I have heard parents of young children, the ages before grade school, so often tell me that they are not worried about their children doing well in school, because their children are so bright and have such good language skills that they are fine.
I have had older parents, with older children talk about the early promise in their children somehow being lost.
I have had older parents, often second marriages, and or a later-in-life child, talk about how intelligent and gifted this new child is, and how they are not worried about the new child because the child is so able.
And then, again, the move into wondering what happened to that earlier promise and the child matures and somehow does not live up to expectations.
Meanwhile, we all understand that children can learn languages much faster than adults. Thus, on the one hand we understand that somehow that early ability exists and is lost as we mature, and on the other hand when we are in that moment of that ability in a young child to absorb so rapidly, we believe that that is somehow going to remain, despite the research and our own experience.
This is because in ignorance, in that slowing down of that ability to learn languages so rapidly, we forget. But then this forgetfulness would be equal to the loss of that ability to learn so rapidly. So, we are essentially, as we mature, moving into a lack of learning ability, a loss of an initial rapid learning ability, a superior memory, which is a natural assessing ability to rapidly see patterns and order them, into no longer having this ability, and yet we end up making judgements about the ability of the child, saying we need not worry, despite the research, and then later wondering what happened. Obviously, we are not stepping outside of our own beliefs here. We have become that of which we speak, that loss of seeing patterns and taking in information in rapid ways that can assess and conceptualize quickly, enough so that we can learn a new language with ease as does that child, thus we are what we lost, and we believe that loss to be more real that how we started. And, the research is right there describing this very outcome. Is this being lost behind a veil? Yes.
I was talking with a parent, the one I started this blog about, and here I was once again, facing a parent who was convinced that this younger child he had later in life, was so very adept that he wanted for nothing. And he is not lying, at that age the child is extremely adept at taking in the world and creating some order from it. Learning the language is very fast, and so much fun to watch.
Then, as third grade approaches something begins to happen. What is happening is the loss of this ability, this rapid ability to assess and absorb the measure of this actual real world, and the language. Then a period of denial comes in, where the parent will state again and again that the child is very talented and capable, that they know, really know that the child is capable. I have even had parents say to me, when I asked them what they wanted, that they just wanted the teachers in the school to see the capability of their child, how talented and gifted their child is.
Meanwhile the research is there, and it is a question that has existed for a long long time. That children learn languages rapidly when they are young and then as adults this appears to no longer exist. We end up wondering where this went, without looking at the fact that this is a pattern that exists and a question that has been asked.
The behavior of the parents in this wonder, is indicative of the loss of the ability to assess and see the patterns that enabled the ability to learn so rapidly. It is the conceptual ability caught in a belief, caught in a memory without looking at the research that asks the question as to why this rapid learning ability is lost!
We humans are very much like computers, we take in information and we build a memory of this information. We then move as this information only. We fill up our memories with information that is then valued and allowed to define us, and we end up using that ability to assess space and time into reading our memories and defining ourselves as the values in relation to our memories! Thus, we lose our connection to assessing the reality around us. How many have lost a sense of depth perception that are reading this? How many have difficulty parking a car without banging up against something? How many have bumped into doorways, or become anxious in getting things done in your every day life? How many have lost the lightness of movement that is in the child as they run without seeming to get tired? All of this is a loss of using that part of you that payed attention to the real world around us, and instead starting using a memory to be the measure of one’s self here. And for those who lack depth perception, as those who talk and wonder about where the initial potential of the child went, if you are the model of that lack, and that child imitates your behavior with that absorbent ability, what do you think is going to become the measure of that child? They are going to become just like you. Can you rapidly learn languages as that child could when they were young that was why one believed that child was special? And, because of this there was no need to consider thinking about how prevention of what we understand happens to us might be something to investigate ?
Something is slowing us down from an innate ability to learn, to absorb. And since we understand that we have a memory, perhaps it is that what we are in memory is separating us from being in perception of what is here, as that fence we bump into because somehow we have lost our sense of space here. Thus, our memories are immersed, or suffused with value judgements that occupy our presence and distort our focus and we lose our initial promise, as our ability to sense with spatial awareness this reality. Our spatial awareness is caught in the web of memory filled with values that we define ourselves as, separating ourselves from being present in life.
We also know that once a person learns another language , it becomes easier to learn the next language. This means that once one has structural development, that structure enables a more rapid ability to take in more structure.
So, our experiential maps as our memories are not being formed in ways that allow us to retain that spatial ability, which is to retain an awareness of physical space and time. We bemuse like a ‘ time” of the memory, which is a time of values over being present in the space of reality where we can see the parts and the whole, and assess patterns around us, and distance, which we have as children. Thus our awareness in space is lost.
This is evident in the form of our education system. Why do we collect data on a child in a box? Do we attempt to collect data on a tiger as to what that tiger is capable of from what that tiger is doing in a zoo?
As parents, our responsibility is to form a sound character, a character who can learn, choose and succeed. We measure children by the words they know, the clarity of the meaning of the word and the amount of words as what structures that child, because this gives the child the ability to chose, learn and succeed in life.
Is this not what you would have wanted, the confidence to learn, the freedom to choose and the self esteem to succeed? Why not build a superior memory?
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