Do you need help?

This small post is about cultivating the natural habit of offering help in children. It may look trivial and commonsensical, but we often overlook its significance as it is very vital for a peaceful, co-operative life ahead.

One day, Apramaiya, 3 years, was trying to arrange the bricks and it seemed to be challenging for her to lift the bricks and arrange it. Raedita who was playing by Apramaiya’s side in the sand area, observed her friend’s discomfort and intuitively offered help, “Apramaiya, do you need help?”

Apramaiya instinctively said, “No”. In this moment, she was self-confident that she would independently be able to complete the task.

Raedita simply said, “Okay”. It was no coincidence that Raedita offered help and also respected Apramaiya’s decision. It is this recurrent behaviour Raedita experienced that has formed her behaviour pattern. The processes that make up intuition are learned. And, through positive lived experiences, a child sub-consciously learns to have a positive intuition. 

In any learning environment, what matters is not the materials children play with, but how children play with them. A sand area can open possibilities for children to expand their imagination, to activate their sensory brain through touch and smell.

However, it is the safe space weaved by the adults that leads to the development of vital life-long skills and behaviour patterns in children in the early years. Amongst the many incidents that Raedita might have experienced, the distinct one was when Raedita was helped with lifting the blocks and the bricks for a couple of days by her friend, Cosimo. In addition, Raedita has grown up with a set of conscious adults who have respected her choice whenever she said “No”. She was in turn able to respect Apramaiya’s choice. I find a lack of respect in many adult-to-adult relationships and the genesis of a human tendency to positively respond to situations and feelings lies in early childhood. A SAFE SPACE facilitates children’s journey to naturally unleash their instincts while cultivating a positive intuition. The early years offer us a small window of time to give children the wings to grow and at Sahaj we are determined to grasp this opportunity with open arms.