Me and You Time

Motivational Book
I’ve been reading the very first motivational/self-improvement book published in the U.S. and it’s rather dubious title is: Think and Grow Rich written by Napoleon Hill. The book has been a staple for many American entrepreneurs since the 1930’s. As a book that teaches the organization of accomplishment there are many fantastic principles that can be applied to artistic work with your child.

Power of the Master Mind
The one that I wanted to talk about today is what Hill calls the Power of the Master Mind. Which in common 21st day language would be called a “Think Tank” or “Brain Storm Group” “Vision Cast” or something similar.

A Spirit of Harmony for a definite purpose
Gandhi was perhaps one of the last century’s greatest examples of someone who used this concept in a positive way and according to Hill, his method was in “inducing 200 million people to coordinate, with mind and body, in a spirit of harmony for a definite purpose.”

Our greatest Challenge
Looking at this from an educators point of view I see that here is our greatest challenge as teachers and parents working with musical children. How can we creatively adopt this method of Gandhi in our everyday actions with children?


Become beautiful and lovable people as adults
One of the ways that I have seen this method begin to work is to become beautiful and lovable people as adults. Then really begin to apply the idea to “be the change that you want to see in the world. “ Once this is apparent in our actions, words and intention children begin to want to be around us, and it is far easier to ask them to practice a certain technique or learn a difficult concept.


Bruce Anderson's Re-phrasing Suzuki's philosophy
Children love to learn, you can not stop them from learning!
It just depends what they will learn. And they will learn whatever is put into their environment. (this is a paraphrase of a teacher with a great heart, Mr. Bruce Anderson.)

Children will want to spend time with us
So let us work to develop our own love of music, our own creativity, our own love of learning and by being beautiful and loving people, children will want to spend time with us, and will want to learn from us. I believe that they will learn from us whatever we model for them, at first accepting it as the way things are, and later realizing that they have a choice as well to become who they want to be.

Tips:

Practice being curious about your world with your child.

Help yourself find joy and fun in the day and talk about or show it to your child.

Treat yourself to something indulgent and out of that indulgence approach the “work” of practice with your child as a joyful and potentially playful activity!

Share your deep thoughts or those of others with your child and elevate the practice time into one of self improvement beyond a physical skill to a holistic practice.

Children grow up
Enjoy this time with your child, it will be over and finished very soon. (and perhaps this is some hope for parents who are overwhelmed… :-) children grow up and usually do not want to spend their teenage and older years working alongside of a parent figure as they develop their individuality.

With Love, Joy and Hope,

Ben

P.S. Tune in tomorrow for a talk about Revealing the Invisible - a concept that most parents are aware of, and that I was taught by a parent in Tacoma