The Fundamental Message
Our brains can wonderfully master the skills of peaceful, compassionate conduct, but these skills are not inborn.
Just as we teach our children to speak, read, write, and compute with numbers, to maximize their potentialities, we must teach them emotional and social skills.
And just as there are windows of opportunity for many other aspects of body and nervous system development, there is a window of opportunity for developing a brain with strong social-emotional capacity.
Free play in loving, natural environments, bounded by the Golden Rule, serves as the optimal brain food with which to develop a fully functioning, socially and emotionally skilled brain.
The Golden Rule is the best of preventive medicine. It produces good emotional health, sharper intellectual capacity and, on top of it all, the crucial recognition that we are all equal, mapped within the pathways of the brain.
When children play freely, they are practicing independent self-direction –following their own star. Together with the Golden Rule this makes for the foundation of a free and peaceful world, the heartfelt wish of all people, families, and communities everywhere.
It is possible to raise every single child to be happy, confident, cooperative, compassionate and respectful of others. It is also possible to raise every single child to be unhappy, uncooperative, selfish and distrusting of others.
It’s all about the world in which that child grows up. Do they have a secure, consistent and loving environment? Or do they have an unstable, poverty-stricken or otherwise scary and insecure environment? The latter will bring about a failure to thrive, both physically and emotionally.
Children’s brains must have consistently secure and loving environments to develop well.
Secure environments allow them to go about their natural way of building their brains—constant free movement, exploration and interrelating—without being preoccupied or worried about other matters.
Insecure and fearful environments prevent ideal brain growth and development. They cause the young brain to specialize in wariness, distrust, and defense, which interferes with healthy social-emotional development
Learning to practice the Golden Rule from the earliest years makes an enduring difference in our children’s lives. What greater gift can you give your child and the world than the inner peace and goodwill towards all that comes from knowing that we are all equal?
It is in our hands to make the difference between painful lifelong struggles with insecurity and inharmonious relationships or joyful lifelong confidence and peaceful relationships. Not only is this possible, but it is fun, simple and highly rewarding.
We are the ones who can make a dramatic difference in our children’s lives — the difference between painful lifelong struggles with insecurity and inharmonious relationships, and joyful lifelong confidence and peaceful relationships.
Everything in this blog will relate to protecting and supporting children, directly and indirectly, to reach maximal whole-child (body-heart-mind) wellness.
Together, through Golden Rule Schools in early childhood, we can change the world from being hostile and threatening to being peaceful and secure; in our homes, our workplaces and the world at large.
It’s all about providing our children with the emotional and physical environments that allow their brains to blossom into full social-emotional potential.
