Trophy Children

Lennon is three today and although you will never convince me that he is anything less than a beautiful and gifted genius ..... I am only the gramma. It is possible that he is only a well fed member of our species. We beings have so much potential and yet we are often so blind we do not see what is right before us.

Much of our preferred life style is founded on food I will not feed my dog because it isn't good for him, medicine that is more about avoiding law suits than treating the whole person, and a system of education established to teach the bare basics to large groups of children. An intense desire to have trophy children has even turned big chunks of that education into mere mirages. Our precious little beings are malnourished in the most heinous and God forsaken way it is possible to imagine and in some cases the more money there is the worse the abuse becomes.

Lennon, like all little beings, came into the world primed and ready to learn. He hasn't been put on a shelf and fed panacea tic nothingness while waiting to go into the system. Instead he has just been loved and fed what his little body and mind are starving for. When he is hungry for green beans, we offer him green beans in as many varieties as we can think of. When he is hungry for naming things, or counting them, or communicating them, we do the same thing. Although our money and education might help in choosing what he is offered, it is the attention to him that matters most.

Presented with the gift of a child, the celebration that follows should be a large and varied feast, much much more than the pyramid set forth by a government's minimum standards. I had a cookbook in the late seventies, early eighties that said it all, Feed Me I'm Yours.