Susan – Onehunga
“Children can teach us kindness, empathy, how to play, how to laugh. I’m from Brazil but I’m a Kiwi in my heart now, and I have three children. One will be 18, one is 11, one is eight, and I love working with parents, and showing them how to play with their children. New Zealand is home. Auckland is fantastic. It’s a great place to grow together as a community and with the children.
Usually, when I run my workshops to parents I always quote Albert Einstein about play, and it says; “play is the highest form of research”. Playing is extremely important for children, and parents and any caregiver, and actually children teach us how to play again, and how to have fun again. Yeah, and they learn through play.
I work for Plunket and I run workshops through Plunket and Onehunga Community Centre and other venues around Auckland, and I also work for Auckland Playcentre Association, where our main aim is learning through play and learning together, children learning with adults, adults learning with children, and we’re all learning together, and I also work for SPACE Program. It’s another parents education program that helps parents learn through play with their babies. It’s held everywhere in Auckland as well.
How can we grow Auckland’s humanity and community? We have to get out of there, don’t stay at home isolated, go in your community centre and your local play groups and your local music groups, and get to know each other because a village [can] not just help raise one child, but a village [can] help raise parents. I believe that Auckland is a great place to raise our parents and children.
Having more music, more entertainment and more natural play areas, and more information about our local parks, and our local community centre; what are they offering to our communities, and accessibility. How can we do this together? We can promote this more in the community venues, and take the parents out of their homes, and get out with their children, go play.”
