We get confused, with our climate control options and antibacterial everything. We think things like dirt is bad, subconsciously maybe, but still strongly enough that we shy away automatically from dirty little fingers or mud puddles.
And we say things like, Oh, kids, c’mon, can’t you stay clean for 5 minutes? I know I’ve said that last one recently. Maybe yesterday…
There’s nothing wrong with being clean – by which we mean free from dirt – but there is something wrong with attempting to live and keep our children in a sterile environment. Sure, it’s germ-free. It’s also fun-free.
“Sylvia thought how all parents wanted an impossible life for their children — happy beginning, happy middle, happy ending. No plot of any kind. What uninteresting people would result if parents got their way” (1).
The reason children can’t seem to stay clean for 5 minutes is because they don’t (yet) have that subconscious antipathy toward dirt. They seem to have the opposite. They like the feel of dirt, the squish of mud, the splash of puddles. We need to let them like those things. This is how the explore the world in their tactile, no-nonsense way. What is this? they wonder. So they feel it, touch it, see what their fingers can do with it.
Now we know, most of us, that being outside is good for our children.
“For we are an overwrought generation… and every hour spent in the open is a clear gain, tending to the increase of brain power and bodily vigour, and to the lengthening of life itself. …perhaps a mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time… the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air” (2).
So even if we, the Mommies, are not of the outdoors persuasion, we try to get our children out. It’s good for them, so we go on walks. We go to the park. Maybe we even grow a few vegetables on the patio. But how much time do we spend trying to make the great big, dirty, muddy, puddle-wonderful world a little bit more like the small, stifling, sterile indoors?
How many times have you just laid in the cool green grass, no blanket between you and the earth?
How many times have you walked around in gloriously bare feet, feeling the textures and temperatures beneath you?
Of course, you the parent need to oversee things. You don’t want your kids squishing the dog poo into neat little shapes. But try – try really, really hard – to hold back your own normal, grown-up desire to be clean. Try to squelch the eeeeeew that automatically comes to your lips when your daughter shows you the super-big worm she just found.
Try to give these unconscious explorers time when they can be outside, in the real world, getting real dirt on their hands.
When it’s time to come inside, go ahead and break out the antibacterial soap.
“…a love of Nature, implanted so early that it will seem to them hereafter to have been born in them, will enrich their lives with pure interests, absorbing pursuits, health, and good humor” (3).
Images
1. Mud is my new best friend courtesy of BionicTeaching on Flickr.
Sources
1. Karen Joy Fowler, quoted in Michael Dirda’s Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2005.
2. Charlotte Mason, Home Education: Training and Education Children Under Nine. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1989. Pages 42 and 43.
3. Charlotte Mason, page 73.