Teach Your Children Well

Many years ago I watched my daughter and her ‘Anglo’ friend take their infant sons out for their first springtime. My daughter set her eight- or nine-month-old son on to a barely greening lawn. She introduced him to the grass, encouraging him to touch it, even taste it. She pointed out the temperature, the breeze, the sky and the clouds. The other woman came differently prepared for her son’s encounter with the world. She brought a blanket, which she spread out for her son. She brought toys as distractions and she did not join her son so much as hovered over him in a protective manner: not allowing him to crawl away from the blanket; not allowing him to grasp at the grass (‘dirty’). My daughter introduced her son to the world he lived in; the other mother introduced her son to a potentially dangerous ‘environment’. The Anglo child’s world consisted of his toys, his blanket, his mother, his artificial setting; the world ‘out there’ was alien. He ended his excursion in his mother’s arms. My grandson ended his when his mother chased after him as he explored his new surroundings. ‘This is the way it is done,’ I thought. ‘This is why we are different.’ We discourage competitiveness and encourage co-operativeness; we frown on selfish behaviour and encourage perceptiveness of the other; we correct by offering alternatives rather than through threat of punishment or admonitions; we encourage laughter and camaraderie – there is no ‘out there’ waiting to ‘get us’. We transmit these values through loaning our attitudes to our children.