Helping Children Pursue Their Hopes and Dreams

A Guidebook

Margot Sunderland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351693790
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This is a guidebook to help children who: have been given too little encouragement to follow their hopes and dreams; are too despondent or defeated to go after their hopes or their dreams; are too busy surviving, so hopes and dreams are a luxury they cannot afford; think that hopes and dreams are just for other people; do not follow their dreams because they are too afraid of failing; are following somebody else's star; and, only dream small dreams for themselves, from a fear of being big.

WHAT LIFE IS LIKE FOR CHILDREN WHO HAVE MET WITH TOO LITTLE ENCOURAGEMENT FOR THEIR HOPES AND THEIR DREAMS

We may choose to grow, to stagnate, or to decline, and in a world where there is little encouragement to grow, most of us may not do it very much or at all. (Rowan, 1986, p13)

Many children and adults harbour a private dream, but that is exactly how it remains – private. Too often, dreams remain ‘only dreams’, when in fact they carry great potential. Too many children and adults simply lack the courage or belief in themselves to move themselves through from dream to dream-come-true. It is all too common to see the tragedy of a life that never quite bears fruit, because there has never been ‘quite enough dream’, or never quite enough energy and will behind the dream. In many cases this is because the person has met with too little encouragement in their life.

In A Pea Called Mildred, Mildred meets with only discouragement from her father. This is true for too many children, whose dreams are not taken seriously or are actively discouraged, or whose imaginings are shamed or ridiculed in some way.

Nat, aged seven

Teacher to Nat (looking at Nat’s picture of a submarine): ‘Wow, Nat, that’s great!!’

Nat: ‘No, it’s not. My Daddy says I’m stupid. Am I stupid?’

(By the end of the school year, with this warm and encouraging teacher, Nat did believe in himself, and stopped believing the critical father in his head.)

Nat to his teacher: ‘Hey, look at my super spaceship! See how strong its engines are. It’s the sort of spaceship that can take me anywhere.’

You can see how easily, without the right person to encourage them, children like Nat may just give up their hopes and dreams and develop a belief system categorised by ‘What’s the point?’; ‘Why bother?’; ‘It’ll only come to nothing, it always does’; ‘I’m useless’; and/or ‘I can never get anything right’. In other words, a child’s too-low motivation to get on with things, his inability to carry things through to the end, his sense of flatness, apathy or lack of interest, his very low self-esteem or his move into antisocial behaviour may stem from too little encouragement and sometimes active discouragement for his ideas, his hopes and his dreams.

If a little girl wants to fly we do not just say ‘Children don’t fly’. Instead of that we pick her up and carry her around above our heads and put her on top of the cupboard, so that she feels to have flown like a bird to her nest. (Winnicott, 1949)

Understanding why some children abandon their hopes and dreams, or never really have any in the first place

Children who are too defeated to go after their hopes and dreams

Bright Star, would I were as steadfast as thou art. (Keats)

A child who has suffered from too many traumatic disappointments or active discouragements can all too easily give up his hopes and dreams (if he ever really had any in the first place). His sense of goodness about the world can then become too frail, and he can give up hope of ever finding a better world (which of course is what dreaming is all about). Yet another child who suffers from too much pain and hurt does not lose sight of his dreams. Why is this?

If a childhood includes a very solid and deeply loving connection to someone, then that child can suffer awful setbacks, traumas or discouragements without plummeting into the depths of defeat and staying there. There will still be some light, hope and sense of goodness in his inner world – all essential ingredients for the capacity to dream. Indeed, the emotional fuel that carries an idea of a dream from its seed to its eventual fruition often comes from some loving connection. A loving connection can sustain a child through the most difficult times. Without one, life can be one big struggle. Whether this connection is to a parent, a nanny, a teacher or someone totally unexpected, it gives the child a sense that ‘I have something of value to offer, I am potent.’

A child who never experienced a loving connection, or whose loving connection has been cruelly broken, may have his creative endeavours in life blocked; or they may not take off at all. Such children can be plagued in life by self-sabotage, self-doubt and self-hate. Defeated children who do not have these strong foundations in love often do not reach out for praise or encouragement. Some do not get angry either. There is hope and life in anger. Anger is a protest, as opposed to a giving up.

A defeated child is like a wounded soldier who has lost his will to fight. He is too weak to get up and go after what he wants. Hence the lifelessness of depression, which is all too prevalent in many children as well as adults. Depression leaves no room for dreams.

But what can defeat a child so? Here are some common causes:

	The child has experienced too many interactions of dominance, criticism, belittling, shaming or put-down.
	The child has felt unable to light up a centrally important person in his life, and/or he found too little light in this important person which could have lit him up.
	The child could not get Mummy or Daddy to be proud of him, however hard he tried.
	In babyhood, he lost too much hope and faith in his capacity to make an impact. His crying did not bring his Mummy or brought her to him too late. The baby whose cries are repeatedly unanswered eventually stops crying. This is often thought to be good, but it is actually a matter of defeat.
	There has been something too weak, or too troubled, in the child’s connection with one or both of his parents in early childhood.
	The child has experienced too many adults’ needs or demands for him to be a certain way.
	The spark in the child was never fully lit, because the adults in his life were too frightened of their own life-force, excitement and passion to be able to encourage those in their child.
	A deeply loving connection has been traumatically broken because a most important person in the child’s life has left or died. This is only a problem as regards the fuelling of dreams if either the break happened before the child had time to really take in the love, strength and goodness from that relationship and make it his own, or the child has no loving others in his life.

If a child has suffered from too much defeat in any of the ways described above, then there will be no point in saying to him ‘Brighten up!’; ‘Can’t you find something better to do than just watch television...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Author & Illustrator
• Acknowledgements
• About this Guidebook
• Introduction
• Why Children Need Help with Their Hopes and Their Dreams
• What Life Is Like for Children Who Have Met with Too Little Encouragement for Their Hopes and Their Dreams
• What You Can Do after You Have Read A Pea Called Mildred to the Child
• Considering Further Counselling or Therapy for Children Who Have Difficulty Wishing, Hoping or Dreaming for Themselves
• Bibliography