I have been fortunate to spend a lot of time playing with children. Being eldest in the family, with three younger brothers, having age intervals of 4/5 years each, gave me a rare opportunity to play with children right from my childhood. With constant interaction with children, I learnt the psychology of a child and found that a child accepts you as friend only if you talk with it like a child.
If you behave like a child with them and can see the world through their eyes, you will find that children will love you as equals and even can act like your parents or teachers. Playing with them in this fashion gives me immense pleasure as I forget my old age, my worries and tensions and more importantly take me to my own long lost sweet childhood memories.
My life has remained joyful with interaction with children, so much so, that my nature became delicate and sensitive to the world like a child, created enormous curiosity within me and I could easily develop friendship with any child by becoming child myself. My career as a teacher and passion for reading provided me plenty of resources to build interesting stories around small pack of knowledge and presenting them to children as delicious gifts.
Though I had good experience to play a role of elder brother, acting a role of father for my daughter added new dimension to my experience. Sumedha, my daughter, was very sensitive and emotional like my mother and had tender feelings about everybody. I learnt to sense the feelings of tiny living beings which we generally ignore all the time. In my enthusiasm of teaching science, when I gave a lens to her for play, she returned it to me after seeing an ant dilapidated through her play. My Marathi story `Bhing’ (published on this blog)is based on that event.
My son, Sushant was quite naughty and industrious and wanted to learn everything by playing with it. I enjoyed making science models with him and telling adventure stories by making him hero. He showed me how one learns the mechanism of toy by breaking and assembling it again by trial and error.
My grandson Ketan ( Sumedha’s elder son) had varied experience of staying in big cities and in USA. I had to modify the stories to give him knowledge of forest and wild animals. He liked my stories and was always after me to hear new story. He had keen interest in imagining things and drawing conclusions in his own ways. In USA, he was fascinated by `Pokeman’ TV serial and had plenty of modern toys to play with. He showed great patience in drawing pictures or assembling blocks in mechano. That habit has now developed into his skill in origami and composing poems.
My grand daughter ( daughter of Sushant), Anusha now at age of 2 and half, shows exceptional quality of adapting to any environment with smiling face and curious attitude. She is quick to pick the words and takes pleasure in imitating elders like copy cat in the same tone.
Ojas, younger son of Sumedha (Age -5) has sharp visual memory and logical thinking. Recently we had gone to USA and I could develop a good friendship with him by suggesting him new ideas and topics. I found him to possessive in nature who gets totally hypnotized by the new story. He likes to act roles of the personalities in the story may they be characters in Ramayana or Mahabharat, Shivaji or even gods. Like a typical American, he applies the idea to write a book, use costume, build a model and live life in that role.
When I had gone there two months back, he was deeply engrossed in roles of Ganapati and Krishna and fond of toy story heroes, Woody and Buzz. He could narrate stories of Shivaji word by word with exact pronunciation variations just by seeing the video. I have added his audio records in our school4all.org site. With my stories of solar system, he prompted me to tell stories of visit to every planet while sleeping, where in will be controller of spacecraft and will do countdown.Myself Woody and Buzz were the co-passengers in his trips. Soon he became expert in modifying the story to his liking.
Just to divert his attention, I told stories of robot boy, James Watt and Newton which he liked very much. When I helped him in preparing model of Newton sitting under apple tree, he was overjoyed. He understood principle of gravity in no time and related to every action. What he liked most was the dancing of plate due to steam in James Watt story. He would jump himself while telling this story. He even replaced Newton by James Watt in the model and built a story himself. If I tell a new story, he used to say `Please ask me questions on the story'.This experience was new to me. He liked to do rehearsal of story. He used to capture any new idea and tried to explain it back to me. He used to play with me like a friend of his age and enjoy in winning over me. He got attracted to me even though I was old and not smart looking like others. It was the inner understanding between both of us and in his words `we were sharing common secrets’ which nobody else knows. I learnt from him, how one can learn fast and remember its details if one gets obsessed with it, gives full concentration and applies it everywhere.
My wife, Shubhangi has a knack of making friendship with any child in no time, by coining the words with phonetic rhythm and linking them to the surrounding
world of pets, trees and toys, as if they have feelings and understand her talk and actions. This creates a perfect, lovable and friendly environment for the child. It likes to repeat those magic words and enjoys in interacting with those objects. She talks with them in their language without caring for its inappropriateness in sophisticated world of grown-ups. Children feel comfortable and like to imitate her.
I could write pages after pages about the wonderful experiences we both had while playing with children, but in short, everything can be summed up in simple words, love and joy.
Having friendship with children has great rewards. While talking with children we learn a lot about human nature in its purest form. Their minds are open with no politics or reserved-ness in. They behave quite naturally showing the feelings of love, anger, ego and even selfishness, which we suppress in our gentleman mask. I believe that we can mold them, train them effectively and amicably, when they accept you as a friend.
For many grown-ups, it is difficult to abandon their status of superiority or parenthood, while talking with children and they fail to establish good rapport with them. Many a times, parents are too busy to spend time with children. They, however should not forget that they are loosing a chance of building a treasure of unforgettable sweet memories for both for the years to come.
