Claire, a friend of mine and fellow Mom is a Clinical Psychologist and has just collaborated with some other professionals on a very clever new app. If you have a baby age 0-36 months, you can try it out free for a month, go to:
http://www.mylearningbabyguide.com/
When I signed up for Benjamin’s free trial month this morning and went through his activities for the week, it got me thinking. It reminded me that my parents taught me both a love of learning, and the importance of learning something new every day.
Babies are incredible to watch. They are born with a yearning to learn. Their tenacity is phenomenal. They don’t seem to mind how many times they fall and bash their heads or arms or legs. They are fearless.
Imagine what we could learn if we had no fear of hurting ourselves? What if we really understood that getting it wrong, repeatedly, is the necessary path to getting it right? Even if getting it wrong means bumping our head… or bruising our ego – something babies fortunately have not cultivated in their first year when so much needs to be learnt.
Recently I attended an Infant First Aid class arranged by the same friend, Claire. I noticed that the more I learnt about dealing with potential injuries and life threatening situations, the more fearful I became. The idea of course, was complete the class with enough know-how to be calm and confident in a medical crisis.
Yet I’ve found that sometimes, armed with so much information about what can go wrong, as adults we tend to be nervous, worried and overly cautious. We over-think things. And if we stew too long and too hard on the negative, I believe it’s possible we could draw unwanted situations into our lives.
I noticed that young children, on the other hand, are a lot more light hearted about all learning. Babies are blissfully unaware of all the dangers and potential outcomes lurking around every corner.
To them, it’s all just a wonderfully exciting game.
Learning comes naturally to them because they just love to mimic us.
For instance, this was Ben’s take on the infant first aid course (see photos below)… and here I thought he was just playing while we were learning!
So let’s take a page out of a wee one’s book… let’s see learning as fun and immerse ourselves in it – enjoy making attempt after attempt until we get it right.
