When I worked in a nursery we displayed a Hallowe’en Pumpkin in our entrance hall. It was placed on a table covered with a table-cloth. Under the table-cloth we put a tape recording of the pumpkin’s voice that we would play when it was lit. The children would be mesmerised.
I taught a wonderfully imaginative little boy who particularly loved the pumpkin. He went on to school and told his teacher all about the talking pumpkin, his belief that it really talked was genuine. Rather than stimulating his natural imagination she told him, ‘ Of course it doesn’t talk , it was just the teachers making the voice’. I was so sad when I heard this story, talk about shattering a child’s illusions .
Right from the Start 
That is, indeed, a sad story. Children need to have things to believe in, and an element of magic in their lives. If my son asks a direct question, then I answer truthfully, like our discussion of people wearing suits at Disneyland Paris. I only admitted that they were people after he said “They’re just people in suits, aren’t they, Mummy?” However, I am always led by him.
This is even more important at school, where you must be sensitive to what the children believe. As teachers it is not our job to shatter children’s illusions.
LikeLike