Hey Folks!
It's been forever, and no excuses, I just haven't made time to write. BUT, the other day something happened that made me think, "oh I need to write about that". So let me set the stage:
Gavin and I are working on a Dinosaur puzzle, I think it's 36 or 48 pieces, so easy, but not THAT easy. He's getting pretty good at doing them, but sometimes needs a little prompting to continue/finish them off. So we're lying on the ground, starting with T.Rex (obviously), and building his head and body. So while we're looking we do it the way you'd expect, "oh, we need T. Rex's arms... and now his tail..." etc. Then while we're looking for the next piece, Gavin points out that he needs one that has a funny triangle shaped pointy end, and finds it with the picture part of the piece pointing down (so it's just cardboard on the back).
How cool is that?
Then, he knew which one he needed simply by the background colours (it was higher in the sky, so more blue).
How would YOU do the puzzle?
I know what I would do. I'd find all the edges, then put them together and then look for defining items, much like Gavin did with T. Rex and add those in. Then will in the spaces.
Kids are different, they try a wider variety of approaches, they switch between strategies FAR more often than we do as adults. It's partly why they take longer, and why they get hurt more, because they explore their environment in more ways than we do. We see a chair and think, "oh good a nice place to sit". We don't think to climb the back, tip it over and jump over it, crawl underneath it, hang off the side, etc. Partly because society tells us we "shouldn't", and partly because we're adults and have to do serious "adult stuff" all the time. We get beat down by expectations of how we should be.
No wonder creativity is a difficult thing to come by. Gavin does this stuff all the time, and I try to encourage it as much as possible - but maybe what I should be doing is watching and learning from HIM how to implement it in my own life a little more? Being creative is where most of my best ideas, and most of the best stuff in my life has come from.
Why don't we have our clinic IN the gym? Then I could teach folks how to exercise to improve their health instead of just fixing them when they're broken - so I did (Sudbury School of Fitness). And since then we've added more and more programs and services to our business to help round out what we think should be available to folks.
I can't wait to see what else Gavin has to teach me, and I hope I'm present enough to take it and use it in my life.
In health,
Dr. Adam Ball