How Do You Prepare Children for Difficult Life Transitions?
As parents, we know that the most challenging parts of raising children are periods of transition, times of change. The transition from breastfeeding to other forms of feeding, from home to kindergarten, from kindergarten to school, and many other transitions. What principle should we always maintain so that such changes will be welcomed?
First of all, let us put aside for a moment what we are familiar with, so that we can be open to absorbing something new.
By nature, a baby is meant to breastfeed until the age of two, as is also stated in the Kabbalistic sources. Today, this generally does not happen, and this is where problems begin. This is not the place to discuss the many reasons for this, but we will simply say that if we completed those two years, it would not be so difficult to transition the child to the next forms of feeding.
Such is nature’s way, i.e., changes should come at the proper time. This is also the overarching principle that should guide us through every transition and stage of development.
The example that best illustrates this principle is childbirth. When do labor contractions begin? When both the fetus and the mother’s body demand a change. The body shows us the signs, indicating maturity and readiness, and then we merely assist the process in taking place. We do not determine its timing.
Similar signs should also appear in the process of ending breastfeeding. First of all, a desire to move forward should emerge in the child. If we let things happen in their own time, we would see how the child begins to show an interest in tasting the food we place before them. If they want it, they will take some. If not, they will not. According to the inclination they show to progress through the process, we take further steps in the same direction. This is how a strong immune system will develop in the child, although unfortunately, today we are very far from this.
The transition from staying at home to attending kindergarten should also take place gradually. In principle, until the age of two, a baby primarily needs their mother. Although the baby is already outside her womb, they have no desire to venture far beyond her immediate surroundings. They need to feel her, her touch, her smell, and so on. It is not advisable to take the baby out of the home too much as even their body is not yet ready to cope with environmental influences.
From the age of two onward, we begin to relate to them as a young child. Leaving the home should be a planned process adapted to the child’s emotional and intellectual development. First, we expose the child to a simple, natural environment: grass, flowers, soil, a dog, a cat, birds. Not frightening things, distant things, or things they cannot comprehend, but precisely those things that have always existed in the immediate surroundings of human beings. We have inner records, preparations within us for perceiving them.
As for technology and screens, it is better to wait. Just as humanity reached them only after tens of thousands of years of development, it is advisable to give our young children a few years as well. Otherwise, we might be causing them harm that we do not yet understand.
Kindergarten is a very important place where a child should learn the foundations of life: how to relate properly to others, knowledge about the surrounding natural world, experience working with colors, shapes, and various tools, language, speech, behavior, and countless other phenomena. What a child learns in kindergarten will serve as the emotional and social foundation for their development throughout life.
The child’s entry into kindergarten should be smooth, meaning that the mother should accompany them closely. At first, the mother should take the child to kindergarten and remain with them throughout their entire time there. Incidentally, remember that we agreed to forget about today’s world for a moment, with all the limitations imposed by earning a living, the workplace, the kindergarten teacher, and a thousand and one other factors.
As the child becomes accustomed to the new environment and begins independently approaching different games, the sandbox, and perhaps playing with the other children, the mother can gradually create some distance. The child must feel that she is nearby, just a couple of feet away, then a couple more, and so on. Sometimes she will play with the child; sometimes she will step into the kindergarten kitchen for a moment. Whenever the child remembers her, they should always be able to run to her, but gradually this need will diminish. Later, she might say something like, “I need to leave the kindergarten for a little while to buy something for the house, but I’ll be back with you in an hour.” In this gradual process, the mother reduces the amount of time she spends at the kindergarten until the child no longer needs her there. The purpose of all this is to ensure that the child does not feel abandoned or cut off from their source of life.
The next stage after kindergarten is school, and here too we should build a smooth transition. Therefore, already during the kindergarten years, it is worthwhile to teach letters, reading and writing, digits and numbers, measurements of length, width, height, and depth, and different kinds of comparisons. We should begin creating an atmosphere and a learning program and, already in kindergarten, start building the child’s future classroom.
About a month or two before school begins, the teacher or several teachers should come to the kindergarten. Every day, they should spend time there with the children, together with the kindergarten teachers and, of course, the children’s parents. Accordingly, the teachers will gradually get to know everyone, play with the children, connect with them, and organize enjoyable activities every day. The transition to school should feel like moving from the old kindergarten to a new one, gentle and smooth.
For this purpose, it is worthwhile to preserve at school some of the things the children experienced in kindergarten: games in the yard, sitting in a circle, singing together, group conversations, and plenty of creative activities. In truth, it does not matter what we call the framework, kindergarten or school. Of utmost importance is to continue the same developmental process, deepen the learning of how to relate properly to friends, develop the senses, study art, become familiar with the world in which we live, and more.
If in kindergarten we became acquainted with all of these phenomena at an introductory level, at school we progress further, add knowledge and information, and broaden our horizons. It is worthwhile to have as many educational outings as possible so that learning becomes experiential. Another important element is developing memory: learning as much as possible by heart, such as songs, special texts, and so on.
Ideally, each class should have its own space, with its own yard, a kind of homogeneous society that grows and develops without disturbance, with mutual complementarity and positive connections among everyone. If there is no alternative, several age groups can share the same school, but even then, it is better not to have too many. Every age has its own characteristics and drives that awaken within it, and it is best not to mix them unnecessarily and disrupt their development.
Life flows easily when we build it as a continuum rather than through forced breaks. “Educate the child according to his way,” not by force, but with everything coming in its proper time.
Based on "New Life 211 – Education in the School System" with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.