Thoughts on Children and Excellence

I've been thinking lately about whether young children have an almost instinctive ability to recognize excellence. One of our granddaughters has just turned 4. I grant you that she is an "old soul" who has a tidy as well as a pensive personality. She loves her books and gathers an alpine mountain to take with her when she is called upon to nap or prepare for a night's sleep. This child went to a friend's house and when she came home she said to her Mother, "Mama, ____ doesn't have any good books. Mimi (that's ME!) has good books."

What kind of books do I have for her when she visits? I have the classics with great pictures and rollicking stories. I am determined to spark a desire in all my Grandchildren to continue to pursue excellence in their lives and to be alert to those things which are commonplace or ordinary so that they will always desire to reach for the best that they can afford.

This has been a quest of my own for many years. What constitutes excellence? What is it about an object that denotes "quality"? I found a book many years ago entitled Art In Everyday Life by Harriet and Vetta Goldstein. Granted, it was an ancient book. The book's photographs went back to World War I. Yet, many of the concepts within this book were timeless. The Goldstein gals believed that those things which surround us in the dailiness of our lives influence how we think. If we pursue artful beauty, even in the smallest detail, we will become enlarged in our conceptual thinking. They also maintained that the lack of money does not militate against surrounding yourself with things which are beautiful. I really appreciated the comparison photographs they used which juxtapose good design against bad design, even though the photos were ancient. It still helped.

Because I have been largely self-taught and find that I have to be alert in order to stumble across helpful information; this book has been a help to me. I'm sure there is a book which is more contemporary that deals with the same topics and is filled with even more helpful information, but I'll have to inadvertantly amble over it! My husband's homily expression: "Even a blind sows finds an acorn every now and then.", conveys my own not-very-scientific process!