DIFEERENT STROKES OF WISDOM

“The ancestor of every action is a thought”- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we take control of our own communication with ourselves and produce visual, auditory and kinesthetic signals of what we do want, out-standing positive results can be consistently produced, even in situations where the odds for success seem limited or nonexistent.

Some days back my eight year old brought his art homework, sounding a bit tepid. As I had been a little critical of his art work earlier. He declared that out of three topics he had to submit 4-5 themes of any one of the topic in a week’s time. Asking what the topics were, he mentioned: A Birthday Party, My Pet and Aliens.

The next question was to choose a topic which according to my rating he could do without much assistance, pat came the reply, “I’ll do, My Pet, cause, have done earlier so will repeat again.”

Beware of believing that the way to change behavior is to first change attitudes. Attitudes tend to be the result of behavior, not the cause of it. Instead of imposing “NO” do some other topic, I played along and asked him to try a different one for fun-sake. A while later, he decided on the topic of Aliens. The topic was pretty alien to me as, I am not a great buff of the Hollywood Sci-fies, so there was no insight from my side.

As Thursday evening proceeded, I asked Ishaan, of his art work, and he very confidently told me, he has completed it. This is what came in from him, four themes on aliens:

Aliens in space:

He mentioned that it’s a fictitive imagination as neither he, nor the teacher has visited space, so he could pass that theme well.

Second was Aliens playing golf, it was a worthwhile theme as he himself likes golf.

Then came Aliens at sea, which was also good as he had just finished watching Pirates of Caribbean.

After this what followed was really stunning to see his creative imagination. He had drawn Alien for Peace.

The most lucid explanation that he gave for the themes was- The Good Viewer of Cartoon TV.

Communication occurs when the audience does something with the message. The audience has the power to interpret the message. And I realized that my eight year old had interpreted the message right.  As societies become more technologically advanced, parents give up some of their authority to other institutions such as schools, the mass-media and peer groups. And always blaming TV and its impact on children is not good would be incorrect. With control measures in place children can spend time and gather knowledge from different sources provided their interpretation is put in constructive use.