HANDICRAFT AND OUR CHILDREN. A Series of Articles. Article 4
Our children and we. Would you dare say that we don't love them? They are everything for us! For them, for our nearest and dearest, we are ready to manage three jobs, to bear lack of sleep, to ignore what we want, to endure whims of their age-based oddities! Yes! We utterly devote all our life to them!
In the meantime, psychologists, social scientists, teachers and even healthcare providers have been ringing the alarm bell since long ago! Distance between children and parents that can be observed at all times (the generation gap, isn’t it?) turns into the unbridgeable gulf nowadays. Keep an eye on yourself. We get another job to earn money to buy a new phone, tablet computer, pumped-up kicks for our dearest children, and give them to the caring hands of grandmothers (at its best), baby sitters, neighbors or preschool teachers. WE ARE NOT WITH THEM! We spend our time cooking, doing the laundry, putting dishes into the dishwasher, standing near the bread machine, multi-cooker, handling the vacuum cleaner or duster (think of any further options you prefer). WE ARE NOT WITH THEM! We are facing smartphone, TV or computer screen just to get distracted from today’s problems chasing us… WE ARE NOT WITH THEM!!!
And may be it’s better to stop for a while, to cuddle this little body you know up to the last cell, smelling of either grass clipping, or a sparrow, or our own childhood, or something long-held and almost forgotten… But we have unlearned to get in touch and talk to them. We need some kind of intermediary that would help us to break the ice, approach them closer and at the same time not ruin their “adulthood” and independence they value so much.
Ah, how wise were our grandmothers that used to spend time doing crafts and gradually teach them to juniors while they grew up. The gist was not only to learn to spin, weave, sew and knit to be able to prepare the portion, to make necessary clothes for the nearest and dearest. Yes, it was surely the necessary transfer of craft skills and knowledge. But it went beyond this task. It was transfer of the spirit and energy of creativity and beauty.
During the hours of joint handicraft, one could learn of the glorious past of the country and family history, hear narrations of magicians and knights, of the eternal love. Crafts and real-life communications united everybody, from children up to the elderly women. Handicraft was the backbone that not only held them together in the single creative process, but also helped to cultivate and strengthen close relations between older and younger generations. And the conversations that accompanied their work, in their turn, also speeded up inclusion of the youth in the social life.
Peer into the calm faces of mothers, grandmothers, elder sisters, beautiful in their spirituality. Enter into this spirit of the family warmth, serenity, balance and harmony that prevail in all the pictures. And together with us, get amazed at this unbelievable family accord that is apparently beyond reach nowadays.
Just like centuries ago, today handicraft can help to get in touch with children. The form of family communication still remains important. Conversations of the grandmother with her grandchildren, mother with her children in the cozy comfort of the quiet home atmosphere that implies doing crafts allows to transfer social experience to the children non-intrusively, thus making it easier for them to enter the adult life. Today, such family get-togethers, just like doing crafts alone, may be accompanied with your favorite music, combined with listening to audio books or learning foreign languages.
And can the handicraft help us solve the acute and painful issue of communicating with our children?
