September 23, 2021
by Mary Clifford Morrell
One of my granddaughter’s favorite words is “imagine.” It prefaces much of her playtime with her sister and often revolves around dragons or horses or family scenarios. One of her favorite imaginings when she plays with Pop is being a baby horse hatching out of an egg.
She covers herself up with a blanket, gets on all fours and when Pop sees some shaking going on under the blanket, he knows the egg is about to crack and a tiny horse will be hatched. He never tells her horses aren’t hatched out of eggs. She knows that. Her response would simply be, “Imagine they are.” There’s power in imagination. Not only is imagining fun for children, which is the best reason to encourage it, but when children use their creative minds to imagine something they are developing processes that will help them in adulthood.
They are growing their social, emotional, physical, language, and problem-solving skills. When children imagine, they are in control of all situations, something they are not in real life. Imagining is a time for them to create their own stories, make their own rules, try out their own ideas, explore in their own way. They can even be the adult in the story for a change!
Certainly, living through the pandemic has made it clear to children that much of life is out of their control, for them and for their parents, too. Spending time in control, even in an imaginary situation, helps children maintain a positive perspective and develops an encouraged attitude toward achieving rather than failing. Maintaining the ability to imagine is important for children who will all too soon become adults.
Those adults who continue to imagine are those who create new ways of doing things, who invent, who build businesses and charities because they imagined, and believed, they could. Because children absorb everything they see and hear, it’s important that we, as the adults in their lives, give them the opportunity for their own imaginings, not simply the regurgitation of something they’ve seen in video games or TV shows.
Many of the popular video games today are violence based and it is reflected in the behavior of many children when they play. Famed educator, Dr. Maria Montessori, stresses the absorbent mind of the child, writing, “The things he sees are not just remembered; they form a part of his soul.” Just imagine what the world would be like if humanity had the soul of a child. Jesus called a little child to him and placed the child among the Disciples. “And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’”
Mary Regina Morrell, mother of six and grandmother to nine, is a Catholic journalist, author, and syndicated columnist who has served the dioceses of Metuchen and Trenton, New Jersey, and RENEW International in the areas of catechesis and communication.