Imaginative

Kids have such fantastic imaginations. Its unspoiled by life. Unsoiled by reality. It blooms free in their protected environment. Well, unfortunately not all kids. I don't even want to go there as its the stuff of terrible living nightmares.

In the case of my own kids they are very imaginative, creative and expressive. This feeds off each other as it does with most siblings. I wouldn't claim they are any more imaginative but it pleases me, pleases me more than being academic. Maybe that's wrong but its honest. The youngest to express this side of themselves mainly in game and stories told orally. The oldest expresses her side artistically and this isn't to do with age- it has always been the case. It reminds me much of myself at that age getting praise for drawing not drawn from memory but copied. Still good all the same. As well as the drawing though she also writes. She writes plays and acts them out at school with her friends. Writing is something that I didn't do at that age. In fact I didn't start reading for leisure until my late teens and only started writing a few years after that which lead me eventually into blogging.

Every year from nursery to school the oldest has been praised by teachers for her artistic attributes as well as her imagination. In many respects it has been encouraged. That has always been a good thing. Last week my wife went to the parents night at the school. The youngest two had glowing reports, the oldest not so glowing. It would seem that from having her imagination cultivated for years it is now time to curb it. Its all come a bit sudden for her. Its all a bit too sudden for me too and I don't like it.

Don't get me wrong I can understand the reasoning but that doesn't make me accept it any more. She is at an age now where she has to stop all the foolish mind wanderings and buckle down in preparation for hard work and exams. Imagination is now outlawed. No drawings and plays. That artistic police are patrolling with batons at the ready.

Of course I understand she needs full concentration now for the acedemic side of things but I do wish they had blended it better rather than a sudden stop. And I don't like the idea of this part of her being stifled. I don't like the duty to conform. Maybe I don't like the prospect of my oldest finally having to face reality and worried that all the beautiful things will shrivel and disappear.

This takes me back to myself. As I said I was the same at that age and I had my dreamworld razed to the ground as reality came crashing in. And even all these years on I think I am still trying to get my head around it. One of my earliest memories of anxiety came with this reality- though I saw it as dread but dread is anxiety: fear of something yet to happen. I left school, went into accountancy, left that for a job in electronics and found myself jobless as the job I was sure I had after first an interview and then a medical was not offered. So I was at home with my parents looking unemployed and my dad decided that I would work for him. After a week of it I had intense dread every day after until he finally let me off the hook. I hated it. Being stuck in grimy dirty places and working with dust and steel wool and going home soiled in dirt and sweat knackered. Its not that I had an aversion to work. I had an idea of the work I wanted to do  and it was expressive. I really couldn't handle that kind of work.

That leads me into thinking about employment and how all my working life I moved from here to there. From accountant to eventually electronic test engineer to then IT and from that to programming and finally to database management. Never satisfied with any of them. Always seeking something new. Even when I left the last job I started working towards a job in web design. And its not that I am lazy. In all of these lines of works I have had to study hard at the same time as working- in my last job I sat no less than 10 exams and came away with 3 qualifications already to look into something new where though qualifications were worthless. Always restless for something new. Always seeking fulfillment and never finding it. Forever trying to appease that part of me they locked in a dark room and never finding it. I wonder if in the end I just burned out in the search.

As much as I agree with the logic in what the school are doing I think that deep rooted fear is surfacing that by stifling my daughter's imaginative side it will lead her to a restless life like my own. I just want her to be happy and follow, eventually, a life that makes here happy regardless of how much she makes from it financially. I just worry that blotting out her imaginative urges will lead her to feeling something in her life is always missing and never being able to find it.