Before Drama and Beef it was Pajamas with feet (blockhead)

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I am reading the story of parents who decided to listen to what their 2 year old had to say when they were not around.
This was a project in the 1980's called "narratives from the crib". You can read about it in the book Tipping Point. When the parents noticed their daughter talking to herself at night they began recording their conversations with her as they put her to bed and then the conversations Emily would have with herself before falling asleep. The recordings were then analyzed by a bunch of linguists and psychos and "they found that Emily's conversations with herself were more advanced than her conversations with her parents. One observer wrote "For once the lights are out and her parents leave the room, Emily reveals a stunning mastery of language forms we would never have suspected from her (everyday) speech."

At this point I want to clarify something. A narrative is not the story itself. It is the structure or the telling of the story or retelling of a story.

One of the psychologists (bruner) said this about children "They are not able to bring theories that organize things in terms of cause and effect and relationships, so they turn things into stories, and when they try to make sense of their life they use the storied version of their experience as the basis for further reflection. If they don't catch something in a narrative structure, it doesn't get remembered very well, and it doesn't seem to be accesible for further kinds of mulling over."

Some of the stories Emily would tell herself were "what linguists call a temoporal narrative." "She would create a story to try to integrate events, actions, and feelings into one structure--a process that is a critical part of a child's mental development."
(In the book they give a really cool example of a story she tells herself. It is her ideal Friday routine.)
This is what the was written about what she said "a remarkable act of world making..." I really like that phrase "world making."
All this research and much more is what was used to create the T.V. show blues clues. They wanted to make a show better than sesame street for kids. So they set out to build upon sesame street and take it further by using the narrative. "But it becomes easy to understand how you would make a children's show even stickier that Sesame Street. You'd make it perfectly literal, without any wordplay or comedy that would confuse preschoolers. And you'd teach kids how to think in the same way that kids teach themselves how to think---in the form of the story."

Watch an old episode of sesame street and one of blues clues and notice the differences. It is interesting(ss)/boring (bluesclues).

What struck me about all of this is the Hebraic way of teaching. The memorizing of the Torah. Midrash (Any of a group of Jewish commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures compiled between a.d. 400 and 1200 and based on exegesis, parable, and haggadic legend)....the retelling of stories. Parables--temporal narratives. The passing on of history and stories through story telling etc. It is a very interactive process with lots of repition.

Blues cluse is much more repetitive than sesame street ever was and this is why "If you think about the world of a preschooler, they are surrounded by stuff they don't understand--things that are novel. So the driving force for a preshcooler is not a search for nevelty, like it is with older kids, it's a search for understanding and predictability (anderson)".

This is why we are bored stiff by Blues clues. It is repetitive and we are looking for novelty. We have grown up and seen it allllll before. Same s%*t different corner.

But for a child, "on each succesive watching they master more and more, guessing correctly deeper into the program, until by the end, they can anticipate every answer." The show starts easy and then gets progressively more complex.

to be continued...in the meantime read the message bibles explanation of the first five books of the bible.

Fear,Anger,Love/Stop,Go,Corner

My buddy took a driving course for super cars. He drove all kinds of really expensive cars. It cast him $4000.00 dollars for a couple days of lessons. One of the lessons involved a bowl attached to the hood of the car with a tennis ball rolling around in it. They had to weave through an obstacle course without the ball flying out of the bowl---whoever did it the fastest won.
The most important thing he learned he told me was about what a car could do.
He said it could do 3 things. 1. Stop 2. Go and 3. Corner. He explained to me that each of these aspects works according to ratios. Meaning that you can't stop as well when you are also trying to go. Foot on gas and brake at the same time for example. Here is another scenario. Your driving about 60 and realize that you are about to miss your turn so you begin to brake and turn at the same time. The result is usually a loss of traction and you miss the turn and stopping takes alot longer than you had time to. Many of us have sat stuck in a ditch or peeling our car off a pole in an intersection wondering what just happened.

I think that sometimes it is better to do one thing at a time, sometimes it is essential to do them in the right order, and other times it is important to know where you need to focus your energy most 60/40, 90/10, more love less anger, less go more corner etc. I think our emotions fit this as well in some aspects.

When we try to love and fear at the same time it doesn't work well. Sometimes we don't tell people we love the truth because we are afraid to hurt them.--and then they never grow up or don't see reality. Sometimes when I am agry I say things I don't mean to people I love. It is when these powerfull forces are both exerting their power that sometimes my emotions come out all wrong. Love can make my anger very irrational. Then sometimes my love constrains my fear or anger.

Try this next time you go into a corner slow down first, hold speed while you corner, and accelerate out. Then think about your emotions and add to this blogg. I think that it is a helpfull way to look at it, if you find it helpfull please help us think it through more thouroughly.

end.