Clowns. Ugh. I sort of shudder to even write that word. Scary. Wrong. Weird. Twisted.
More than once I've had to escort one child or another far from the vicinity of a clown encountered at a fair or festival. There's something about the makeup, the hair, the...clownishness, that freaks kids out and makes their parents uncomfortable. Take this list, for example, and you pretty much get the horror that we think of as clowns. I hate them too.
But interestingly, clowns as we think of them are far removed from clownING. Which is a whole different thing, really, and is something kids do naturally. Let me explain:
Clowning is an art form, a form of exaggerated expression that brings forth the inner emotion of the moment. Think about it. My kids do this every day, and quite naturally. Eric, my youngest, feels anger quite often. He's speech-delayed, having trouble forming words, yet he knows the words and knows what he wants to say but can't express it, at least not so he's understood. Hence, frustration. Which leads to anger. So he growls a lot, growls his anger. So we make a game of it: who can growl the loudest? We exaggerate the feeling, using our entire bodies, our voices, our faces, to express that anger. And afterward the tension is relieved, Eric can more quietly try again to express what it is that he wants, and we go on with our day.
And it works with my other kids as well, though I have to be careful that my exaggeration of their emotion doesn't come off as making fun of them. It's better to exaggerate your own emotions, and how better to do this than by making a big show of it? Eric's birthday cake ends upon the floor when I tried to turn it out of its pan? Let's all wail and cry our grief over the poor, poor cake! So we did that and it was great fun, and the kids even helped clean it up afterward.
And doing this helps remove some of the I'm-the-parent-and-you're-the-child thing, too. I mean, it's important to hold that distinction, as kids need guidance and a framework of some sort of structure, but at the same time by clowning you can create the atmosphere of mutual respect that I think is so important in helping kids grow up feeling empowered. And if you can have some fun together along the way? Even better!
Photo: Redbookmag.com
