Finger Cutting Knife

A 2 ½ year old child in our school, on seeing the knife started asking “Give me the Finger Cutting Knife… Give me the Finger Cutting Knife..”

It was later on known to us that his mother told him when he picked up the knife “Hey, It will cut your finger, don’t take it”. From then on the child started calling the knife itself “Finger cutting Knife”.

This can be taken as one classic example of “absorbent mind”. The child’s absorbent mind works very different from adult’s mind. It simply absorbs everything as it is without any perceptions of the past. This is why the child started calling the knife as “finger cutting knife” instead of understanding that it will cut the finger.

We must keep this in mind when we work with small children (Particularly children below 6 years), when we advice them, or correct them or lead them . We should try to use small commands, simple pictures, simple things, and set up simple and neat environment for them.

We can know that due to this absorbent mind only, children simply repeat the words what we say and imitate whatever we do.

When we try to understand and analyse the behavior of the children, we must apply this and search for simple reasons for their behavior. We should not treat them as more complex reactions from the child, examples “they act”, “they pretend”, “they plan” and so on..