Disneyland and a Toys-R-Us store. Many parents opt for the "nursery look" - the bright primary colour paintwork, the nursery rhyme character bedspread, the A-B-C curtains, the dangling, jangling mobiles, the cartoon character wall posters. But I think there is far too much emphasis today placed on children's rooms looking bright, lairy, stimulating, exciting, cluttered, busy, etcetera. Soft hues of naturally occurring colours in anybody's sleeping room are far more conducive to the semi-conscious states, especially a child's. A soft and quietly decorated space with some soft natural light through a window will best evoke the feeling of the womb and the land of dreams.

Lighting
   From birth onwards, a baby is gradually accustoming to the cycles of the natural world around them. Concurrently, they are trying to figure out the cycles of the domestic scene around them! Sometimes these two worlds clash, and it would be in the area of lighting where this is the most obvious.
   A baby's eyes are very sensitive to the light, and for the first 4 - 6 weeks they need to be protected from the harshness of full sun. If you have a bassinet in which they sleep to be near you during the day, have a light cloth over it to keep out bright light and insects.
   A baby's eyes also need to be gently treated in the dead of night when they wake up. A sudden flood of light as you enter the room to tend them can only serve to frighten and stimulate them - the last thing you want. Already mentioned in "Closeness and Rest" on page 330, is the method of using a dim light, torch or candle, just enough that they can make out your face, so they do not think - "Wow, lots of light. Must be daytime. Time to wake up and play!"
   Remember too, that life is not just black or white - full light or no light - but that nature includes periods of dawn and dusk when twilight indicates the most appropriate states of mind for that part of the day. Most people tend to sleep later than sunrise, by keeping their blinds closed, and then have their electric lights glaring long after dark. Whilst this may be something an adult can adapt to, it is not something a young baby should be exposed to nor forced to conform to too early in their life.
   When setting up your baby's room, or that of a young child, use a few different, variable forms of lighting such as dimmers, coloured bulbs, coloured lampshades, shadow shades, and candles (that only you can reach). Introducing children to a wide range of

lighting experiences is good for their perceptions of light and shade, not just of eyesight but also of emotions, mind and spirit.

Things Around the Home
   As well as the environmental nature of the home itself, are the things in and around it with which a child will come in contact. Within this category there are toys and there are incidentals. Sometimes these become one and the same! New parents often think that if they give a child plenty of their own toys, that they will leave the parents' own goods and chattels alone. Ha, that doesn't work! So therefore other approaches must be found.
   Prior to a baby getting around, they only ever get to touch things which they are given. Once crawling begins - look out! What they see is what they want! This can therefore cause constant admonishments - "No you can't have that; Leave that alone; Give me that; Get down off there; Look out for that ledge; Who broke that vase?; Stop playing with that door; Go and put that back where you found it;" I have always felt that each of these statements is a reflection of parental ignorance and selfishness in that we should not need to be restricting a child's explorative and creative urges with such prohibitions. It is a parent's role to set up their house so that it is safe for the child, safe for the parents' valuable artefacts, and not a place of constant friction between the forces of childhood and adulthood. Expecting a very young child to "learn what they should and should not touch" (based on your desires rather than their own safety) is a most repressive and usually punishment-based kind of upbringing. In short it is the parents' responsibility to create a household which is crawler-proof, then toddler-proof, after which time a child will be able to remember and respect the value adults place on their property and possessions.

Toys
   As a baby begins to become more conscious of his environment, many parents (and child educators) consider "stimulation" to be important. Personally, I don't think stimulation is the correct word for it, although it may nowadays be the popular one.
   From birth to death, the human consciousness has an inbuilt drive to explore, investigate and expand. In truth, it needs no outside stimulation to do this. What it does need is a lack of blocking against its own creative urges. How does this blocking occur? By being suppressed and supplanted by external forces.