Movin' Easy Dancewear

We all know that children explore everything.  They want to go everywhere, touch everything, and eat everything.  As they get older they want to make a game out of everything, or a song, or a dance, or a picture.  They explore.  They put things together.

Before my son could walk, I held him up to a bamboo chime.  He explored the sounds and played with the differences in the pieces for much longer than my arms could hold him up and way beyond my attention span of watching his exploration.

What does a child explore?  The answer is beyond our comprehension because we have long discarded the tiny distinctions that children can hear, see, feel, and generally perceive.  Use it or you lose it is the rule and we lose it because we train ourselves to believe there are a limited number of colors, shapes, sounds, movements, and perspectives visually and perceptually.

I began to ask myself why I am so delighted with the movement of children.  They are exploring in an infinite universe that I have long ago forsaken.  When a child runs, all my senses tune up because a lot more is happening than I understand.  So what is the real connection between the child’s exploration and everything they do with their bodies and their sensations?

I got the answer when I saw enough children scream when they were taken out of the sand box.  With my grandchildren came along, I set out to find out what was going on in the sand box.  Miss Twala would insist on staying in the sand box.  When it was time to go, she was just like the other kids I had seen screaming.

So I decided to do what parents are not able to do and stay there in the sand box as long as she wanted.  The parents knew they would never get home at this rate and became irate with me.  But they knew that between my stubbornness and Miss Twala’s high pitched voice, they did not have a chance of budging us.  We would walk home or they could come back for us before dark or we had to come up with another alternative.  Miss Twala was the same in the swing.  Get down?  No not yet….on and on beyond multiple infinities of adult attention span.

What was she doing at age 1 for that long that was so important that all matter within one hundred yards had to be shattered with her scream unless she “got her way.”  Whoops, there it is.  What is this “her way” and why is it hers and not ours?

When I read The Brain that Changes Itself and This is Your Brain on Music, I got the answer.  The child is building connections in the brain.  In the sand box and in the swing, the child has not finished building the connections that the child knew needed to be made right then and there.

There was something else about Miss Twala that I noticed.  She, more than her two sisters, wanted the experience in the sand box to be like it was the last time she was there.  She connected the feeling of being in the sand box at the end of here play time with something special and absolutely necessary.  The exploration for her had a sequence that meant something important.

I do not claim to understand what is going on in the child’s mind, but I did begin to watch for those times when the length of time and the sequence of exploration were important.  And after much play, what I found totally surprised me.  Miss Twala of all people said, “I’m done.”  She completed whatever brain connection she was working on and was ready to go on to something else.  The adults are jumping up and down in delight, “Wow.  We get to go home now.”

My journey into dance has been a series of mazes trying different styles from 1960’s thrashing to study of many forms of improvisation, and finally entering formal dance training with modern, tap, ballet, ballroom, tango, and Latin dancing.  I discovered that when I dance something connects inside.  I am exuberant and somehow able to clear away negative thoughts and bound up places in my everyday life.  I go past obstacles.  I bring my whole body and mind to the task.  And the next day, I apply that exuberance and that learning to my relationships, my job, my creativity, my hopes, and dreams.

My first breakthrough with dance was in a Japanese Karate class.  I loved the dance form that crystallized the fighting movements.  And I was good at it.  The second breakthrough was sparring with 10 year old kids.  We connected in a way that was not happening with us older types.  There was a kind of click that would happen when the ten year old and I began to explore together.  We were learning from each other.  I loved entering the exuberance and the delight of those moments of exploration.

It would be many years later when I discovered that children use movement to explore.  Because I loved teaching as my first profession and because I loved dance as exploration, I began to notice how children use movement.

Children need a place to play, to create, and to dance.  Is this quote a duh or not?  “Children without access to places to play suffer higher levels of obesity, diabetes, asthma, anxiety, and depression.”

http://www.edutopia.org/students-design-school-playgrounds-research

Why dance? Dance is the primary mode of exploration by a child.  When we take the time to notice, children have a movement groove going all the time.  They are trying out something new, repeating it, doing it with the grocery cart, on the stairs, on the curb.  Movement is exploration and exploration has one main purpose, to make connections in the brain.

With or without music, discovering and building the brain connections to the body are top priorities that begin in the womb and continue until we die. No other activity engages the entire brain, the inner and outer rhythms of the body, along with the full delight of using the imagination.

Why is dancing with children so urgent?  Because we adults shuffle the child from place to place without noticing that the child’s job is to feed their brain so it can grow.  Dance is the major way they make connections with the body.  This is their “occupation.”

Toddlers dance and we are delighted but when an older child explores a movement over and over in public, we feel like it is our job to nip that action in the bud.  Crawling over and under the chairs in the airport is for us dangerous and unsanitary.  Yes, we need to make our judgement calls, but the activity is what the child has chosen to build their brain at that moment.

Like in the airport, we stop children’s brain feeding times at all times of the day and at any location.   When the child is exploring movement, we either do not notice or we judge their occupation to be a low priority. 

How can we expect anything but computer and game addiction if we have ignored the child’s basic brain food, dancing.

What is my top priority in dancing with children?  The child is most important.  They know what is exciting and how to connect brain, body, and spirit.

What is my part as an adult?  Most important for me is paying attention, being present, and being involved actively or passively.  Next, is holding to a “building” context rather than a correcting or directing one.   Every action I make must be measured by whether it “builds” on the child’s brain building process.  All I have to do is look at what the children are doing and help that along.

What are the four steps involved in this context of building on the child’s dancing?

First is paying attention to when and where the child is dancing.

Second is making the space usable and safe.

Third is providing the opportunity for the dancing to happen regularly.

Fourth and most important is to develop the skills to stay focused and helpful throughout the child’s exploration.

Grandpa’s Guide to Dancing with Children is my exploration with twin girls Twala, Tweela, their sister Tiger, and their cousin Mr. Man.

I follow two simple principles.  Children dance all the time, and a child’s job is to build connections in their brain by exploring every variety of movement.

To follow these principles, I have to adjust my habitual response both to children and to my use of time.  I have to train myself to pay attention, total attention, to only one thing, “How are they exploring now?”  Then my job is to support their brain building activity whatever it is.

Paying attention and supporting are the hardest for me because my inclination is to direct, to correct behavior, and to set time limits and schedules.  Of course my adult life has to go on even with a child present, and my fear is that “This will go on forever.  We will never get out of here if they keep doing this.”

The most important discovery I have made is that the child knows when they are done. The child’s brain building activity has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  When they are supported, they know when to begin, when to keep it going, and when to end.  Something in my adultness still wants to scream, “What about me?  Don’t I know best?”

The answer is “No.”  When it comes to a child’s exploration, only the child knows what and how much activity they need.  Their discovery process and time sense goes way beyond what we call “attention span.”  That term applies only to how long a child can be directed by an adult or manipulated by media.  My new approach speaks directly to the adult pulling the child from the sand pile kicking and screaming.  It also speaks to the child addicted to electronic games without a sense of time.

What’s more fun than laughing until I cry?  What’s more fun than running with dogs in the park?  Dancing with my grand children, that’s what.  I not only laugh and smile for hours, but I can not wait for the next opportunity for that much delight.

So at every moment I am with our four grand children, 3 girls and a boy all about the same age, I am watching for the moments when dance will pop up as the main feature.  Matters not whether it’s the short feature, the full length, or the cartoons, I am ripe and ready to catch their wave of sparkling delight.

I will tell my stories of how I learn to dance with crawlers and toddlers and Asbergers, how we learn together, and how our brains grow beyond our wildest imaginations.

So much is happening at a dance school for children, it is hard to talk about it all at once.  Not only are the children building the brain space for exuberant learning that involves their whole body and every part of their brain, their parents are building a world of focus and communication that will support their family in everything they do.

Every child should be congratulated on the courage to say yes to so much delight and every parent should be congratulated for supporting their child in an art form that helps to build their personal expression as well as brain body connections.