Louis and the storm

Last night marked the end of a few days of tropical weather here in the UK. We’ve had three or four of the hottest days of the year in a row, and then suddenly torrential rain for the last 20 hours.

Yesterday afternoon, when the storm first hit, it was sunny and balmy one moment and then a few seconds later the wind picked up and driving rain lashed the windows in the kitchen. All six of us were sitting with the door open watching in absolute wonder. There were flashes of lightning with booming thunder and then suddenly hail stones bouncing all over the garden the size of large, ripe cherry tomatoes. I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere in the world, let alone in England.

The interesting thing was Louis’s reaction to the storm.

Last summer we went camping in the South of France and on day four we were caught in an horrendous storm. It was the worst weather to hit that region of France for many years. The thunder was deafening, the rain was driving sideways and wind was truly terrifying.

There were four families on the remote camp site, all of which had children a similar age to ours. The electricity went out straight away which plunged us into darkness, the damaged tents were not safe to stay in as the trees all around were constantly threatening to collapse under the onslaught from the wind.

Everyone was really panicking.

I remember watching Louis (who was only two and a half at the time) looking at everyone around him, trying to work out what was going on. He was picking up the fear in the faces of everyone he looked at it. I was watching him learning to be scared of the weather.

From that day on, he’s talked constantly about lightning storms, asks if they’re dangerous and compares them to other dangerous things with which he’s familiar.

On the several occasions that we’ve had mild thunder since then, he has been hysterical. Literally inconsolable, shaking in terror at the imagined beast of the lightning storm!

He talks about storms at school and draws pictures of them.

‘We’ve got to do something about this,’ Susan said a few months back.

And from then on we’ve gone out of our way to continually emphasize how much we love the thunder and the lightning and the rain!

Last night, Susan jumped up and said ‘Let’s go out in the rain!’ and she ran outside. A few seconds later she was drenched. Leon ran out after her and was dancing around too. Then to our amazement, Louis ran out and danced in the rain with them.

He did not want to come back in. When it stared hailing he ran around and picked up the giant ice balls!

‘They will hurt you if they hit you on the head!’ I said.

‘Wait a minute.’ he said as he ran inside.

Two minutes later he came back with an umbrella and went back out into the garden to collect more hail stones!

The thunder boomed all night. At 3am Leon came into our room crying, scared of the thunder.

But Louis was lying peacefully in his bed!

It was a great reminder of just how impressionable those ‘little eyes upon us’ are. Children really do soak up their environment at an alarming rate don’t they? And we are such a key influence in their environment.

The information we expose little Louis to at this young age will influence him for the rest of his life. The ideas that take root in his fertile young mind will do so without his consent or participation for the most part. Those ideas, tucked away in his subconscious mind, will, as Jung said, ‘rule his life and he will call it fate’ unless he learns to examine them.

We have been determined to do our best to provide good, healthy, helpful information to our children as they grow and develop. But of course, we are not going to get it right in every area for every circumstance.

That’s why we are also resolutely determined to teach them how to learn, how to unlearn, and then how to relearn .. this more than anything else we can do for them, will help them adapt and survive and most importantly thrive in a world that we won’t even recognise in a few year’s time!