The Importance Of Creating Core Memories For Children
So this is (was) Shauna. She was brought into the practice a couple of decades or so ago, having been dumped on the local coast path with her ear tags removed (these would have identified the farm) and a badly broken hind leg. We pinned the leg and I brought her home to recuperate.
She lived in the house with us, sleeping in a pen, and roamed the garden by day in this extremely natty red jumper. She ate her own bodyweight in poisonous plants and decorated the wall behind her pen with the aftermath*, and every evening my daughter - who was already at school at the time - and her friends excitedly 'herded' her inside and put her to bed.
Once she'd recovered to the point we knew she was going to be ok (this took a few weeks), we gave her to a friendly smallholder and she lived out her days.
My daughter remembers none of this. None. Even the photos (which I've just found on an old hard drive) do nothing to trigger the memory. We have a saying in the family, for when someone has forgotten a major event: "Her name was Shauna. She was a sheep. She had a red jumper", delivered as a flat-toned mantra.
Kids.
(*: no amount of scrubbing would completely remove it. When we moved, eight coats of stain-stop and three coats of emulsion seemed to do the trick.)
#Sheep #SheepOfMastodon #Defaidodon #Animals #Gardening #JoinIn
