Educating to wait: a useful exercise for children and adults
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Christmas is scarcely a month away now there is little to wait for gifts, parties, holidays! But can children still wait? In today’s world, waiting is perceived as an annoying inconvenience, as a useless void before the satisfaction of a desire or a need: for everyone, adults and children. Ultra-fast connections, 24-hour deliveries, all at your smartphone’s reach: for adults it is a novelty to which they got used to and adapted quickly, the children were born with it, they have already found it, and it seems normal like this. They have grown up and live in an environment where everything is immediately and always accessible, used to having even before desiring.
Does it make sense to educate today’s children to wait? And if so, is it possible to educate them? Learning to wait means being able to appreciate the value of things: allows children to reflect, evaluate and then choose. Too easy and trivial to remember the unbridled consumerism of our children on games and toys wanted, taken and immediately abandoned! In particular, haste, not giving space to time, makes the ability to choose less and less present: waiting, on the other hand, allows us to analyze the details, grasp the details and therefore be truly able to decide with awareness. Waiting means thinking: it implies the ability to postpone to a more or less distant future, to let desire growfantasizing and planning creating expectations. But educating to wait also means learning not to let yourself be overwhelmed by instinctive reactions, getting used to self-control and consequently to leaving the right space and time for others, that is, respecting and understanding the needs of others (for example, the turn to go to swing, or to be able to play with the doll in the nursery). Waiting is not empty, but allows you to define, refine, develop desire. Without the acceptance of the long term, young people risk gratifying themselves with trivial, superfluous things of immediate use.
Vice versa, waiting allows you to look far ahead, have the patience to pursue greater desires, which cost commitment, perseverance, study, but which promote self-confidence, gratification and self-esteem. This too must be learned as a child, in order to be able to arrive as a teenager – and then as an adult – to decide, for example, which high school to enroll in, what job you want to do, which partner may be more suitable for me, etc.
So, having established that it’s worth it, how can we educate children to wait? Not easy: it is necessary to slow down the times of the whole organization of the child’s life (and therefore also of the parent). Plan the day together, so that it begins to foresee the future, and then talk about it again, telling each other what is past. Attract attention to something new, stop and observe, highlight and bring out the details. Reorganize spaces, eliminating overflow: leaving a few games available at a time, so that he can concentrate on one activity before moving on to another. To experience the choice, its effects and the possibility of making mistakes, obviously on topics compatible with age! Also propose board games, puzzles, constructions: static and slow-moving games, in short, the fun doesn’t just come from movement games or frenetic video game challenges! Involve them in activities where there is a before, a during and an after, for example making a cake: you prepare the ingredients, process them, cook them, leave them to cool and… finally you eat! Or even plant the classic bean seed that will become a plant, as long as the right times and care methods are respected. It is difficult for children to find someone to help them stay within the wait: adults themselves have difficulty managing it, living it. On the other hand, accepting the time of waiting means going against a fast, frenetic lifestyle that is today’s. Going against the trend is difficult, but not impossible.
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December 2, 2022 | 09:50
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