Dr Ludmila Elkoninova - International Council for Children's Play

1.3.Any new experience, including appearance of an image, is always
connected with a bodily sensation. When a child starts to walk, not just a
broad visual space opens up in front of him, but he feels it tonic-kinetically,
he feels the “there” and the “here” with his body. Image at this age is an
action in the visual-body field which is felt by a body. Grown-ups set up
external boundaries of the child’s activity through prohibitions (can go here
– cannot go there). With the appearance of external boundaries, there also
appears a ‘reaction’ to a prohibition – an intended breach of the prohibition
by the child. This is not a whim, but the only possibility to establish, feel the
internal boundaries of an act. It doesn’t come easy with a child: he is
attracted by anything that his eye can catch, however he gradually learns to
separate himself from the outer world. The perception of his own action first
happens in motion. The ‘own/alien’ boundary (external/internal) is felt by a
child on bodily level – well known is the struggle over own space in a
sandpit, children’s “proprietary” mood (this is mine; I’m not giving it back). At
the age of approximately 2,5 years a child starts to realize that it is exactly
he, who is acting: words ‘I myself’ start to appear in his speech.
6