Every Child is a Star

The new level is up! The theme is: Every Child is a Star. There is one passage that really caught me from this class:

Anak-anak terlahir hebat. Kitalah yang harus selalu memantaskan diri untuk selalu layak di hadapan Allah, memegang amanah anak-anak yang luar biasa.

Children are born great. It is we who must always set ourselves up to always be worthy before God, to hold the blessing of extraordinary children.

Allah tidak pernah membuat produk gagal. Tidak ada anak yang bodoh di muka bumi ini. Yang ada hanya anak yang tidak mendapatkan kesempatan belajar dari orang tua/guru yang baik, yang senantiasa tidak pernah berhenti menuntut ilmu demi anak2nya, dan memahami metode yang tepat sesuai dengan gaya belajar anak-anaknya.

God never made a defect product. There is no stupid child on this earth. There are only children who do not get the opportunity to learn from good parents / teachers, who always never stop studying for their children, and understand the right methods according to their children's learning styles.

As parents, we should be able to discover our child's ability. I once heard from Ibu Septi Wulandani, the founder of Ibu Profesional,

"Actually, we don't need to learn sophisticated concepts of parenting. Just be with your child. Play with them, be close to them. In that way, you will be the expert of your child. You will know exactly what's their potentials, what they are good at, so it is easier to guide them to the path they may excel at."

What she said somehow remind me of a widely touted theory that anyone can master a skill with 10,000 hours of practice. That being said, Alula is 14 months old now, which means that it has been more or less 10,000 hours we are together. However, sadly, I feel that I haven't master her, I still know very little of her.

Discovering Ability

To discover child's ability, we need to expose our child into three aspects:

• Lots of interaction
• Lots of environment
• Lots of activities

By exposing children into those three aspects, we hope that children can find the activity that really excites them (ENJOY), never stop to catch up perfection of knowledge no matter how hard (EASY), and be great at that particular field (EXCELLENT). After the three things mentioned above, there will be a productivity  and appreciation of works in their fields (EARN).

The Approach

There are four areas that can be explored to discover child's potential: Intra personal (self-concept), interpersonal (relationship with others), change factor, and spiritual.

The first and foremost field that need to be explored in a young child is the self-concept area. Child's self-concept is formed through his/her view or feeling about him/herself, as a result of:

• interaction and experience with the closest environment
• the relationships quality with parents and closest families
• attributes given by the environment to him/her

The approach that can be done by parents to discover child's self-concept are:

• Know God and His creations
  A child who understand his/herself will know who creates him/her.

• Train the child to read him/herself
  Two important phases in child's life are when he/she was born and when they find the answer why they were born. Thus, help our child to convince him/herself as the best God's creation and as the representative of God (guardian) on earth.

• Train the child to read the nature
  Train the child to understand why they are sent by Allah to live in the place they are living now, and also understand the culture where they grow up.

• Train the child to read the era
  Educate the child based on the era they are living. Thus, they will understand the challenges of living in their era and how to survive within the era.