The Importance Of Creating Core Memories For Children
So this is (was) Shauna. She was brought into the practice a couple of decades or so ago, having been dumped on the local coast path with her ear tags removed (these would have identified the farm) and a badly broken hind leg. We pinned the leg and I brought her home to recuperate.
She lived in the house with us, sleeping in a pen, and roamed the garden by day in this extremely natty red jumper. She ate her own bodyweight in poisonous plants and decorated the wall behind her pen with the aftermath*, and every evening my daughter - who was already at school at the time - and her friends excitedly 'herded' her inside and put her to bed.
Once she'd recovered to the point we knew she was going to be ok (this took a few weeks), we gave her to a friendly smallholder and she lived out her days.
My daughter remembers none of this. None. Even the photos (which I've just found on an old hard drive) do nothing to trigger the memory. We have a saying in the family, for when someone has forgotten a major event: "Her name was Shauna. She was a sheep. She had a red jumper", delivered as a flat-toned mantra.
Kids.
(*: no amount of scrubbing would completely remove it. When we moved, eight coats of stain-stop and three coats of emulsion seemed to do the trick.)
#Sheep #SheepOfMastodon #Defaidodon #Animals #Gardening #JoinIn
Lo, thar be cookies on this site to keep track of your login. By clicking 'okay', you are CONSENTING to this.
Jules
in reply to Badgardener • • •a couple of Christmases ago the whole family went round to my brother's house, and he and his wife went all out - decorations, games, Santa footprints in icing sugar, the works.
When we were leaving I asked my niece what her favourite bit of Christmas was, and she said excitedly "When the cat did a poo on the stairs"
Badgardener
in reply to Jules • • •Years ago, when my son was still in primary school, we were doing the usual teatime catch-up on the kids' day, somewhat on autopilot.
Him: "This morning we had maths"
Us: "Oh good, you like that"
"Then this afternoon we had PE"
"Uh-huh. Yes, yes"
"And we saw a plane crash"
"Lovel- wait, WHAT?"
It turned out that a light airplane had ditched in a field about a mile away, and the kids had all been in the playground and seen it fall out of the sky.
It's a huge part of family folklore that he considered this the third most interesting thing he'd experienced that day.
Fionnáin
in reply to Badgardener • • •