Seeking Life

A woman I know was telling about how she and her husband used to connect with, and serve, people on the street and how she used to enjoy it, and how alive it made her feel. That was before kids. Her life now, similar to mine, involved 3 kids, school, kinder, home, community, part time work and so on. It didn't always seem as 'alive'. So, I've been thinking today about the times and things in my life that make me feel most alive. Hmm, also, I think, at different stages of our lives, we need to see the 'alive' bits differently, or identify them anyway, to see they are actually there. I reckon it can be hard to actually choose to do the things that make us feel most alive.

People are surprising

I was reminded tonight of the challenge of how we view people different to ourselves. My eldest chose, "Children just like me" by Anabel Kindersley and Barnabas Kindersley, as his bed time story. I love this book. It has wonderful photographs of children and the things/people in their lives. It reports information about different children, their families, food they eat, schools they go to, games they play in a non-judgemental, level playing field kind of way, no one way of living is presented as being better than another.

I have been thinking about ways to challenge my kids stereotypes about people different to ourselves. My eldest has been trying to make sense of the way in which people live and the way for him to do this is to think that the way we do it is good, and the way other people do it is due to some sort of deficit; "they don't know how to..." This is a trap for us too, it is easy to think that the way we live is full of positives and 'the way to do it', and that other people's way of living is not as good. All people have strengths and deficits, even us.

Many people do live very different lives to us: they might live in a one roomed house, they might be farmers, they might not always have enough to eat, they might make their own clothes, they might go to school for more (or less) of the day than we do, they might eat more junk food... The list could go on indefinitely. BUT people, whether they are rich or poor, formally educated or not, urban or rural dwellers, are resilient, creative, enterprising, clever, AMAZING. They might find a solution to a problem I certainly couldn't imagine, they might be very resourceful or audacious. People are surprising. I'm trying to talk about this to expand my kid's world when we talk about how other's live. It is important to see how we might learn from others no matter what they're like. "Children just like me", is a good book to share too, it helps us to see other kids as kids, to see that, although people are different, there are lots of things the same as well; they all like to play with their friends, family is important, all have favourite foods.

Children Just Like Me

"A unique photographic celebration of children around the world. Through colourful pictures and children's own words, readers learn about the dreams and beliefs, hopes and fears and day-to-day events in the lives of children across the globe. For young readers between the ages of 7 and 15"

The Map

Drat! I cannot find our world map. I used it as a teaching aid a conference kids' program and now it is GONE. It is a colourful kid's map. There is little text, save each country's name. It used to hang on our family room wall. The kids would look at it often, mostly pointing out that they live down here (in Melbourne, Australia). My eldest liked to identify countries that he knew, for example England, where his aunt lives. It was also a fabulous teaching tool for talking about different countries as they came up in conversation or on the news. It was easy too, already hanging, ready to find out if a country is; on the equator, in South America, borders Cambodia, or any other interesting fact about the world. Our journey of developing a sense of world-mindedness was easily aided by a map.
I need a new map. I'll keep you posted.