And that gift is the gift of being comfortable with silence. Restless Children Children really have so little quiet and solitude in their lives unless parents make the effort to give it to them. Many kids stay up too late and then have to be nagged to get up, get dressed, and rush to eat breakfast and go. They jump into a bus or a carpool and ride to school amid a crowd of children talking and teasing, Even if they're driven to school alone in the car, the parent has the radio on or worse, the child listens to a Walkman. At school they are in crowds at recess and lunch.
Children come home after school and turn on the TV or the CD player.
A child always immersed in so much sensory stimulation learns to tune some of it out on the conscious level. For self-protection he simply must. This leads to a contraction of the consciousness and to a deadening of the sensitivity to others. In order to have any time at all for his own thoughts, to get in touch with his own feelings, to imagine, to create, a child needs to have quiet times. The inner self needs silence and solitude to develop.