“The first few times with Maddie he was there just a few minutes. But it wasn’t long before he’d stay at Maddie’s an hour or more. He was fascinated by the Gogol story

“The Overcoat.” It brought home to him how things can become status goods, which then get tied up in self-concept. And that having your self-concept tied up with status goods makes you really vulnerable. I certainly wouldn’t have expected a seven-year-old to understand ‘self-concept’. But Andy did.”

“More recently they talked about the Midas story. How King Midas had not understood that material things cannot love you back. How the king had loved his gold so much that he wasn’t aware that the gold couldn’t return his love. It was only after he turned his daughter into a thing, into gold, that he finally understood that things cannot return your love ‘cause they’re not alive. You know I had never realized that that’s what the Midas story is about. I thought it was merely about the love of money. But it really is much more. In a way it’s a very modern story. Maddie explained to Andy how material things like play stations, TVs and all the other material things cannot return your love. And because these things are not alive they can’t really play with you, the way other kids can, or Dachsie the dog can.”

“After that Maddie went into the specifics; how not to fall into the Midas trap; how to handle various social situations, how to make friends that care for you and are fun to play with. Andy actually listened to what became social instructions. Never before had he listened to any kind of social instruction.”

“Were the behavior instruction effective?” I asked.

“When I baked coconut macaroons for desert the other day knowing that Andy really liked them he looked up at me with the sweetest smile and aactually said ‘thank you.’ We could never get him to say thank you before. Of course I hugged him. I was so moved I cried. And when we entered Andy in second grade at a new school there were no problems. His second grade teacher commented on how Andy is such a polite boy. There was no hint of his taking other children’s things. I guess the Gogol and Midas stories carried real meaning. What really surprised me was that Andy needed to be given abstract reasons in order to be polite and to understand what being kind is all about. You know I think he objected to learning to be polite and generous as something you do automatically because that made it like learning the multiplication table. I wonder if that objection holds for a lot of children nowadays.”
Sometime later I saw Gerda, Andy’s pre-kindergarten teacher, at the shopping center. She asked me if I’d seen Andy and how he was doing. She hadn’t forgotten the boy who had been her first and only failure. As a dedicated teacher, Gerda had gone on to graduate school in Education and had become a second grade teacher, the same grade that Andy was in now. When I told her about Maddie’s successful intervention she was both fascinated and unbelieving. “Seven-year olds can’t possibly grasp such adult philosophy. Andy must be unusually brilliant, although he didn’t act it when I knew him.”

Gerda’s response led me to wonder, “Are you sure your students wouldn’t understand and be equally fascinated with ideas about people making and creating material things and what that means?” Gerda and I talked for some time about Maddie’s approach. From the way Gerda wanted detailed information I knew she’d try the approach on her second graders.

And she did, as I found out several days later when Gerda called with her voice almost shrieking with excitement. “I have a class of little seven-year old philosophers. They’re just wonderful! My Profs in grad school wouldn’t believe what these kids are capable of. The ideas these kids have! I had no idea they’re that observant. We had a really productive free-for-all. They got that involved. And they loved Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’ and understood the Midas story after I explained it to them. You know, like Elise, I had never really grasped what the Midas story is about.”

I could readily believe that Gerda’s Profs in graduate school would have scoffed at presenting such advanced concepts to second graders. Educators tend to assume that seven-year olds are incapable of abstract and philosophical constructs and therefore have to be given rote instruction instead. Such advanced ideas should wait to be introduced later in adolescence, at the earliest. But Maddie, with the over seven decades of experience knew that by age seven children are eager learners about the meaning of life, that they want to understand how the world is put together and how they can become masters of it.

I heard again from Gerda shortly after Valentine’s Day. “My students really did themselves proud. You should have seen the Valentine cards they made. Before they started to make the cards we had several sessions during which everyone took turns in describing something especially nice that someone had done. It was slow going at first. But gradually the kids got the hang of it. Then each child made a Valentine card saying thank you to the person involved in the nice happening they had previously described. Some of the illustrations they created were just priceless. Others were wonderful expressions of love. The kids either sent the cards or took them home to their parents. I explained to them that they had produced a material thing that would give pleasure. The responses to their productions were great! And everyone at school heard about the Valentine cards my second graders had produced.”

It was some months later that Gerda and I met to have coffee at the local coffee shop. I was curious if Gerda’s second graders had understood that since material things are not alive they can’t teach you how to play with others, or what human interaction is about. When I asked her she laughed. “I hadn’t gone into details about it. But little Alice brought it up. She pointed out that not all presents are a good deal. It took a while for her to put into words what she meant. But the other kids had understood. They helped in explaining it to me.”

“The general idea was that if you get a present of a play station, a DVD player, or even a TV you don’t need another person to play with you. It seems that Alice’s parents had decided against giving her these as presents. They explained their reasons: that learning how to play with machines is not the same as learning to play with other children. And that learning to understand other people is much more important than knowing how to interact with the machines, which anyway, in a few years will be out of date.”
“It was really amazing the way my seven-year olds understood what Alice was trying to say. And as a group they decided that machines, because they’re not alive, can never be as much fun or as worthwhile as another person. Tom explained it this way, ‘a dog’s more fun ‘cause he’s full of surprises. You can’t really tell what he’ll do next. He’s different from machines, and he can love you. The machines can’t.’ Of course the kids didn’t realize how much playing with each other teaches them. That without these experiences they don’t become socially competent. That’s what really worries me about all these modern acquisitions, we lose our ability to interact with one another. I think Alice’s parents are right on target.”

I wondered, “Is that the reason you encourage a lot of class interaction? Do you feel that the children need this more than ever because the machines are preventing them from learning what childhood play used to teach us?”

Gerda’s response was, “I wasn’t that clever. What I had noticed was how eager my students are for our various free-for-alls. They seem to enjoy them so much and they get a lot out of them. I guess they’re sort of starved for getting to know each other. It’s something they’ve been shortchanged from experiencing during most of their lives. The free-for-alls taught them a lot. They became more considerate and as time went on they stopped interrupting each other.”

Afterwards, as I thought about it, my summary of what Maddie had taught Andy went something like this: material things can give us great pleasure and we can give material things as presents to each other. But regardless how much pleasure things give us; they cannot take the place of people. For things cannot love us, or care about what we think and feel, or teach us how others think and feel – only another person can.

When Elise and I talked recently she laughingly described what a delight Andy had become. How much she had come to enjoy his presence. Then, with some embarrassment she added, “You know it’s so much easier to love a lovable child.”

Copyright © 2005 by Renée Fuller

About the author:
Dr. Renée Fuller is a developmental psychologist and author of the Ball-Stick-Bird reading program. Read her many articles on her web site: http://www.ballstickbird.com . Do you have a question or comment for Dr. Fuller? Contact her:
(413) 664-0002
info@ballstickbird.com