Smell and Affectivity in Children

by David Fleischacker

One area that would be good to expand in a four-dimensional living classroom (which is the general character of a Montessori classroom) is the opportunities for children to learn about themselves and each other in terms of smell and affectivity.1  

Smell is profoundly linked to affectivity.  It naturally generates feelings at the sensate level (eg. how some flowers awaken joy in creation or rotting flesh repulses).  And these feelings at the sensate level then constitute the environment in which wonder at the intellectual level has its first awakenings. The smell of burning wood, of pollen, of spring rain, of death all draw attention to some facet of life and the world, and in that intentionality springs the awakening of the quest for why .  

I am sure this could be tapped into in a thousand ways by watching the young boy and girl and what naturally awakens them in smell, and then generating materials and activities based on what you find.  I would be grateful if you would let me know of your discoveries (dpf@naturaled.org).

Not only the intellect of course is awakened, but so is the will.  The child’s first attraction to what is good is through her/his passions and emotions.  And hence, when she/he is awakened affectively to others and to the world, it also becomes the starting place in which the child finds herself/himself poised to cultivate or build or assist in the flourishing of what is in us and around us.  This is authentic freedom. This is the call of conscience.  And I am sure there are differences in how this emerges in boys and in girls. 

At these moments of affective awakening, the child is confronted with a choice.  He or she can help to flourish and protect or ignore and destroy.  In an environment that is filled with love and generosity, a child is more likely to be awakened by its smells with a similar response of love and generosity.  In an environment of mere power and greed [all the seven deadly sins could be listed here], smells awaken emotions that tend to breed thirsts for power and greed.2 At the same time, this is not absolute.  Adam and Eve fell even though they lived in the grand beauty of the Garden.  The smells there must have been glorious! And conversely, God in his great generosity surprises us all by bringing good out of evil, especially in his young saints who rise up out of the midst of personal and social persecution or radical poverty and starvation.  The smell of death, war, and garbage dumps is repulsive. Yet God raises Saint Lucy or Saint Maria Goretti out of such situations.  

It is important that young children and young people come to know themselves, and a part of that self is the sense of smell and its link to the awakening of the soul to creation and to itself, and ultimately to God.  Incense is not a mere nicety, nor is the fragrance of flowers and spring rains, nor the smell of roses with the appearances of Mary. These smells impact the essence of the child.

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1 Smell needs no explanation.  Affectivity needs a bit. By affectivity is usually meant feelings and feeling states. However, I would like to expand this a bit.  Those parts of the brain involved in affectivity (eg. amygdala) are sublated (taken up into and liberated) within higher levels both of the brain, but also of sensory consciousness. And sensory consciousness itself is sublated within the human intellect and the will. Hence, we not only have feelings of joy in eating some good food (a sensory experience), but we have joy in discovery (an intellectual experience) and joy in a new freedom or in having followed our conscience (joy within acts of will).  Literally, our bodily feelings come to participate and be liberated in our imagination, our minds, and our wills. And they shut down when such sublation fails to happen, think of additions for example.

2 I tend to think that a child in such an environment will pay attention to different types of smells than would the child who is responding positively in and to an environment of love and generosity. Please let me know if this bears out in your observations.