Human Being or Human Becoming?
(Mike)
“When I got home from school, I would run with my dog spot to the pond past the pine trees. That was a long way back, probably a quarter mile. Then we would run back to the road. We would run back and forth until I had to go in for dinner.”
My dad didn’t talk much about his childhood. I didn’t even know he had a dog, but I could tell he was picturing the scene in his head as he told me about the freedom he felt as a child as he ran endlessly. When he told me this story, it was hard for him to get around. His legs didn’t always take him where he wanted to go. But he still had his memories. He could smell the pines. He could feel the breeze. He was no longer on the other end of the line as I talk to him on the phone. He was back at his childhood home, and I pictured it as if it were a vague memory of my own.
This made me think about some of my assumptions as a preschool teacher. In early childhood education, we often think of children in terms of “development.” Child development can be important, but we must remember it is one lens to look at children. When we look at children in this way, we are always looking at where the child will go next. Emily Plank, author of discovering the Culture of Childhood, told me that we think of children as Human Becomings rather than Human Beings (although I think she was quoting someone else).
This conversation with my father, I see it is just as important to look at childhood from the other side, to look back and see what we have been. That boy running with his dog was still a part of who my dad was when he was talking to me even if he could no longer move like so swiftly. That boy running was also once an infant taking his first steps. The developmental view is no more important than the reflective view. I could talk about how that child running is not just developing his muscles, but releasing BDNF to spur neuron growth, while also regulating his attention so that he could focus on academic skills. But that is really beside the point. It seems to me that where we might be next in our development is comparatively unimportant. What matters is that all of these experiences make us who we are.
[My father passed away in October 2019. I had originally written this before he died. He was unable to speak on his final day in this life. ALS had rendered most movement impossible by then. I sat with him and told him stories of my own childhood as well as the stories I remembered of his childhood. I can’t be certain but it seemed to make him smile although the movement was almost imperceptible. His physical body was failing him, but he still had the body in his mind]
