Are You In The Childhood Age?
In Life Age One, your life begins. Much of it, around the first two years, involves learning how to get your needs met and your desires listened to. Life revolves around your caregivers and family members.
As your mind awakens, the world reveals itself as a magical place to be explored, tasted, smelled and touched. Sounds and shapes capture your attention and you learn the touch, smell, sound, sight and taste of our closest companions and caregivers.
Each day is full of new surprises and each night is full of deep slumbers. As toddlers we start physically exploring our world. Our eyes, ears, hands, toes and tongues get busy figuring the world around us. And nothing escapes our focus if it grabs our attention.
Become A Family Member
One of our primary roles is becoming a viable member of our family. We need to be loved, gain respect, deserve trust and earn the investment of resources and precious family time.
The early years are a time of exploring the dynamics of our family. We consistently test the boundaries, learn the rules, adopt the values, and mimic the behavior of those around us. We seek to figure out the roles others play, the ones assigned to us, and how to find and use power to get our way.
Become A Playmate
We tend to think of childhood as all fun and games, but serious business is afoot ... literally. Each day brings us new experiences , new tests and new trials. We use play acting and games to figure out who we are.
As we enter our early school years, we encounter other children, and learn how to make and lose friends, how to play and work together ... and how to start mastering the basics of sitting still, playing only during recess, raising our hand to talk, answering questions ... along with learning how to read, write and do sums.
Critical Tasks & Challenges
Few of us master all the critical tasks of childhood -- but most of us get through it by the sure hands of the clock turning us into bigger and bolder/humbler versions of ourselves.
We struggle to learn how to not only survive .. but thrive ... in the family we inherit. We tackle the critical task of trying to figure out who we want to be when we grow up through the use of role models, childhood heroes and playacting. And marry that with the ideas we have about what we could be great at .. if we are lucky enough to discover that. And there is always learning the unwritten ... and often unspoken ... rules and values of our family and culture.
Added to that workload disguised as play, are a number of challenges. They start with overcoming the bias of feeling bad because we are making mistakes .. instead seeing them as a natural part of the process of learning by trial and error. Also learning the critical difference between being bad and behaving badly. And surviving childhood with our innate sense of truth, honor and rightness intact along with our body image, sense of self worth and self acceptance.
