Power of Will

My grandson's five months old. He can now lie on his front and prop himself up on his arms. He can keep his head up for a long time, gazing curiously at the world about him. He kicks his legs out with a lot of force, but ends up kicking the air since his feet are pointing up. But he sometimes manages to put huge amounts of power into his knees and move forward a tiny bit. In order to do this, he has to keep his body level so he ends up putting his face straight down into his playmat. For a second he sees nothing and there's a risk that he won't be able to breathe, but nevertheless he does it over and over again just to move that little bit forward.

He's quite a zen baby. He sleeps peacefully and hardly ever makes a fuss, but, according to his mother he is a strong-willed baby. Even though he was only born a matter of months ago, he is full of energy, always wanting to do things: he'll turn himself to face things he wants to look at, he’ll reach out his hands towards everything he wants to taste, and he makes funny little voices and sounds to communicate with us.

Babies are born with a tremendously strong will and a natural curiosity. Along with their physical abilities, they come into this world fully blessed with everything that is necessary for their development. So, saying things like “giving them drive” and “making them have a sense of curiosity” is kind of strange. It's as if will and curiosity are things you have to find somewhere and bestow upon them.

Not long after moving to this country, my family was invited to dinner at the home of a Steiner school friend. She was right in the middle of preparing dinner when we arrived on her doorstep. Her two year old son, who had up till then been playing by himself on the floor, said “Mama” and lifted up his arms. His mother then popped him up onto the kitchen bench, said to him “Put some flour on this meat here”, and then proceeded to fry some meat in a pot filled with boiling hot oil. Her son had a field day helping flour the meat, all the while getting his hands and face covered in white. Right within reach there was a huge kitchen knife...

Witnessing such a sight – one I wouldn't have seen in a million years in my family – I was struck anew with a feeling of “I've certainly come to one hell of a country”. If you were raised by such courageous and accommodating parents, I bet you could get to do all sorts of fun things.

I do admit this is an extreme example and I’m not saying that everyone has to be like my brave friend. But adults do stop children from doing the things they want to do for any number of reasons: it's dangerous, it'll be a pain to clean up afterwards, we don't have the time...Some people sincerely believe that children are wilful or that it's the parents’ responsibility to decide what children should do. These parents desperately keep their children's will in check. Either way, children who are not allowed to do the things they want to do begin losing their inherent will.

For most kids, the time comes for you to sit your high school exams and your parents all of a sudden come at you asking “why are you so unmotivated?!” what are you supposed to do? You have absolutely no idea why you can't just summon motivation of your own accord. The reason why you only shrug whenever you get badgered with the question “Isn't there anything you want to do in life?” is probably because your potential was quashed so long ago.

According to Rudolph Steiner, because a person's will develops in their first seven years, you shouldn't make them do mental activities during that time. To really cultivate the will that they're inherently born with, the best thing is for them to come into contact with beautiful things in a safe, relaxed environment and to sing, dance, draw pictures, listen to stories, play with flowers and animals, whatever. It's about becoming one with nature, moving around and simply playing. If, during this period, you don't let children do what they want and instead get them to do things like Gifted Education, they'll end up as a teenager who knows a lot of facts but is weak-willed and doesn't know what they themselves want to do.

Now, you might come back at me with “No way! Thanks to Gifted Education my kid's on their way to Tokyo University and has tonnes of motivation”, but God only knows whether getting into Tokyo University is something that high school kid actually wants for themself.

People think adults know and understand far more than their children, but I don’t really think that is the case. Their bodies may be small and they may be low on facts but kids know a great deal. Young children may not be able to explain things in words, but they have incredible intuition and know themselves best of all.

So, to cultivate those precious things our children are born with, they do need our support. Let's not crush the things they're born with. Let’s stop beating them down. Let's not let them lose what they already have.

We should stop stuffing them full of external knowledge and information. If we try cramming all of that stuff in, we're not nurturing their precious innate will and curiosity. When they need knowledge and information, they’ll be able to get it in no time.

Rather than going to work on our children, we should be working on ourselves, cultivating the courage to let go, increasing our power to trust that things will turn out alright and making sure that we have plenty of time and room in our lives for our children.

 

Today, my grandson continues to inch forward with all his might.

[You can find the original post in Japanese 「意志の力」here.]