Kids & Storytelling & Cessation of the Doubt

Kids like to be entertained. As a teacher, as a storyteller, or as a parent sometimes, you need to “get their attention”. Yes, maybe, to be a teacher is to be an actor?

In Fanny & Alexander, a movie by Ingmar Bergman, a worn chair is told by the father into the world’s most valuable armchair to a doubtful bunch of kids. Power of imagination! You see sparks  in their eyes…

When he wants to destroy the “throne”, at the end of the scene, the kids SCREAM!

BUT ALSO

Kids know they are entertained, but they play the game. It then becomes the essence of entertainment : Cessation of the doubt – or suspension of disbelief. They know you’re embarking them, but they like it. They dive into your story.

It’s not an “as if” attitude! It’s a “Oh I’ll be entertained!”. It’s an openness. They go for it.

Once they’re in your story, they follow, they’re happy.

BUT ALSO

Kids are smart. So… in one second, you can bring them back to reality, you can waltz between the terrible witch, Dorothy, and… yourself back.

My opinion here is it’s smart to use this intelligence, to be aware of it.

They believe you, they don’t want you to burn the magic golden throne, but at the same time, they know.

The tango between “You’re in the dream of the story” and “You’re aware I’m an adult playing with your mind” is an elevation process.

Thanks for reading!

Elbowing the Audience by killing the Suspension of Disbelief

The power of questions & the strength of possibilities

The power of questions is the power of intriguing you.

Some questions don’t even need answers, but have the power to move your brain, to make it invent. Invent concepts, ways, doors, solutions, views…

Questions are events (because where you live, there is no florescence of questions). Questions are interesting, they can also be disturbing, or funny.

You can make the decision to let yourself be driven, or be pushed around by the power of questions.

Questions trigger movements in your brain, movements of dance, of dodging, or even swerving. Smile!

Questions secrete glowing happy interesting fog-patches of possibilities around you.

Maybe questions can meet… your own questions. Maybe they help you to ask some more questions to your partner, or… to yourself : to be surprised, to discover the strength of possibilities.

Sorry, I’m French, and if my quirky English tickles you, my bad.

Tool : Invention. Events. Decisions. Movements. Possibilities. Questions are powerful. Ask, or be asked? Both! Dolphins are fast and elegant, they seek this dance.

Merci !

Kids at 2 in a park : on screen or in life? #parenting

Do this :

1-Enter in a park

2-Sit on a bench

3-Watch around

4-Kids at two

Some :

run, walk, scream, climb, play, laugh, hide, jump in a puddle

Some :

touch mummy’s smartphone’s screen, tied in a stroller

What about yours?

#Montessori misinterpretation mess

Nooo it’s not an article against Montessori education, which is great!

Here’s the core of it, copy/pasted from Wikipedia :

Montessori education is fundamentally a model of human development, and an educational approach based on that model. The model has two basic principles. First, children and developing adults engage in psychological self-construction by means of interaction with their environments. Second, children, especially under the age of six, have an innate path of psychological development. Based on her observations, Montessori believed that children who are at liberty to choose and act freely within an environment prepared according to her model would act spontaneously for optimal development.

It’s a very interesting approach, and one of the key word of it is AUTONOMY. Many parents interested by Montessori buy books to understand and use it at home, but some of them just heard about it, or read an half-page article, and they just clicked on two concepts they adoooore :

• My child (who is already “ahead of others”, of course) will be even better.
• My child will be more autonomous, and… I will have peace.

This second point is the problem here. Autonomy is very important in this education, but not in the way “he is happy alone and I will have peace to do something else”!

It’s more : freedom to choose and activity and the rhythm, self-discipline (“I notice my mistakes”), experimenting, etc. There are… books about that!

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : jesusssauvage

“More of the Same Thing”, when insisting is a failure #Watzlawick #Change

More of the same thing is what I call a “wrong tool”. It means : INSIST. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s stupid. Push push and push in a dead end. Seems easy, but we all do the same mistake.

The pattern is simple :

You have a problem. You think you have the solution. You act. It fails. So you think you have to insist, push, go stronger, “more of the same thing”. you fail.

The problem is “you think into the box”, and you are SURE you have the solution, and that if you insist enough, you will get it. And it’s wrong!

It’s an old classic, told by Palo Alto therapy searchers and Paul Watzlawick. If you want to save your couple, if you want to help someone, if you want to flirt, if you want to talk to someone who doesn’t want to talk : STOP. The solution? It’s at the end of this article!

The book? Paul Watzlawick : Change. Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution.

The author gives an example (which I translated rapidly) :

A teacher in a class has a single kid “with problems”. She asks to meet the parents and learns that he has huge issues, comes from a broken family and is very lonely all the time. So she tries her best to take care of him and give the boy much more interest; but the solution is worse : his notes crash, he is more alone. She insists and it goes into a dead end. The therapist says that “the more of the same thing” she does, the worse it’ll go (what she does isolates the boy from the other kids, for example). She’s asked to ignore him. Only to compliment him if the notes are good. And it worked!

If a wife asks her husband to talk more to her, spontaneously, about his days or thoughts, he will tell little things as an effort, but he will feel more and more closed, which will… make the wife to be more focused on him, waiting, and “more of the same thing”, arguing continuously about why he doesn’t talk to her enough, which will embarrass him more and more, etc.

Chögyam Trungpa, who was a Buddhist Meditation Master, says that if someone answer “No” when you want to talk with him, you just have to disappear. If you don’t, if you insist, you just transform yourself into a nagging (oh, a new word!) Demon. He’s so right!

Of course you know the story of the bunch of guys flirting everyday with the beautiful lady in a bar, with no success. Only one guy understands the problem (“More of the same thing”). He just sits in the bar, no interest, showing his back to her. And paying her the most neutral way every night. And guess what? He become the only one who gets her interest…

The tool is also a dial :

It’s hard to detect when you insist “more of the same thing” stupidly, because you are SURE you’re about to succeed. Don’t be a demon. And think out of the box. Buy the book, by the way, it’s very good.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

“Vicarious” : How to learn by watching others #pedagogy #empathy

Vicariant en Français. Vicarious in English. What a strange word! It’s a concept and I put it here very simply, as a tool, or a seed. Do what you want with it.

Vicarious : Experienced through somebody or something else.

It’s all about learning, first.

There are many ways of learning. Albert Bandura was interested by one of them : observational learning. A way to learn is by watching others.

Social learning theory : learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context and can occur through observation.

Vicarious can be extended to other things.

For example : in the night your eyes can’t see, so you use your hands to “grope for” (en Français on dit “Chercher à Tâtons”, ain’t it cute?).

Vicarious : Experienced throught something else. To replace a function by another.

Think about this now :

Empathy is a vicariance, a Metaphor is a vicariance (a word for another), a Trauma can be vicarious (traumatised because you helped traumatised people), an Emulator is vicariant, and a Impostor is vicarious, etc. Once you have this tool, you can use it elsewhere.

Ref : Alain Berthoz, la Vicariance

 

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I’m living vicariously through your pictures in Lille…