love and are interested in. Nowadays, we come across many people who are skillful, but in the wrong position, which renders them be less productive and creative. No one is stupid; it’s all about policy of efforts. However, some people can be considered less skillful, not because they are so, but because they are not in the right place where they can highlight their credentials.

At the end, we are all born with such valuable strategies and traits that can help us discover the world in the way we choose, yet through education most of us can change them and stop adopting them at a certain age. Therefore, helping our kids maintain those self- strategies will make them learn as fast and easy as possible. To acquire a language, or to know how to make your first step, might be more complicated than many things we want to learn when becoming adults. However, the secret is in practice, insistency, turning on and off cognitive monitor, curiosity, questioning, sharing, cooperation, interacting, and so on, but all these things should be based on freedom and independence.

So, isn’t it wise to learn from our children?

Edited by Allison Kreamer. Photo by Rita Houari