Nourishing The Spiritual Embryo
By Ms. Nurhidayati
First of all, thank God because of the help of God, I can finish writing this essay entitled “Nourishing The Spiritual Embryo” right in the calculated time. Last but not least hopefully this essay can help the other to gain more knowledge about nourishing the kids.
Let’s check how many people think that they feel lost and didn’t know what they need to do in their life, and feel useless? Or How many people think that every child who was born is like empty paper or white paper, so we as adults or parents need to sketch for the good. I do, but it all broke when I learned about Nourishing The Spiritual Embryo from Maria Montessori. But before that let’s see the meaning of nourishing itself. From Oxford dictionary, nourishing it is an adjective word that means of food or drink) helping a person, an animal, a plant to grow and be healthy” or the second one means nourishing (to something) (formal) allowing a feeling, an idea, etc. to develop or grow stronger.
Spiritual the Oxford dictionary said that is an adjective word that means connected with the human spirit, rather than the body or physical things. And for the embryo as the Oxford dictionary, it means a noun word for a young animal or plant in the very early stages of development before birth, or before coming out of its egg or seed, especially a human egg in the first eight weeks after fertilization. And as the idioms in embryo, its means existing but not yet fully developed. So the meaning of nourishing The Spiritual embryo is “the spiritual embryo needs to be protected by an external environment that is warm with love and rich in nourishment, where everything is disposed to welcome and nothing to harm it.
Back to Maria Montessori once also said in one of her quotes: “We shall walk together on this path of life, all things are part of the universe, and are connected with each other to form one whole unity” (Montessori, 1973, p. 8).
And “We must take into consideration that from birth the child has a power in him. We must not just see the child, but God in him. We must respect the laws of creation in him.”
Maria Montessori, 1935 (1989a, p. 98)
That means that everything in this world, no matter it is big or small, living things or not, all have a purpose that God designed for each of them. Maria Montessori said that every child when they were born they already had a blueprint, that will be determined who they will become someday, when they were born. She also said that the way we nurture the psychic embryo that supposed should follow our spiritual embryo. the Parents should give the child as many experiences and let them grow as they will become. Parents is to guide and introduce children to many experiences, then observe and then give. It is our part to recognize that and follow the child. Many parents try to force the thing parent what they think is best for their kids. This sometimes creates burden for the kids. They feel they cannot be free, follow their heart and dream. Cause they are busy to please their parents.
Imagine little kids trying to build and design a building, we as adults or parents should prepare the scaffolding our child needs. So our child can has all the support. We should not make the building our own design, it is not our building to begin with. For example, parents force the kids to do things that they don’t like at all. It might be that the kids rejected it at the beginning, but as the parents wouldn’t give up and scolded the children for going astray (ie. Naughty kids, parents will not love you anymore, etc) the child will slowly give in. This however made the kids stressed out and the result wouldn’t be maximal. And when the result is not maximal, parents again will schold the child. This made kids lose their confidence and believe that they cannot do things right, if this happens many times together with being compared to others, children will feel dejected. This happens to many Asian parents, their parents also did. They feel that the parents knows the best for their child, they rarely learn from others or listen to what their children need.
As we know that every child’s development, will go through some phase, each time they grow. So if they skip one of these phase there will be an impact when they grow up. They might feel something is missing when they grow up, but they didn’t know what they missing. And unfortunately, the conventional school also made most of the kids uncomfortable. They are being compared to other students by rank, who’s the smartest one and whose not. This made the kids compete with each other, and if they cannot follow it, they might feel down. And kids also getting forced to stay still and learn the subject that they might have not be interested in. that’s why we might see many of kids who look exhausted when they come back from school and they are not excited to go to school the next day. Maria Montessori at that time observed many kids and made the new education method called Montessori, which took after her name. Montessori system turned out had a good result and it is applicable to use until now. These Montessori systems allow kids to learn based on their interests. Not to force the kids to learn what the school want. This made kids excited and improved their learning. For example, as an adult, we also gain more confidence and are excited to learn more about something when it was fun. The same happens to kids.
Let me give you an example from my own experience. But before that let me tell you, my background family. I am only child. My mom and my dad love me, but the way they treated me was different. My dad alloweds me to do what I like. Even he wanteds me to do something that that I didn’t like, I would be will explaining to him the reason why and he would considered it and most of the times let me be. When it was time to decide on a major for university degree.
At first, my dad wanted me to go to law school it was one of his dreams. But it wasn’t suitable for me. So I spoke to him and explained why I wouldn’t take it. He understood and let me take the major that I choose, which was hotel management. My mother was another story, she tried to control me since I was little. She forced me to do things that she wanted me to do. Luckily, at that time my dad supported my decision.
I remembered when I was little, my mom wanted me to have short hair as it was easier to dress up curly hair short. Until one day, I wanted long hair. I think I was in 3rd grade. My mom invited me and my dad to go to a hair dresser and told me that my hair needs to be cut just a bit but not short. I agreed with it and went to one of the hairstylists and get cut. But how shocked I was when it all finished I discovered that my hair already cut so short like a boy. I knew my mom tricked me and told the hairstylist to cut my hair short. Because I already told the hairstylist just to cut my hair a little bit. So I stood up and run toward my mom right away. I screamed and pulled my mom’s collar and said: “how could you do this to me?” and I cried. Luckily my dad was there, calmed me down and convinced me that he would talk to my mom, so this would not my mom lost my trust. Because it didn’t happened once but many times in different cases. It made my relationship with my mom drifted apart. And it got worse when my dad passed away. My mom wanted to be close to me, depended on me, and controlled me a lot. I feltel awkward and didn’t know what to do. But mom asked me why I was not like her friends’ child who can get close with their mom? Did I not love her? My heart said: this happened because when I was a kid mom didn’t want to understand and forced whatever she wanted on me and now when you didn’t have anyone to depend on and now you run to me and put all the burden on me. It seemed that everything was my fault. At that time I felt lost and said again in my heart how could she did this to me? Wasn’t mom or parent supposed to give me comfort? My heart was hurt. Because I was not prepared for this kind of situation. As time went by my mom used to say to me that I did not love her if I didn’t do what she wanted me to do. At first, it worked for me, but afterwards it got old. Then she had a new trick. She would nag me until I gave up because it’s so annoying. That is why after I graduated from university I worked far from my home. Because if I stay close to my mom, my mom will try to control me.
I tried to understand mom many times but end up I feeling tired when I am around her. But on the outside, I became a woman that needed others approval on everything. I got confused as I was used to being controlled by someone and not confident with what I’ve done. It took time and a long process for me to understand it, slowly but sure got better with counseling. It helps me to understand myself and accept the way I am. But it is still process until now. For my mom, our relationship is getting betters as she also started to open up and tried to understand me. But it didn’t mean there was no conflict anymore. Sometimes we argued but we now can manage it better and I can accept it. So If you feel lost and confused about what to do, talk to someone that you trust, let them see inside of you, then let the inner compass that God gives to guide you. Then you will know what to do.
Hopefully, my essay and my experience can make us adults, parents, or all the readers to become wiser nourishing their young ones. And my experience won’t repeat itself. We need to listen and observe what our young want/ need and provide it as best as we can. So they can follow their inner compass and become what they meant to be (not what we want them to be). Thank you.
