Child Right

Eva comes with me where ever I go.


Today we went to a radiologist for sonography of my relative.

As usual, Eva started questioning:

Why she need to drink water?

How will they see inside?

Can we go inside and see how they check ?

… TO explain things to a child, an adult needs clear understanding. And if the adult does not know thing, she has to accept that ‘I do not know’.

Beauty of explaining something to a child is, you need to find out simple examples from day to day life or situations. You have to be simple and direct. A child’s question is enough to break down one’s ego of being knowledgeable.

Well,

The attendant was listening to our talk and he was listenings to us with a smile on her face.

He asked us to go inside and see the check up, without asking him for the permission.

This happens at every shop we go.

The shopkeeper and fellow customers enjoy our talk and then their response to Eva gets changed.

Through this process, I realized that as a society in general, we do not know how to ‘respond’ and ‘attend’ a child.

We consider a child ‘low’ to adults. We ban a child’s right of equality.

From Fear to Wonder

Eva used to be a brave girl. She had child-like fears but she also had tendency to explore into unknown.


Somehow, she became fearful.

Our new house does not have close neighborhood. It is almost like a farm house as there are few farms nearby. We had wide open surrounding inviting birds and insects. Well, a beautiful, calm place to an adult. But , Eva’s fears started developing with the satting of the Sun.

We worked out this way :

Hey, look at the colours around ! How beautiful ! See, the evening Sun has coloured everything. Let us check the colour after ten minutes. Let us see which star comes out first and who finds it first.

We would sit in the porch or on the stairs, Eva, sitting in my lap and covering her body with my arms around, would get driven into the wonder and beauty of the colour play of evening sky.

Now, it is not that she has became fearless, but evenings have became a time to explore beauty of setting Sun and exploring the sky.

Same has happened with the camouflage .

One day I asked her to open the gate and she said she cannot because there was a camouflage.

So , adding dramatic excitement into my voice, I shouted : oh, where is it? What’ the colour ? Have you seen it changing its colour ? Where is camera? Let’s click few photos.

Then, step by step, we went closer to it. I encountered my fear too.

Now, it is her friend. She enjoys photos from net and rushes with camera whenever she sees a camouflage.