It’s About Making Babies!

OK – I adore Sharon Astyk. Her writing ranges from pro-peak oil concerns to gardening, to surviving a decline in availability of energy. And she writes very well. Wonder of wonders, she is often longer winded than I am.

Today she wrote about This Place We Know on Casaubon’s Book. How a visiting toddler knew farm animal sounds better than some of the words in his vocabulary.

Sharon posits that farms, and the relationship of man to domestic animal, is inherent in childhood. She uses the experiences of her kids to explain the universal recognition and bonding of child to farm.

Poppycock.

The issue here is storytelling.

The idealised farm often portrayed in infant and toddler books often touches on simplified, old-reliable stories. The fireman, the policeman, the farmer. These stories have inspired children, for months to years, sometimes for a lifetime, to take these stories to heart.

Many authors recognize that a cow can be described in a story easily. Few people spend the time to study how a cow (bull, steer, calf, oxen, etc.) behave, so the storyteller is free to project and simplify. Dogs are more familiar, so the storytelling is more encumbered, and fewer easy stories about dogs, cats, etc. are around.

Reading to the child.

Picture: Mom reads to child. “The cow eats grass. See the cow inside the fence? The cow says ‘Moo’.” And goes on. Now consider what the child hears and observes. Mom identified a simple object – a cow. Everything Mom says and does is important, so the cow must be important, too, right up there with spoon and breakfast and diapers. The cow makes a noise – Moo. Mom makes a game of the noise, one that the child is invited to play. Game equals reinforcement. The time Mom spends on this page, with this picture, and this sound game is greater than many other things that Mom considers important – so the cow, too, and the Moo sound, must be important – and the toddler masters the Moo game and recognizes the cow, to please Mom.

How many important lessons do you know, that can be told that simply? It is no wonder the child picks up on the Moo sound, and the cow. And it has nothing to do with how child-appropriate a farm might be (a farm is highly desirable and highly child appropriate, I agree with Sharon on that). It is all about storytelling.

The simple children’s stories about police and firemen focus on the uniform, the siren, and rushing to help – no explanation of how the fire started, or how someone became the crook the police protects everyone from – or the people harmed in turning the crook into an outlaw. Really simple stories.

Two generations from now.

Will the generation after the next one tell stories that Mr. Greenjeans might have told on Captain Kangaroo? (Yes, I do remember the Grandfather Clock, Bunny Rabbit, and jingling the keys to the clubhouse.) Will infant and toddler literature be updated past the 1930′s farm technology? Time will tell. I expect that storytellers of the time will use history to identify simplest objects and concepts, and historical literature for examples of the simplest stories and games.

Who knows? We might start teaching our children lullabies and children’s songs, so they will have them for their children. It could happen!