The Wisdom of Children

Many people know that this is a particular fave topic of mine. I could write a book about it - oh yes - I have written a book about it, though this is something which I keep forgetting about because I'm too scared to do anything with it - but that's a whole different story.

Anyway, I've been reminded of this whole wisdom thing a couple of times over the past few days.

I took my ten-year-old son to see the drama production of Philip Pulman's "His Dark Materials" on Friday at the Theatre Royal in Bath. It was presented by Bath Young People's Theatre, and it was stunning. The oldest member of the cast was 19, and the youngest 10. We sat in the theatre for over 5 hours absolutely gripped by the performance, although I have to say that I'm glad my son and I were familiar with the story and the characters before we went along. I'm sure that without having read the trilogy beforehand it would have been quite tricky to figure out exactly what was going on.

Lyra Belacqua is the principal character in the story. She's a 12 year old girl brought up in the belief that she is an orphan, though the truth is much more intriguing. She is deemed to be a child of destiny, and she has many adventures on the way to fulfilling that destiny. With the help of the alethiometer, the Golden Compass of the film version, she is able to detect the truth about any situation. As a child she is able to read the alethiometer - it takes a particular state of mind, which eludes us as we grow from children to adults, and we lose our innocence.

One of the other things we tend to do when we reach adulthood is forget how wise and capable we were as children, and, in forgetting, we then develop the tendency to underestimate those who are children around us. My kids never cease to amaze me with the things they say and do, and I hope that I never lose the ability to be pulled up by them, and be reminded again of their wisdom.

What on earth am I talking about? Well, here's an example. The other day we were sitting around the dinner table and debating what we would do with the remaining days of the school holiday. We'd done golf, we'd done cycling, though to be honest hubby and I were hoping we might get to repeat at least one of these activites. Our daughter was keen on the idea of cycling, but our son would not be drawn on anything. He actually said he couldn't think of anything he'd like to do. (I wonder if this is his policy - to deliberately not volunteer any ideas in the hope that he'll be able to stay at home and play on his computer?)

After we'd made it clear that a day staying at home and playing computer games was not on the cards, our four-year-old daughter suggested that she brought her bike to the golf course and cycled round while we played golf. Hubby and I stopped in our tracks. What an ingenious solution! On the face of it, it catered simultaneously for everyone's preference who had expressed one, and cycling round the course couldn't be that different from driving a buggy or pushing a trolley round, could it?

We were amazed at how she had created a solution that would accommodate everyone at the same time - and still manage to make it so that we would be spending time together. She was able to do this because of her innocence - it didn't cross her mind, as it did ours, that other members of the golf course might not take too kindly to a child using the fairways as a cycle path. She was also able to do it because one of her main gifts is making sure that everyone's happy, and that everyone gets to join in.

In Pulman's book Lyra'a gift is story-telling, which gets her out of many scrapes. In real life all our kids have their own particular gift and motivation, just like we did. It's fun to listen out for their gifts - and to try and reconnect with our own.