Ok, I know this subject can be absolutely mundane. But there is a little story in one of Maria Montessori’s works with kids. The story ended with a child learning to blow his nose with a piece of handkerchief and he was absolutely happy to see the worthless blot

on it. She discovered that little children, who were taught to blow their noses, gained a sense of personal dignity when they were taught to do this simple task. There are many 3 or 4 year old kids who have no idea what to do when they need to blow their noses. It is one of those things you would think parents should be handling at home, until they turn up in your classroom or you see a kid running around with snort hanging off his nose in the cafeteria when you are having lunch with your friends.

Don’t get me wrong. Parents do attend to their kids. However, they do it in a way as to satisfy the child’s need to be assisted but not the child’s desire to be taught how to do it himself.

There are several other aspects of personal hygiene which we feel have a bigger place in a child’s life than blowing his nose:        Toilet hygiene; Eating habits; Washing hands; Tying shoelaces; Picking up your own sandwiches to eat.

Apparently, many tools are used to aid the performance of these tasks which kids have to do, from potty trainers to shoes. It is obvious that people realise to make miniature sizes of the tools adults use to help kids learn to look after themselves. What about the sneezing, coughing and blowing of the noses? Bear in mind, learning to sneeze, yawn or blow one’s noses is an aspect of internal growth and development which if not taught to a person when he is young, will surely bring him social disgrace when he becomes older.

Imagine this. How do you feel when you feel you are coming down with a cold or you have phlegm stuck in your throat and it is not making its way up to your nose for you to blow it out? The only way you would want to get rid of the phlegm is to literally breathe in the matter into your throat, to a point where it will find its way into your mouth so you can spit it out. Well I am telling you, not everyone, no matter how dignified they have grown up to become, whenever you do that, you almost always will end up having to snort! And I have absolutely zero tolerance when people do that in public. Sneezing and yawning without covering the mouth are socially rude but people still do them in public, oblivious to the fact they not only look hideous but also unpleasant.

One thing is certain these days, the handkerchief is not a part of the item in our wardrobe, and it has been replaced by the tissue paper. The thought of a worthless blot on a niece piece of handkerchief might have deterred us from wanting to carry one around in our pockets or purses. We have switched to using only tissue paper wrapped in boxes which we would have placed in different parts of the house and also in the car, as a practical must have item.

Good thinking! But alas, we have forgotten how to treat its use; as we consume more tissue papers; more money has to be spent to replenish those empty boxes. We find ourselves writing down ’tissue paper’ as a grocery item and the next thing we know, we discover more varieties of tissue paper in the supermarket: scented and unscented, paper napkins for Christmas and birthday parties. We have turned a single basic item called the handkerchief into a redundant piece of fabric because tissue paper has greater commercial value.

With swineflu lurking everywhere these days, we now turn towards using hand sanitzers; done with the tissue, let’s go with the bottles and cleansing chemicals.

What has become of the child who needs help to blow his nose? Give him a piece of tissue and he will know what to do with it. What do you think? Will he ever learn that he has become an involuntary customer to the tissue paper industry? When he sees that there is an abundant supply of tissue paper on the shopping isle, he would never have thought there is a shortage of trees on earth where paper come from. He will learn its value if he is given only one or limited supply of tissue paper. A lesson on scarcity will lead to appreciation of availability.

So How Would You Teach The Child To Blow His Nose?

Here is how it should be done in a few simple steps:

One: Ask the child to take a piece of clean tissue paper, demonstrate to him by holding a piece yourself in your hand and raising it to your nose.

Two: Then blow through your nose into the piece of tissue in your hand, so the kid understands the process.

Three: You will be surprised that some children actually struggle to blow through their noses. (Have you seen how difficult it is for kids to blow their own birthday candles through their mouths?) This task is even harder for some.

Four: What to do when he is done? He has to learn fold in the tissue before he disposes it in the bin. In some pre-schools, the kids are taught to leave the piece of tissue in his pocket (if it is clean enough to use a 2nd time) in case he might need it again.

The Worthless Blot On The Handkerchief

If you still reading this post, you are probably agreeing to the notion that the blot on a piece of handkerchief is not a worthless piece of junk. That is if you are willing to count the hundreds or thousands of tissue paper that a child would have used just to learn how to wipe his mouth properly after his meal or blow his nose correctly. When it comes down to it, teaching your kid to use a piece of cloth napkin or handkerchief to wipe his mouth or blow his nose goes a long way in saving money and helping your kid to claim his sense of personal dignity and henceforth appreciate the concept of social grace. He will grow to become happy with himself and thankful to us that something as mundane as blowing his nose has been taught to him well.