Abstract
Two different unique activities, i.e., caring children in a forest by a group of residents and treating children who have mental retardation or pervasive developmental disorders by a non-profit organization, were investigated by a long-term participant observation and they were discussed depending on the same theoretical framework in which the bodily interchange between experts and children was focused on. By this, we tried to develop an inter-local viewpoint for the two different localities by combining two different descriptions (observational language) of each activity with the same theoretical language.
First, the activities of Walt Kindergarten in a mountainous area called Chizu, Tottori-Prefecture, Japan were described by showing several episodes of the second author's experiences. In the kindergarten, child-care was always carried out in a forest.Teachers and children faced nature side by side without taking a hierarchical relationship. The teachers rejected a choice between appreciating and depreciating a child but tried to accept each child as he/she was. Such attitudes of the teachers looked changing parents so that they acknowledged the diversity of growth of children and acquired the patience to wait until children could do something new by themselves.
Second, the activities of a non-profit organization called the Asile in Uji city, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan to treat developmentally-handicapped children were reported using participant observation and interviews with their mothers by the first author. In the Asile, therapists tried to accept children unconditionally without any preconceptions that the children were handicapped. The children rushed into arms of the therapists and were treated with therapy that combined physical and psychological modalities. Such relationships between therapists and children changed the mothers' attitude toward the disorders from negation into acceptance.
It was suggested that the two activities were characterized in common by the relationship between experts and children in which the both were interchanged with each other like becoming a single body.Also, new meanings of child and child raising emerged from such a relationship and brought about a change in attitude of the parents.
