Journey Chronicles: Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child:...

Journey Chronicles: Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child:...: "Distract the Child with the Shallow and Unreal “Modernity is a form of confinement: a way of life wherein we are free to ‘express’ ourselves..."

A good friend has been blogging her way through the book Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child. I have been eating up every post. I have always admired this young mother's style of motherhood and wifelyness and find myself heartily agreeing with her thoughts on childhood. It sounds as if this book expresses a lot of what I think about childhood development and early education. She's promised to loan it to me when she's done. I hope she hurries up!

I was musing the other day on the fact that in just my lifetime, childhood has changed dramatically. I'm only 33 and yet I grew up in a world without home computers, VHS, DVD or cable. The closest we got to children's television shows were PBS shows like Sesame Street and 3-2-1 Contact. Now parents have to choose vigilance to even provide opportunity to do anything but T.V., video games and "learning" shows. And we wonder why so many children no longer love to read or have to be put on Ritalin to sit still when they turn 5?

In my mind, all of life is education. What we do with our 8 month old affects how they will learn in school. In an age of so many privileges and tools, we have to be particularly thoughtful and purposeful about how we use the electronic blessings in our lives. It's all too easy to do what is available without thinking and Destroy the Imagination of our children. Without imagination, children cannot learn.