A key hallmark of America’s founding was protecting the freedom of choice. Growing up and getting educated in the U.S. was couched in and saturated with freedom of choice. The Sustainable Early Education Development System (S.E.E.D.S.) is predicated on free choice. Parents, teachers, and students self-select to participate and implement S.E.E.D.S. ideas and practices.
Freedom of choice is the foundation for fostering and nurturing young curious minds. It goes hand in hand with allowing a child to follow her/his curiosity in exploring their world. Restricting a child’s curiosity limits their freedom of choice. This ultimately leads to stifling their learning and informal and formal education. It may not be possible to cater to the full range of choices a child might want. But it is essential to routinely provide a child with choices AND linking the choices to responsibility for the consequences of that choice.
Babies are born into the world and must acquire the language of their parents. Lack of effective communication is a common problem between parents and young children. Ironically, some children seem to communicate with each other using a language unfamiliar to adults. While many adults assume the babies don’t have a language, another way to look at it is the adults don’t understand the babies’ language. From the child’s perspective, the big people don’t seem to understand but seem trainable. The baby cries and the world moves around them. They have power. Eventually, in most cases, both babies and parents seem to work it out and develop a comprehension of a common language.
The parents’ juggling act is to nurture and foster the child’s curiosity while allowing optimum freedom of choice. Parents are naturally protective of children. What follows is the classic Goldilocks pattern. Too little protection (i.e. little or no parental control or nearly total freedom) can, at worst, be misinterpreted as parental neglect. At best, some of these children may become super outstanding. Too much protection (i.e. full-on over protection) can manifest itself in absolute authoritarian control. These children may be timid and lack self-confidence. Somewhere in between is the “just right” mix of protection and freedom. We aren’t sure how to characterize these children. Hopefully they have their curiosity intact. They may become life-long learners, critical thinkers, effective problem solvers, and socially responsible people. This is what S.E.E.D.S. hopes to empower parents, teachers, and students to achieve.
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