What is empowerment?

Is empowerment a method? Is it something that will apply only sometimes or not apply on kids all the time? Is is that we empower some time and not all time?

Pondering:
If I am helping a child is it not empowerment?
If i am not responding to child, is it not empowerment?
If I am not making child think and helping, is it not empowerment?
If I am upset with child, am I not empowering?
If I am setting up consequence for the child with the child. am I not empowering?
If I am not acknowledging I am not empowering?
If i am not trusting the child, am I not empowering?
If I am not following the child, am I not empowering?
If i am not allowing child to take decision, am I not empowering?
If i am refusing to listen to child, am I not empowering
If I am not acknowledging the child, am I not empowering
Well, we do all the above at Aarohi and yet empower the child :-)

Many times I decide to not to respond the child and I inform the child why – what way am I empowering the child?
At times I ask the child to do the task and then reflect – I do the thinking for the child – is this another way of empowerment?
When I am upset with the child, I do express and I express in many ways  - the empowerment also means knowing other's needs and my role in that.

For me empowerment is not a set rule, it does not have a rigid definition. It is not static. Like river empowerment is dynamic, it is fluid, it changes its form in many ways, in many places.

Then what is empowerment?

Persian movie, “A separation”.

Watched a Persian movie, “A separation”.  We liked movie for its tight script, direction and no extra frills.

The movie began with application for divorce, and ended up with.............. In between the family gets into some trouble.  Movie takes many interesting turns and as a viewer does not allow me to make one image about one character  - all have their own characters. Sometimes the lady reminded me of myself, and husband reminded me of Ratnesh, sometimes it was vice versa. The 11yr old daughter reminded me of my own daughter Asawari - watchful, thoughtful and yet very supportive without any judgements of the actions of her parents.

I enjoyed listening to Persian language.

A classic for people like us who loves movies based on intense portrayal of characters.

What we loved about the movie - the kind of beliefs the script  lets you form of the characters and then the story breaks them one after another. In one way it is a movie about judging and not judging. 

You end  up judging and then you gasp when you reliased that all your judgments were actually judgements.Very cleverly and delicately directed - with some awesome editing and acting.

Loved all the characters.

Highly recommended.

Aditi-Ratnesh

work and work

Have been thinking about the similar lines for few days.

This blog is triggerd by a post by Nivi "A Ted Talk on 'How to live to be 100+http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100.html "

At Bodichipalli village I see many old age people, still carrying water from well to their homes.

One of our mason has grand children and he still travels by cycle and lifts bricks.

At village, our neighbors made their home by themselves with a little help from other villagers - they do carpentry, masonry, painting, gardening .........all works together and still they get time to sit out and do nothing, Kids at campus are impressed with their multitasking.

Last week we were discussing about "when a child of 3 yrs is working on Mobile, laptop or text books we all feel great, but when the same child washes the plates we may be thinking "oh! the child is doing work". According to me whether it is operating mobile or washing plates both are skills and child is exposed to both the skills - but our own belief about both the skills gives different messages to the child".  I see no difference in learning maths from text books and sweeping floors - but the way it is delivered to kids creates boundaries - one becomes superior and other inferior. One becomes more important and other more important and waste of time. Many kids shares "this is not my work, maids will do this work".

In our education we talk about hands on skills, but we donot talk about our own work which we find all around us - we outsource our daily task to others (maids, carpenters, plumbers............) and send our kids to various learning classes to work on hands on skills like pottery class, robotics, theater classes and so on.

One of the visitor at campus asked me "if the child is not working on maths in Kitchen lab, then what value one gets out if it, kids can do a lot of maths in kitchen, how does other things like cleaning the table bring value for them". I was speechless. I see a huge value in cleaning table  - we first think about the left over food, how to recycle them, how to store them, how to make changes in our next meal based on the left over quantity..............this intangible maths is invisible and hence does not bring value for many.