Flying with Kids
I’ve been flying Southwest a lot lately, which means no assigned seats – and I seem to always be one of the last people boarding the plane.
But there’s almost always an empty seat next to a baby. Most people aren’t interested in sitting next to a source of potential crying, squirming, and errant crumbs.
But babies are my favorite airplane companions. The air on a flight is always stale and recycled, and the people are generally hunkered down in “airplane mode” – absorbed in their laptops or books, or just zoning out. They aren’t giving off a lot of positive energy.
Sitting next to a baby is a breath of fresh air. Babies don’t retract their energy - they emit an “I’m right here and now!” signal. At the end of a baby-free plane ride, I’m usually feeling old and tired and wrinkled. But when I sit next to babies, I leave the aircraft with a smile on my face.
The other day, I lucked out – there was an empty aisle seat next a beautiful nine-month old sitting on her mom’s lap – and her three year-old brother was in the window seat, bouncing around, opening and closing the shades, and performing various maneuvers with a couple of little toy trains.
I was especially lucky - the mom was totally low tech. During the flight, we talked occasionally – and the baby nursed and slept, and the little boy cuddled as she read him a book about a rabbit over and over. They talked about different pictures, pointing out colors of butterflies. There was a lot of squirming, but it was happy squirming. Young kids are naturally engaged in developing their sensory-motor capacities - watch the body, and you're watching the brain in action.
When a lot of parents travel, they plug their children into laptops or I-Pads, Game Boys, cell phones and the like. It is a convenient way to keep kids occupied.
But watching things on screens is not great for kids’ brain development. It's an unhealthy combination of under- and over- stimulation. The sensory involvement is minimal – eyes stare at a 2 D image, and if the hands are used, it’s mostly the thumbs. And the brain’s alarm system is on, at least a low alert – we’re biologically programmed to know that flashing lights and things that move fast are potentially life-threatening. So the eyes glue to the screen, instinctively watching for danger.
This “ocular lock” is unnatural. In a normal 3-D world, the eyes are moving all the time, gauging distances, noting changing textures and colors. Every time our eyes move, they stimulate a different part of our brains. But on the screen, everything is flat and exactly the same distance away. When our eyes don’t move, they over-stimulate one part of the brain, and the rest tends to go into a kind of “airplane mode.” Even if the content flashing across the screen is the most wonderful educational stuff in the world, the medium is a powerful message to check out.
One thing that happens to media- saturated kids is that they don’t develop their full capacities to entertain themselves. Instead, they tend to develop short attention spans – except for the mesmerizing media. Although they may become highly skilled in some very specialized ways, they haven’t been activating the 3-D, sensory rich pathways that nature intended.
The brain is a use-it-or-lose-it feedback loop - less-used neural pathways eventually get jettisoned. If kids spend a lot of time looking at screens, everything that isn't a screen gets into a lower position in the neurological queue. As this continues, the neurological foundation that children's emotional, motor, and cognitive skills are based upon can get pretty shaky.
One of the biggest problems is social. Kids who stare at screens aren’t interacting with people. The screen is non-responsive. It has no eyes that look into theirs, no voice that changes in response to theirs. It doesn’t touch them, and can only be touched in a very limited way - a way that creates in it a pre-programmed response, so totally absorbing that it leaves no room for the child’s imagination.
The three year-old played with his trains. He opened and closed the shades. He made a little nest at the floor of his seat. The simplest things were fascinating to him.
And by the end of the flight, he and I were singing songs and playing finger games. Next blog entry, I’ll share some of my tried and true favorites – and some of the ways these songs and games affect development of body and brain.
Comments
Thanks so much, Tricia! Please feel free to pass it on.
Thank you Eve for drawing attention to “living in the moment” with engaging our God given senses with oneself and others. I will share your insight and information with colleagues, friends, parents and students. I appreciate your passion and work. Your observation, curiosity and intellectual assessment of human development is Amazing. “airplane mode” a great analogy.
Thanks, Regina! It’s nice to know that these “ordinary” insights resonate.
Absolutely wonderful post! I have found, partly through observation and partly through reading books, that life is a curve, if you can think of it that way: At each end of the curve, one is more concerned with beintg, rather than doing. Happily, those babies and tots that you fly next to, are at the early end of the curve, where a given present state is more important and meaningful than the social, political, historical or other implications which a culture associates with that state or situation. The seniors for whom I play at retirement facilities are at the other end of the curve, in a similar state of mind. I find them much less cynical or judgmental than most folks my own age! I wish that there could be a way to help those at the top of the curve, those 40-or 50-something hotshots in business suits and minds on their bottom lines, to reconnect, at least a little bit, with the simple joys that come with the energy of life! I’ll definitely share your post with my students’ parents.
Thanks, Jessica! One reason I love spending time
with children is that they bring me into the NOW. And
elders can do the same thing, when they have let go of
their own judgments and are just enjoying the moment.
And so can anybody who has let go and is just enjoying
themselves!
Throwing yourself into music is a great way to get into
that NOW space, at any age.
Tricia Kjolhede Jun 25, 2011
I hope that you have found a way to post this marvelous information on a forum for parents. I have never seen it so well stated. Bravo!!