My Childhood Imagination

Jack and the Giant Slayer tale
Photo: Project Fandomm

When I was young, I always thinking about the world around me. About everything that is familiar and natural. It can be the lines of an army of ants getting to their nest or the cloud in the sky. Somehow my thinking also comes to the part of the god. Where does the god stay? You know already a kid has such a creative imagination. Once I thought that there is a powerful man or creature who sit above the heaven and He is monitoring all of us and the nature beneath Him.

Maybe I was influenced by the tales of the West. I am sure that all of us have heard the tale of Jack and the Giant Slayer. Of course it is totally wrong and God is incomparable with anything else of His creatures. Subhaanallah ‘ammaa yasifuun. That was an old story a long time ago, by the way, I still knew nothing. When I recall it back, it is kind of funny thinking. But in other way, it is quite good as since young I had ever thinking about big thing and the environment. Somehow this could stimulate the mind and my thinking.

To nurture the mind of a child, we must give exposure to him regarding the fundamental of the nature. Tell him about how natures work. Who creates the nature? Tell him about the God. Unless you are an atheist or an agnostic (may Allah guides you). Attracts him to be more conscious on environment. Be an observer of the nature. All of these could stimulate and create an active mind of the child.

By the way, it could connect the neutron cells in the brain. You know about this right? At least at some point we might heard about this neutron through a milk brand advertisement video clip in Malaysian TV. They claim that by drinking the milk with a special ingredient or essence could stimulate the brain’s neutron cells. I do not know how true is this fact? Or it just an advertisement myth or simply a wrong fact. What a paradoxical statement, how can a fact could be wrong as it is fact. Merely a wrong fact is not a fact at all. Whatever!!!

Bedtime story session
Photo: Wikimedia

Simply nurture your child’s mind with creative thinking and imagination because it helps your child to grow. Some people nowadays used to read a bedtime story to their kids. Well that could be one of the ways. Perhaps you simply choose the right story. By the way, it is the norm of the Western to read bedtime story. However, in our Malay culture too there is some kind of the same norm. Back then and in some places today, the grandma or grandpa or simply momma tells some folk tales. In Malay folks we do have Pak Pandir tales. A character of an old man who is a little bit dumb with his funny actions due his dumbness. We do have a tale of Sang Kancil and Buaya. Sang kancil (mousedeer) who is highly intelligent could manage to escape from the Buaya (crocodile) who want to eat Kancil.

Malay's Folk Tales
Photo: Manaf Yasir
Click here for reading the tales.

Photo: Nazierah

Last word, we are rich with many Nusantara tales. So why not let the kids grow their imagination with those tales. But not to forget the reality. Tell them the actual thing too. Too many tales could corrupt the kids’ mind. They perhaps would be trapped in the world of imagination. That is what happen to some kids in the Western. A kid talks to his imaginative friend.

---T.T.---