May 3, 2012. Paul Hixon
No matter what you hope your children will do in life, exposing them to the right environment with the proper stimulus is truly the key. Buy them Tonka trucks and encourage them to figure out the gears, they will aspire to be mechanical.
Expose them to art and buy coloring pages and they may just become the next Michelangelo. Who knows.
I went to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural mecca in Oak Park Illinois this summer and I was struck with awe at the ingeniousness of his design ability and enamored of the buildings themselves and particularly how they use simplicity and space and interplay the idea of contraction then expansion within the rooms. He was so very gifted, it’s obvious; he was the mastermind behind Falling Water, the most important piece of American residential architecture. But I know that despite his natural gifts, these things never would’ve fully developed and blossomed on their own, unencouraged. In other words what I’m saying is that it’s nurture, not nature. People become the sort of people they become due to the things to which they are exposed, due to the stimulus. Due to the parents making that conscious effort to expose their child to greatness in whatever form that greatness exists.
Thus, we have the Suzuki-method-raised children who become violin virtuosos at an age where other children are just learning to go pee on the potty.. There are also those children whose parents listen to music constantly while the child is in utero and therefore that child emerges from the womb with a natural ability to pick up instruments and to learn to play as they grow. I think this is what happened with my children, as we are all music junkies in our family and my children exhibit at alarming proclivity to teach themselves music. I’m sure some of it is talent but much of it is environmental and a keen desire to mimic what they see and what they admire.
There are those parents who let their child literally chew on books in their crib when they are infants. It doesn’t sound healthy I know but it’s really only paper (unless it comes from China and then it may contain small amounts of melamine.) But the point is this: those kids teething on text typically become voracious readers and acquire a life-time desire for learning through books.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s mother apparently wanted him to become an architect. She would buy him building blocks and urge him to build her something. Then praise him for his efforts. She wanted him to think about these things. She provided positive experiences for him when he was young and nurtured that striving within himself.
Had she bought him coloring pages and crayons and asked him to draw or color something for her, who knows where he would’ve gone instead with his ingeniousness. I’m a firm believer that people come into this world with certain tendencies but essentially as a tabula rasa or blank slate ready to be written upon and ready to receive information and to process the experience and use whatever they are exposed to with a natural/innate desire to create.
It’s a logical process like a seedling to plant. People reap what they sow. Buy your child coloring pages and crayons and encourage them to the hilt and who knows, they may just paint the next Sistine chapel.
Updated May 3, 2012. Published January 13, 2011. Paul Hixon
