“I don’t like carrots.” That’s my five-years old reminding me of something I already know. “But you have to eat them; they’re good for your health,” I say. “Yes, you always tell me that, but I just don’t like the taste of carrots.”
It is 8:30 PM, and my eldest daughter can’t sleep. I take her downstairs for a cup of chamomile tea, a bowl of veggies, and the science magazine (that I read myself on a weekly basis). This has become our nightly ritual when she cannot sleep, we both love it.
That night, when she sees her bowl of vegetables, she suddenly tells me: “Mommy, I don’t like carrots.” I know she doesn’t, but I keep trying; I know all the benefits carrots have. That night, instead of trying to convince her to eat them for the sake of her health, which isn’t something that resonates with a five-year-old, I decide to do something different. What if I help her “discover” carrots?
Recently, I’ve been reading a lot of Richard Feynman’s work. Are you joking Mr. Feynman is a beautifully written and fun biography that has inspired me in many ways. But the paragraph I am sharing today is from his less-known book: What Do You Care What Other People Think? and specifically from the passage where he describes his relationship with his father. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did:
[The next Monday when the fathers were all back at work, we kids were playing in a field. One kid says to me, “see that bird? what kind of bird is that?”. I said; “I haven’t the slightest idea what kind of bird it is.” He says: “it’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn’t teach you anything!” But it was the opposite. He already taught me: “see that bird?” he says. It’s Spencer’s warbler.” (I knew he didn’t know the real name.) “Well, in Italian, it’s a Chutto Lapidittida. In Portuguese, it’s a Bom da Peida. In Chinese, its a chung-long-tah, and in Japanese, it’s a Katano Tekeda. You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing, that’s what counts”.
I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. He said, for example, “look: the bird pecks at its feathers all the time, See it walking around, pecking at its feathers?” I said, “well maybe they mess up their feathers when they fly, so they’re pecking them in order to straighten them out.” “All right” he says. “If that were the case, then they would peck a lot just after they’ve been flying. Then, after they’ve been on the ground a while, they wouldn’t peck so much any more – you know what I mean?” “Yeah”. He says, “let’s look and see if they peck more just after they land.” It wasn’t hard to tell: there was not much difference between the birds that had been walking around a bit and those that had just landed. So I said, “I give up. Why does a bird peck at its feathers?” “Because there are lice bothering it.
The lice eat flakes of protein that come off its feather” he says. “Each louse has waxy stuff on its legs, and little mites eat that. The mites don’t digest it perfectly so they emit from their rearends sugar-like material, in which bacteria grow.” Finally he says, “so you see, everywhere there’s a source of food, they’re some form of life that finds it”. Now, I knew that it may not have been exactly a louse, that it might not be exactly true that the louse’s legs have mites. That story was probably incorrect in detail, but what he was telling me was right in principle.
My father taught me to notice things.
One day I was playing with an “express wagon”, a little wagon with a railing around it. It had a ball in it, and when I pulled the wagon, I noticed something about the way the ball moved. I went to my father and said: “Say, Pop, I noticed something. When I pull the wagon, the ball rolls to the back of the wagon. And when I’m pulling it along and I suddenly stop, the ball rolls to the front of the wagon. Why is that?” “That, nobody knows,” he said.
The general principle is that things which are moving tend to keep on moving, and things which are standing still tend to stand still, unless you push them hard. This tendency is called inertia, but nobody knows why it’s true. “Now, that’s a deep understanding. He didn’t just give me the name. He went on to say if you look from the side, you’ll see that it’s the back of the wagon that you’re pulling against the ball, and the ball stands still. As a matter of fact, from the friction it starts to move forward a little bit in relation to the ground. It doesn’t move back.” I ran back to the little wagon and set the ball up again and pulled the wagon.
Looking sideways, I saw that indeed he was right. Relative to the sidewalk, it moved forward a little bit. That’s the way I was educated, by my father, with those kinds of examples and discussions: no pressure – just lovely, interesting discussions. It has motivated me for the rest of my life, and makes me interested in all the sciences (it just happens I do physics better). I’ve been caught, so to speak, like someone who was given something wonderful when he was a child and he’s always looking for it again. I’m always looking, like a child, for the wonders I know I’m going to find, maybe not every time but every once in a while.]
Inspired by this hands-on approach to education, I grabbed the opportunity to turn a simple carrot into a fun and engaging learning experience. “What if we look into the properties of a carrot? And before browsing internet let’s take a carrot from the fridge, “what do you observe?” I ask my five-year-old. She starts with the color orange and together, we brainstorm why a carrot is orange. Her hypotheses were both surprising and intriguing.
As we continue to examine the carrot, she points out the shape of it and notices that it is not symmetrical or perfect, and we talk about why that might be. Then I ask her why the bottom corner is black, and she tells me that it might be the remains of the seeds. She also notices that the skin has a thin hair, and explains away: “Mum, this is because the carrot grows and the roots are so strong that they leave a little trace on the carrot, so the carrot remembers where she come from”. After our observations, we look up 10 properties of a carrot on the internet, including benefits for the eyes, skin, and teeth.
That night she ends up eating the carrots, and then draws one before going to bed.
How powerful is to learn with our own children; the art of observation.
#Education #Caregiving #Food #Family
Every week, we will post a short blog relating to the concept of attention, the latest scientific developments around it, or our updates about our own progress here at Lifeverse!
Sign up to the blogIf you have an interesting idea that relates to attention, or if you do research on attentional processes and would like your work to be featured on our blog, please reach out - we are always happy to collaborate with brilliant minds from across fields and disciplines!
Pitch us an idea!This article explores the unique types of attention parents develop, particularly those dedicating substantial time to their children. Identifying two distinct attention modes—focused and rote—the author reflects on the challenges and engagement levels associated with each. Drawing from personal experiences, the author discusses the pursuit of achieving a state of “flow” with one’s children, akin to the immersive state described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
The narrative also touches on concerns about diminishing self-regulation in a screen-dominated world, referencing a study’s findings on the impact of screens on children’s self-control.
In this new article our expert reflects on the natural parental fear of their child falling ill and shares a shift in perspective towards sickness. Instead of solely worrying, our expert sees it as an opportunity to listen to their body, be present in the moment, and understand the concept of care.
The statements “Everyone knows what attention is” (James, 1890) and “No one knows what attention is” (Hommel et al., 2019) may seem contradictory, but they can coexist. William James refers to a common, intuitive understanding of attention, seen in everyday phrases like “give me attention.”
On the other hand, Hommel and colleagues highlight the evolving and sometimes contradictory scientific accounts of attention. While lay individuals agree on what attention is, scientists can have ongoing debates.
How can caregivers master the art of observing children? What can we learn by simply following a child’s natural instincts and development? And how does that challenge traditional approaches to education?
This blog post offers some thoughts and reflections from parents, a Montessori guide, and a paediatric neurologist on these questions!
This article explores the unique types of attention parents develop, particularly those dedicating substantial time to their children. Identifying two distinct attention modes—focused and rote—the author reflects on the challenges and engagement levels associated with each. Drawing from personal experiences, the author discusses the pursuit of achieving a state of “flow” with one’s children, akin to the immersive state described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
The narrative also touches on concerns about diminishing self-regulation in a screen-dominated world, referencing a study’s findings on the impact of screens on children’s self-control.
Label
06-03-24
In this new article our expert reflects on the natural parental fear of their child falling ill and shares a shift in perspective towards sickness. Instead of solely worrying, our expert sees it as an opportunity to listen to their body, be present in the moment, and understand the concept of care.
Label
29-02-24
The statements “Everyone knows what attention is” (James, 1890) and “No one knows what attention is” (Hommel et al., 2019) may seem contradictory, but they can coexist. William James refers to a common, intuitive understanding of attention, seen in everyday phrases like “give me attention.”
On the other hand, Hommel and colleagues highlight the evolving and sometimes contradictory scientific accounts of attention. While lay individuals agree on what attention is, scientists can have ongoing debates.
Science
12-01-24
How can caregivers master the art of observing children? What can we learn by simply following a child’s natural instincts and development? And how does that challenge traditional approaches to education?
This blog post offers some thoughts and reflections from parents, a Montessori guide, and a paediatric neurologist on these questions!
Science
13-12-23
If you have an interesting idea that relates to attention, or if you do research on attentional processes and would like your work to be featured on our blog, please reach out - we are always happy to collaborate with brilliant minds from across fields and disciplines!
Pitch us a blog idea!Every week, we will post a short blog relating to the concept of attention, the latest scientific developments around it, or our updates about our own progress here at Lifeverse!
Sign up to the blog