Favorite toys and a sense of imagination, Megan Rosker writes, are more important than any test score ever could be.
I recently came across Kristin Theiss’s blog klt’s sketchbook. I loved this post about “loveys”, the toys and blankets children carry with them throughout childhood. For my daughter it is her orange blanket, a hand-knit item she has had since birth. Many of us have something. I had a pink rhino that I eventually lost in Houston—when I was 21. OK, it was probably time to let go anyway, right?
Kristen’s post got me thinking about the importance of these objects and of make-believe or “nursery magic,” as she calls it in her post. Are these relationships disposable, easily replaced with cartoonish images of pop toys and groovy TV trends? Or is falling in love with a toy important to how we develop? What kind of children do we raise if they never have the chance to care deeply for a figment of their imagination?
When we push our kids too quickly out of childhood, separating them from their blankies and loveys, we force them to mature too fast. Yet, in our aggressive and paranoid educational atmosphere, there is no place for gentle play and tenderness.
It is so easy, as a parent or teacher, to get caught in the fury and push of educating our children at a younger and younger age, when really, what is the point of an excellent education if we have never learned how to love or care for someone or something else? What are our children going to use their education for? Given today’s push for individual success in the classroom, it seems we care more about the personal future of the individual rather than the success of our culture collectively.
Because our attention has strayed so far from “old fashioned” ideals of childhood, we are now at risk of raising a generation of children who are greatly diminished in their capacity for empathy. We have spent so much time focusing on their success in the future, we missed the importance of what is happening in the present.
It is our capacity to care and innovate for ourselves and others, which makes us truly unique beings. Giving our children the chance to be youthful, to get lost in the dazzle of their imaginations, to fall in love with rocks, books, and stuffed animals, to let them feel the disappointment of losing that one they have care for: all of this deepens our experience as human beings. These are not small, unimportant things. These moments define us far more than any score on a test or letter grade in a class. There is no greater quality we have than the ability to love and care for another. Our focus must be on the success of the individual for the greater good of the society. And not surprisingly, this begins in the smallest moment, like when a child falls in love with a toy.
Kristin shares this beautiful quote from the Velveteen Rabbit:
Real isn’t how you are made” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long time, not just to play with , but REALLY loves you, then you become Real….Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.
Originally appeared at Let Children Play.
—Photo Flickr/somegeekintn
About Megan Rosker
Hi Megan,
These articles sure know how to hit home with me. My son is 38. an R.N., accomplished percussionist, nationally recognized “teck” scuba diver, and active in helping to restore/rebuild live steam engines. (Those 300,00 lb. fire breathing dragons that once roamed this country)
His favorite toy was a pelt of rabbit fur, that he slept with for the first 7/8 years of his life. From little, I would tell him stories of all the animals that lived in the woods surrounding our home. He would lay this pelt over his pillow and rest his cheeks on the soft fur.
Once at about four (4) years of age, we came home on a miserable hot July day. In the road was a
dead raccoon, hit by a car. My little one would have nothing to do with this situation. He begged me, “daddy please” go get this creature and bury it. ! So I got out the heavy yard tools and dug a grave under a shade tree. We then walked up the lane with a pair of heavy gloves and several trash bags.
I scrapped this poor creature off the pavement , and carried it to it’s grave site. Together, with his small shovel, we buried this creature for all eternity.
Today, as an avid “Technical” scuba diver (yes, there is a difference) my son has seen first hand the devastation caused to the great coral reefs by rampant pollution and global warming. As a new father, he is now beginning to find his “voice” and speak out about what he has witnessed in the depths of the oceans.
So, from a soft fur pelt, to child bed -time stories about small and large creatures, to seeing and learning about the fragility of our planet….I hope I did good ?
This is so nice to read Megan. Thank you! Your pink rhino is smiling right now…
I still have my decades old Koala bear. My father traveled and was constantly on planes. I thought that if I kept Koala by my side, nothing would happen to my Dad. Years later, my kids went through a stage where they had nightmares. I told them the Koala had special powers and would keep them away. So they each took turns sleeping with Koala. And the nightmares vanished. He’s missing a paw, but still available for the grandkids years from now.
Your article is “on target” and took me back many years in memories…My favorite toy beginning at the age of 3 or maybe 4 was a small stuffed dog. He was white and very furry in the beginning; however, after many years of love and use, he lost most of his furry coat. I cannot recall how or where I got “Bowser,” but I do recall that as a child I was never withoout him–even to this day, some 62/63 years later, he still occupies a special spot in my heart in my home!
For me it was carrying around a little stuffed mouse my grandmother made me. I still have her too. She sits on the shelf in my room, and I’d honestly be devastated if I ever lost her.
My kids have loveys too! My daughter has a little bear and my son has a large stuffed snake. It’s amazing to watch them create personae for their loveys. And I think you are spot on with the empathy remark. Being able to imagine what someone else is thinking, real or imaginary, is an important life skill—we are social beings after all.
The ideal you’re describing was how my parents raised me, and it served me quite poorly in preparing me for the real world of cutthroat status-climbing. Although if you have some sort of access to a community sheltered from the broader culture, say, the Amish, this might work.
You can probably do okay by a child teaching them to love if they’re female, but teaching a male to be empathic, loving and kind is straight-out child abuse, as it will eviscerate their ability to compete successfully on the dating scene.
I do not understand at all where you are coming from. I will write a response based on my conjecture alone, but please elaborate on what you mean, and correct me where I am wrong on your opinion.
Teaching a male child love, kindness and empathy is abuse? This statement reeks strongly of bitterness. Such traits are crucial to relationships; it’s hard to do that whole ‘relating’ thing without being able to understand someone else’s emotions.
I have come to hate the word compete used in conjunction to the dating scene. This mindset of competition only sets men up for failure. A man that feels like he has to “compete” against other men, fictional or not, will only serve to weaken his confidence in himself. He misses the point of dating (to have fun and connect with people) and instead focuses on all of his flaws that make him “unworthy” of dating. He approaches women with the idea that he is a “loser”, and they reject him, solidifying his feelings of inadequacy. More often than not, he will determine that “being too nice” was the cause of all this, which is complete bullshit. Love, kindness, and empathy are not unattractive, feelings of inadequacy are. You know what is attractive? A man that likes himself.
I will take a man that will cry in front of me over an emotionless robot ANY day. But he has to like himself before I am even ever in the picture.
I’ve always liked myself. I know plenty of men who like themselves. I also know plenty of men who are miserable and do not lack for dating opportunities. Liking oneself, being friendly and social and getting women to date a man are completely unrelated to each other.
I only had a few dates until the age of twenty-seven, despite being athletic, good-looking, friendly and genuinely liking people. At some point, I began to figure that something was seriously wrong with my approach and began asking around to both sexes. It quickly became apparent that, for men, a successful dating life is serious business, and that it required a competitive approach. Today, I’m happily married with a son, and hoping to have a daughter.
My wife and I agree that we will be instilling a competitive streak in him at an early age and he will be much more likely to be spending the evening with an attractive woman of his choosing than will your son.
Hint, there is a way out of this, but it involves society actively managing the relations between the sexes through the political process, but I simply do not see that there is the will to implement this.
I still disagree. I feel that there are too many factors to count in, and while you may have needed a competitive approach, but I don’t think that it can, does, or even should apply to everyone.
I had a boyfriend that had a competitive streak. It was apparent later on in the relationship that his need to “win” led to feelings of inadequacy, jealousy, and insecurity. I found this trait to be unattractive and left him shortly after. I find that most men I meet who are highly competitive to be insufferable. I prefer more emotional, creative types.
I find that while being competitive can be helpful in some areas in life, it is not helpful in all areas. I don’t believe in dating being a competition, as I feel that it takes out the fun of connecting to other people.
However, competition works for you, and I cannot be one to say that it is wrong for you or your son. I simply disagree with you.
I am, by nature, an extremely non-competitive person. It was not until is studiously practiced competitiveness in dating that I had success with women. You, as a woman, are completely clueless as to how it is to function as a man in the dating world. You can only disagree with me because you are a woman and cannot understand what it means to date as a man. Both my wife and I agree that to cultivate non-competitiveness in a man is child abuse, although some men are naturally very competitive and would do well with some training to tone it down – I was naturally not very competitive and had whatever traces existed drummed out of me at an early age.
Needless to say, if we have a daughter we will not be raising her to be competitive.
When you do not have a well-organized social ethos that prescribes roles and places to people all you have left is competition. I would suggest you read, and re-read, my second comment below.
I would like to point out that, genders aside, you and I are vastly different in our life stages. I am assuming that you are a man in your early 30′s, and I am a 20 year old female. While you have more experience on me, I argue that the experiences that you had in our roughly ten year gap will likely be different than that of my male peers. Your experiences in the last decade are that of a man in an economic boom, where the status quo ruled. My and my peers’ experiences are that of people in an economic hardship. I believe empathy and kindness is and will be crucial. If my age group is all in a boat that’s sinking, we will need to help each other. This is why #OccupyWallStreet is growing in numbers.
I agree that there is no overarching American “culture”, and that it is hard to share understanding with people where there is no ethos. However, prescribed roles in society are corruptible, which led to a lot of oppression of different races, religion, and women. While feminism helped break down social restrictions on women, somehow along the way it turned into “Let’s emasculate men” which is wrong. However, the standpoint of empathy in men is abuse is extremist and equally wrong. There needs to be balance, and I’m not sure if politically constructed social roles are the solution.
“Helping each other” always encounters the free-rider problem. There are only two solutions to the free-rider problem:
A) Formal hierarchies
B) Very small-scale social units
What you’re seeing is that people are gravitating toward the latter as sentimental respect for the former breaks down. That said, we still have a ruling class that benefits through continued enforcement of the former. Why do I pay my taxes? Because if I don’t men with guns will come for me and will kill me if I resist. I feel absolutely no ethical sentiment to pay my taxes, and I often pay for services in cash to help others avoid taxes, deriving intrinsic pleasure over starving the welfare state.
The social contract that we have enjoyed is unraveling and there is no possibility of retrenchment, just that of a newly established contract. But, all social contracts are sanctified in blood, and where no social contract exists there is even more blood. No one has the stomach required to maintain the social contract, so, we will descend into chaos over the next few decades.
You also mention that organization is susceptible to corruption, and it reminds me of the aphorism that “the smallest world is the most durable” and, I might add, the least corruptible. The other side of that coin is that the smallest world is the dreariest and the most insular, it jealously guards its meager resources and hoards its pitiful mediocrities. So, the trade-off is between insularity and corruptibility, and I tend to prefer managing the latter.
Finally, I would say that the past few decades has created a people that are completely indifferent to much of what goes on around them. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the recent “SlutWalks”, we had one in the Ballard area which had a pretty decent showing, but I had a conversation with some women about the walks. They kept on talking about how women should “not be raped”. I could not understand how this applied to me. Then, it hit me that they wanted me to care about whether or not they were raped, and I flatly stated that I felt no obligation to them and that I did not care whether or not that they were raped, just as long as I wasn’t the one doing it. They were appalled. They tried to shame me. I thought it was hilarious.
That is what we are systematically creating by forcing people into a natural, small-group ethos. I simply could not care less whether or not the vast majority of women get raped, as I feel absolutely no sentimental attachment to the vast majority of women (or men) residing in the American body-politic. And acknowledging this does not make me feel bad at all, and you simply can’t shame me over it. I simply don’t care. Of course, when I asked these same women what they considered as their moral obligation to a man like me they couldn’t think of even one thing. So, the jig is up. The notion of some overarching “American” ethos is a sham, and anyone proclaiming “our shared values” from either the right or left are con artists.
Also, you say that there is a gap between me at 32, and you at 20. I hate to break it to you but any ethos that once existed is only receding into the distance year-by-year. Your 20 year-olds are even further removed from common sentiments of social obligation than men of my age. They are just going to be that much more cynical at thirty-two than am I.
And you are completely powerless to affect that.
You’re also confused about what “culture” means. There is no over-arching “American” culture – I prefer the greek “ethos” – , what we hav ise an imperial body-politic ruling a polyglot of many cultures. Society and culture are synonymous, so there is no such thing as a multicultural society, rather there are multi-societal bodies-politic, like ours, what are also called empires. It is not possible to have ethics pertaining to other with whom you have no ethose, no shared understanding of how to order the social world.
That is the flip-side of the diversification of any body-politic. Empires are always the most interesting places in which to live, but at the cost of any shared ethos.