Yesterday I started to tell you about why I chose NURTURE for my word for November.
Today I began to think about “what does it mean to nurture anyway?“ The typical way we think about nurture is to nurture children as they grow up? I spent a lot of time with children over the years. First with my two children and their friends. Then with children in school when I was a substitute teacher. Next, with the children of my adult education students at Head Start for Family Reading. And now, I have the pleasure of watching my own granddaughter as she is growing up.
As adults who interact with children closely, we try to “care for and encourage the growth or development of“ them as unique individuals. A part of this care is to provide them with food, shelter and other things they need to survive, but there is so much more they need in order to become the people they are supposed to be.
Abraham Maslow is a psychologist who is most known for his hierarchy of needs theory. This hierarchy was created to explain that human beings are motivated to move up from the most basic level (survival ) to ultimately pursue actualization, which is "to be all that they can be".
I mention Maslow only to point out that nurture has a lot to do with the pursuit of actualization, being all that we can be as people. It starts with adults helping us when we are children and then it continues through life as we nurture ourselves and others. But HOW do we do this? Stay tuned until tomorrow when that will be our topic.....
Interesting! I'll look forward to reading more tomorrow. I agree that we usually think of nurture as being about raising kids or contributing to raising children, one way or another. But nurturing is something we all need, even as adults.