I’m learning a great deal these days about the importance of objects in psychological development. It made me recognize consciously something I knew in my gut: the value of developing a relationship with books before the age of reading.
Ben and I spent some time exploring the Beaverkill River in Roscoe, NY yesterday and did our best to capture the experience with our various digital tools.

Play is both easier and harder than we think, precisely because thinking has little to do with it.
The other day while I was with my daughter, she suddenly got pretty agitated with me. At eighteen months, the few words she has are not yet capable of expressing her frustration. Finally, through some charades like acting she made it clear that she wanted me to get out of the rocking chair where I was sitting and join her on the rug.
Symbolically, the message was the same. Come down to my level Dad. And the emotional tone of the moment shifted immediately once I hit the carpet.
What followed was “as if” she said: check out these blocks. Do you like the yellow one? Watch how they fall when I try to stack them. You try. Wow, that’s really high. Whoa…watch out…hahaha. It’s great to have you here Dad. Where have you been anyways?
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“The child knows a natural reverie of solitude which we must not confuse with that of the sulky child. In his happy solitude, the dreaming child experiences cosmic reverie – that reverie which unites us with the world.” Gaston Bachelard, “The Alchemy of Imagination,” in On Poetic Imagination and Reverie, pg. 96
In my work with at-risk teens it’s an interesting problem. Often the behaviors that manifest are either skewed toward seeking attention at any cost or they swing dangerously toward an isolation that is unhealthy. Finding comfort with the solitude of childhood is a door that seems to have been nailed shut.
Bachelard’s portrait of happy solitude gives us an image of the sought after attitude. It fleshes out the gospel saying “unless you become like a child” and can open our eyes to that beautiful occurrence if we stumble upon it.
If my son is in the next room playing, I do my best not to shatter his imaginative space. Instead, if a transition is needed to some different event, I honor the activity underway. Though a few questions I get the lay of his imaginative landscape before placing any demands for moving on to a new situation.
Allowing for a staged release is not easy. The imagination is always ready to pop like a bubble, essentially denying its existence. This has been a huge challenge for me as an adult. Often when waking in the morning, the demands of the day consume my attention before I’m able to process the hypnogogic imagery that wishes to tie consciousness to the previous night’s dreams.
So much of what we find ourselves up against are collective defenses that have gone into forming ego consciousness over the millennia. The way forward paradoxically requires incorporating a piece we discarded. In the end, it’s about living in a manner that honors the imaginal realm.