I love being a dad. It's certainly one of the greatest joys that I've experienced in my life, and am grateful for it. It's also one of the best learning experiences I've been a part of, and quite frankly it's one of the most interesting experiments that I've conducted as well.
For me, I started with the premise that my job as a father is to provide my children with the best envrionment possible for learning and growth to occur, which in turn (hopefully) will have my children turn out to be highly contributing members of society who will do more good than harm and in the end will leave the planet a bit better for them having been here. The intention and premise are simple, and I've got to admit that the methodologies and practices can get a bit confusing and frustrating at times. Certainly those moments far out weigh the victories, but those moments of victory sure seem to make it all worthwhile.
Recently I've been dealing with my third child, Michael, who will be two years old in March of 2011, so he's about three months away from what many people call the "terrible two." I'm not sure that all children go through that, certainly I don't recall my other two children going through a period of "terribleness", but it does seem that Michael is a bit different than the other two. Okay he's a lot different. He's certainly much more independent and stubborn to boot. Then on top of that he gets loud, really loud when he doesn't get his way (think tantrum).
What I've determined about him, and perhaps you're like this as well, he learns by doing. In fact I think he likes the process of learning. He makes huge messes, but rather than observing and then doing, or even being instructed he just dives right in and starts at it. I'll admit, it gets MESSY. Like him feeding himself. It's funny, because I don't like messiness, I find myself constantly trying to take the spoon from him to feed him. He gets upset that I'm trying to take the spoon from him, and he cries and screams. Then I remind myself that it's good that he learns to feed himself, and the faster he's able to do it the easier it will be for me...but the mess I've got to clean up...ARGH!!
Sometimes it seems that the best thing a leader can do is allow the learning to occur, and simply create a safe envrionment for the learning to occur. So what am I talking about? Well in the learning to feed himself example my job is simply to allow him to make the mess and clean up after him. I may attempt to instruct him, but if he's not ready for the instruction then the only thing that'll happen is a fight. I allow the learning to happen. In the case of him climbing up the side of the bunk bed, rather than discourage the behavior, I simply hang out close enough so that should he fall I'm there to catch him. Interestingly enough, though, he gets stuck at times and asks for help, and when he does I assist him.
So how does all of this occur. Ultimately I think that what allows this learning envrionment to exist is the strength of relationship, and a foundation of trust. High trust creates strong relationships and this allows for learning to occur, because learning takes time and learning creates big messes and the endurance required to get through the big messes is the foundation of trust.
What does this have to do with anything...well I think a lot. Here's how I see it. There is the relationship we have others, and then there is that relationship we have with ourselves. If there's any validity to this theory that learning and ultimately growth requires a high trust envrionment, then it seems that for one to learn and grow oneself then one must have a high degree of trust in oneself. So why is it that so many people stop learning and growing as they grow older? Perhaps one reason is that they don't have very supportive environments for growth and learning to occur, but also it may be because they don't have a high degree of trust in oneself. How does one change that? Well, we'll talk about that some other time. Until next time...
Live FREE!
