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Counsellor July 'Education of a Baby' - 2 from: Hazrat Inayat Khan: 'Creative Forces of Life - Education |
No doubt there is a certain limit to it. We may say, ‘We will not let them break the things in the house; we will not let them spoil things; we will not let them trouble us in our work’; but all that is earthly. In point of fact, the guardian has no right to prevent the baby from enjoying its free activity, and every effort must be made by the guardian to allow this. In the children's play, in their hustle and bustle, in their crying and jumping and running and climbing their soul is expressing itself. We call it naughty, but they do not consider it so. Even if it is called naughtiness they think it is lawful for them; and it is so. And because we control them and make them suit our own lives, their energy, their enthusiasm, their spirit become limited; and in this way their real progress is hampered. At this age a child is conscious of the higher spheres. Many times children have known much more about what was going on at the front during the war than even the authorities knew. They knew intuitively, sometimes in their dreams, sometimes in a kind of deep imagination; and when they predicted something, that thing happened. And that shows that at four, five, six, and seven years the child is extremely intuitive, because at that time it is under the influence of the jinn. At the age of three, four, and five the baby is very imitative; it likes to imitate everything it sees. And the best way of educating the baby is to bring before it everything that is worth imitating. For instance, sounds, notes, rhythm, and anything that is pertaining to tone and rhythm build and beautify the character, and form the foundation of character in babyhood. And it is best that fill the age of five the baby should not be taught anything in the way of figures or alphabet or letters. Regularity is the only thing that can be taught to children at that age, and without their knowing it; regularity in sleeping, in waking up, in food, in playing, and in sitting quiet. I was very much interested in what Madame Montessori told me when I was in Italy, that besides all the activities that she gives to the children, she makes them keep a silence; and after a little time they like it so much that they prefer silence to their activity. And it interested me still more to see a little girl of about six years of age who, when the time of silence came, went and closed the windows and closed the door, and put away all the things that she was playing with; and then she came and sat in her little chair and closed her eyes, and she did not open them for about three or four minutes. You could see on her innocent face an angelic expression. It seemed she preferred those five minutes silence to all the playing of the whole day. Children enjoy silence when they have become accustomed to it.
(Maheboob Khan, Hazrat Inayat Khan‘s brother, has composed music to a row of aphorisms of Hazrat Inayat Khan in the middle of last century, as this ‚How Shall I Thank Thee‘. Mohammed Ali Khan, Hazrat Inayat Khan’s cousin, has sung this song around the year 1956 in a concert in Zürich – here you can listen to it) (these E-book are free of all charge - use their treasures well!) |
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