learning freely, compulsively or forcefully?

Okey let’s be picky on this. Once life starts in the uterus, it’s ON. Learning is turned on. Every sense, thought, feeling creates neurons or reenforces already existing ones. The naked monkey vessel, a perpetual learning machine.

So is it even possible to learn freely or is it always compulsively? And how is this relevant for what I wish for my children?

The way I see it is that learning is everything we receive (even the absence of receiving gets registered and memorized). The food we eat, how situations land within us and so on. What comes in and how we metabolize it in our intestines, heart and brain is WHAT we become.

I am not a puritanist in anything that I can think of. But as little as I let anyone force-feed my children, as little do I let anyone force-teach them.

Do you remember being force-fed and it's taking you years before you could get yourself to try those slimy beans again or whatever it was for you? In a similar manner, many people get a hard knot in their stomach when they think about math or other things they were force-taught.

I am humble when thinking about the consequences of the emotional states of my children. Will it bring health or sickness, bliss or agony? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t obsess about it moment to moment, but I reflect over it sometimes. That they are what they learn and become how they feel.

So my experiment is to be mindful of their learning and to as soon as they are cognitively ready, talk to them about what learning is and how they think it all works.