I would have seen Hibiscus flowers hundreds of times. In fact, the entrance I use to park the car, for the last eleven years at my work place, is through a path with Hibiscus plants on both sides.
It was during a recent evening walk, I noticed a flower and a bud together and was made to think that this rich flower with multiple petals and designs, was compressed in a tiny bud as like the one above the flower in the first photo. All the details of the flower stay in the bud and when it opens up it is for every one to behold and take delight in!
A bud is the home for a flower. A bud preserves and protects the flower in formation.
To me, it sounded like a mystery and miracle of nature!
A bud small in appearance is rich and abundant in its potential to be a flower.
I fear that some parents are not able to see the small beginnings in their children and long to see the big things that they always wanted to see in their children!
A child at four years drew his house, the garden in front of the house and gave a verbal description of what he experienced about the home. He did not draw his parents or brother anywhere near the house. For that child the house had not become a home!
It was while, listening to the story of the child, this imagery made sense to me. His parents were away at their work place for two years. The grand parents, with whom he lived were not able to make endearing experiences for him. His brother who is older lived distant from him. In that 'small mind' of a four year old child, he did not experience the ambience of a home! Who was there to recognise the imagining and artistic skills of this child and give him an expanding space to grow up with a sense of belonging! In fact, the the house he drew in a skewed fashion was recently built with the money that his parents earned by working overseas. Th parents viewed the house as important whereas for this boy, a home was what he was longing for!
I wish parents would look out for the mystery and miracle hidden in their children! A child is always speaking and conveying a message when he or she cries, shouts, insists or shows angry behaviour. Parents can reduce them to be naughty and view their behaviour critically.
From my experience with about twenty thousand pre-school children, I have a suspicion that it is the parents or care givers who push pre-school children to be insistent and make them get what they think to be good, by crying and throwing themselves around. They grow up denied of pleasant experiences!
Let me illustrate this from what I watched one day while staying with a family! A father was sipping his coffee and reading the newspaper in the morning. His three years old daughter woke up and called out for her father. Father ignored her call and kept reading the news paper. This girl came crying to him and wanted to be seated in his lap. He ignored even that. What happened was shocking for me. She pushed the coffee mug and coffee was all over the floor. The girl got a slap on her shoulder for this. Look at the sequence of events to see how we as parents, push our children to get attention by doing something not so desirable. She did her best to get attention normally by calling out for her father and when she did not get it, she chose to do something she knew would certainly get her father's attention!
Look at the mystery and miracle of a thinking mind at three years! So much is hidden in that 'small mind'! It is for us to enable them to bring out the best in them ranter than make them to slip to be less than what they are endowed to be !
I wish that the father had left his coffee and newspaper for a while, to greet his daughter when she got up! That would have given some endearing experience to both of them! Treasurable memories of belonging to each other!
Children are like buds! They carry the richness and abundance of a life about to unfold! We facilitate them to have upbuilding experiences to facilitate their formative process! A bud represents the future!
A child represents an adult!
An adult is formed under out watchful and fostering eyes!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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