I am working at home with my computer on Zoom. Our Educational Sciences Manager Shirley smiles cheerfully at me through the screen. She is (re)writing our pedagogical policy plan and I am providing input. We shuffle around, change things up and give real-world examples of how stories make your world. At our groups we think it is important to give children the space to tell stories, to receive and to experience, experience and make their own in a playful way.
Children and stories… My 7-year-old daughter also loves to make stories. Outdoor adventure in the woods or in the dunes. Building huts with friends and since she can write she has been filling notebooks full of stories and drawings.
While Shirley reads 'as a child you get to know the world through stories'. … in my mind I go back to more than 20 years ago when I was still in the group as a starting pedagogical employee and it was actually the other way around… a boy of 5 years expanded my world by 'telling' his story to me.
His name was Tim, short in stature with snow-white hair. Tim was blind in 1 eye and this was closed. The other eye was bright blue and with that he could only see a little. Tim could not speak and was therefore in a special day care.
One day he was standing in front of the window and banging his hand on the window pane. Tim loved being outside and because there was still some time left I went for a walk with him. Half way through that round I realized it wasn't such a smart idea because Tim was walking very slowly and it was almost lunch time. My suspicion was that my colleague wouldn't be very happy if I didn't get back to the group in time. So I started walking a little faster and tried to get him along. That backfired. Tim stopped. I got a little restless, but thought there was no point in rushing now. And so I consciously did the opposite and let myself be carried away by him. Tim pulled me toward some bushes, released my hand, and leaned over. He brought his good eye to a leaf on which a sunbeam shone, so close that he did not touch the net. He stood there for a moment and raised his head again. Countless times he repeated this ritual and chuckled a little. Until he suddenly stopped and tilted his head upwards. He was listening to something. I decided to join him and followed him in his different poses. I touched the twigs, brought my eye close to the leaves and then away from them. Kept my ear in the wind. A different world literally opened up for me, different from how I normally experienced nature. The nuances in all the different colors of the bush, the structure and softness of the leaves, the different sounds I heard from the wind itself, the rustling of the leaves, the singing of the birds, I really loved it. It was only much later in my life that I understood that this is the richness of attention in the moment, what we now call Mindfulness.
And Tim? He saw that I joined him and his face started to glow. We could share this together. I could give him the space to discover and experience his world and he shared his story without words and added something to my world. And to this day I am still grateful to him for that!
Mieke van Vugt
Pedagogical coach SKO
P.S.: we had lunch a bit later ;-)
