To start, here are a couple of anecdotes.
We're at the beach, and the Blue-eyed Boy has a handful of damp sand. He's staring at his aunt, who's eating a packet of chips. As she brings the chip up to her mouth and pops it in, he raises his hand, ready to... eat the sand!
Of course, we alerted him.
The family plus uncle, aunt and two older girl cousins are out for lunch. Auntie points to her younger daughter and says 'Ah hah', in a mocking way. Before long, Curly-Locks points to Auntie and says, with the exact same falling intonation, 'Ah hah.'
The Blue-Eyed boy comments, 'Bad example!'
'Nuf said.
Now, the 'theory' (if you take theory as meaning the ideal to strive for) is that, because it's natural for small children to imitate us, we should not only do what is worthy of imitation, but think and feel thus as well.
I suppose it's like those three conjoined monkeys, a knickknack I saw often as a child. They sat crosslegged, one with a hand over his mouth, the other blocking her ears, the third covering his eyes. They represented 'Speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil.' Strange in a way, because I'm sure monkeys are absolved, or rather, innocent of all such.
Okay, so this is our challenge. Even as a grandmother I find the children present me with developmental opportunities all the time! Let's take them in order and think about speaking no evil. How easy it is to be negative about this or that situation or person or creature. But this kind of 'slander' is not helpful for little ones. And as for 'hearing no evil', how often do we listen to gossip or engage in arguments or worse?
My analogy doesn't work for the 'see no evil' however. Although I'm always on about protecting the children from ugly and evil images, as adults we need to cultivate our awareness of evil so that we can recognize its presence. Then we can deal with it.
Remember, from the 'doing' point of view, meaningful work is what children will love to imitate.
