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Mildred Masheder |
Mildred’s home truths about today’s children
Amid new fears that our young people are missing out on their
childhood, a Hampstead author is calling for a bold return to basics, writes Bernard Miller
AT the heart of last week’s excoriating report on childhood in Britain by the Children’s Society lies one sad fact: we have lost what we used to understand as the joys of childhood.
The Good Childhood Inquiry paints a picture of children under pressure, suffering poor academic achievement, low self-esteem, bullying, behavioural problems, mental health difficulties, early sexualisation, high teen pregnancy rates, poor diet and growing inequality.
This report was drawn up during what was portrayed as the longest sustained period of prosperity in our country’s history. It lays the blame clearly on policies based on selfishness and greed, prevalent in this country since Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election. These demand competition, targets, and constant testing of children.
To regular readers of this newspaper, it might sound as though it could have been written by former New Journal columnist Rose Hacker, who died last year. Two years ago she wrote: “On my 101st birthday, last Saturday, my great-granddaughter informed me she’ll be four in July, then she’s ‘going to have a baby!’”
UNICEF’s report judged Britain bottom of the league of what we complacently call 21 “advanced” countries for children to grow up in.
In her regular columns, Rose tracked changes she had lived through over the past century, showing how policies based on excessive individualism, competition, testing and targets were damaging our children. More importantly, she also described some of the wonderful experiences she had enjoyed in helping transform people’s lives and expectations, improving academic performance and socialisation, tackling mental health problems and reducing inequality.
In more than one column, Rose referred to the work of her friend Mildred Masheder, a gifted educator and writer who has produced many books that promote co-operation, collaboration, creativity and peaceful resolution to conflict.
Mildred’s latest book, Recapturing Childhood, could not have appeared at a more opportune moment. Addressing many problems highlighted in The Good Childhood Inquiry, Mildred adopts a different tack. Where the inquiry recommendations may appear excessively prescriptive – lists of what should or should not be done – Mildred’s book demonstrates co-operation and collaboration in practice, bringing together and presenting positive examples of what families and individuals all over Britain do to foster collaborative efforts.
These meld with her own extensive knowledge on child development theory and practice over several decades from all around the world.
Nature and its importance permeate it. Mildred’s pleasant, plant-filled Hampstead home shows how she herself experiences the delights of nature indoors – especially important at a time when the selling off of school playing fields and the building-over of urban green spaces is depriving children of the outdoor contact with nature they all need.
The value of parks, gardens, trips into the country or to city farms, several of which Rose helped set up, is emphasised.
Contributors to the book describe activities based on sharing nature with children, encouraging them to tend and care for plants and animals while explaining how such activities create nurturing young people and adults.
The consumer society underlies many of today’s ills. One of Mildred’s earlier books is called Freedom From Bullying.
For her, pester-power encouraged by child-targeted advertising, forcing parents to buy the latest technical innovations, is just another form of bullying.
Parents who contribute to the book show how to tackle this by limiting take-up of every new gadget and encouraging children to use their imagination, to create and build things, working together to do it.
Increased professionalisation in education intimidates many parents into feeling incapable of participating in their children’s education.
Excessive, unfounded fear of rapists and molesters crouching in wait for every child damages children’s ability to develop independence and self-reliance.
While Mildred is concerned at the loss of physical education, she does not feel that it should be addressed, as some parents have, by agonising over whether their two-year-old should take up competitive golf.
At a time when children’s parties and their entertainments have become a major and expensive industry and a focus for competition, Mildred’s book is packed with parents recounting the fun they are able to have celebrating at low or zero cost. One parent’s example was to “have an impromptu visit to the park. Afterwards, we come back and dress up in whatever costumes we can find and the children make up their own play”. Another wrote: “We avoided the compulsory bag of expensive items but gave each child a flowerpot of earth and a sunflower seed.
“They enjoyed planting and watering them and had a great sense of achievement when they flowered.”
For Mildred, the most valuable approaches are summed up in the Beatles’ song title All You Need Is Love. Often, when asked what they want, children say they would like parents to sit down and listen to what they’re saying.
Mildred believes in the “It takes a village” approach. Children learn by taking risks that horrify some parents, but somehow youngsters have an innate sense of security and can be trusted not to do things too dangerous for themselves.
One essential element of recapturing childhood is to trust children. That is true respect. It sometimes means failing, but we learn by our failures.
For parents, teachers and carers at a loss about how to improve children’s lives and futures without waiting for governments to get the message and change policy direction, this book will be an invaluable tool.
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