Play, Strangers, and Learning

Farmergirl plays with powertools, runs the saw mill, drive, lights fires in the woodstove, cook son the gas range, runs all over the forest we live in (124 acres surrounded by other large tracts of land), flies transcontinentally, talks to strangers . . . she’s ALWAYS talked to strangers.

For that matter, she’s never met a stranger–just people she wants to talk to whose names she doesn’t yet know.  How are you going to learn to distinguish between and assess people, if you have no exposure to them?  We’ve always talked at length about people who give me a chill, to assess that split-second intuitional gut feeling . . . how can you learn to identify and trust that, if you never meet people who are “off”?

I think people forget that the “play” of childhood is shaping future adults.  Children are constantly finding our more about their world in their interactions with it . . . which sure does explain a lot about kids who go to school, come home from school, lock themselves in the house with their homework and video games and television until their parents come home, go to bed, and repeat that 5 days a week.