“Tidying Up” Young Minds: Parenting and Peter Pan

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In my recent reading of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan I discovered a brief bit of wisdom on parenting young children – especially at bedtime. I particularly found it compelling because it echoes what we tried to do with our children (my wife doing a better job of it than me). 

Needless to say, children get a host of bad, crazy, confused, hurtful and/or hateful thoughts over the course of the day. But what do they do with those ideas while falling asleep? And how do they face a new day if they wake up with those same notions negatively shaping their thoughts and feelings?
 
Part of the answer can be found in the bedtime routine, and especially the sharing that takes place between parent and child just before sleep. This is how Barrie describes the bedtime scene in Peter Pan:
 
“Mrs. Carling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children’s minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for the next morning, repacking into their proper place the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can’t) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind, and on top, beautifully aired, are spread out your pretty thoughts, ready for you to put on.”
 
The time is passed for such a routine with my adult children. But hopefully my recent new identity as a grandparent will provide me with many future opportunities to help “tidy up” some young minds before bedtime.