The Essence of Being a Play-Based Teacher is Not Teaching

I never pretend to know what kids will learn on any given day and, honestly, any teacher who does is either deluded or blowing smoke. No one can possibly know what another person is going to learn. You can hope. You can plan. You can lecture yourself blue. You can even, if you're especially clever, trick someone into learning something, but the idea that one person can "teach" something to another, except under narrow circumstances, is one of the great educational myths.

There is a quote that is most often attributed to the Buddha, but is more likely of Theosophical origins, that goes: "When the student is ready the master will appear." I like these kinds of quotes that persist because they are true even when they can't be traced back to the utterances of Buddha, Socrates, or Einstein. This one is even so true that there is a corollary: "When the master is ready the student will appear."

Some days I accidentally "teach" something to a kid. For instance, I once improperly used the term "centrifugal force" (when I actually should have use "centripetal force") while a child was experimenting with a hamster wheel and the kid, months later, was still misusing my term while performing his experiments, even as I repeatedly tried to correct him. But most days I teach nothing at all except, perhaps, what I convey to my students by role modeling. I've tried, believe me, to convey specific information to kids, like when I tell them that dirt is primarily made from volcanos, dead stuff, and worm poop, but most of the time the only things that stick are the things about which the kids are already asking questions.

And still, despite my utter lack of "teaching," the kids who come to our school are learning. How do I know? I watch them. I listen to them. I remember when they didn't know and then I hear them saying and see them doing things that demonstrate that now they do. And even though I'm not teaching them, they mostly learn exactly what I want them to know.

What do I want them to know?

The joy of playing with other people.

The frustration failure and the redemption of perseverance.

Emotions come and go and they are important.

I'm the boss of me and you're the boss of you.

Our agreements are sacred.

It's not only important to love, but also to say it.

It's not my job to "teach" these things. It is my job to love them and to do what I can to create an environment that is stimulating, beautiful, and safe enough: a place where children can ask and answer their own questions about the world and the people they find there. A place not of teaching, but of curiosity, exploration, experimentation, and discovery. We call it play and it's how we learn everything a preschooler needs to know.

******

Early childhood educators, directors, homeschoolers, and parens of young children . . . please join me for this affirmative and informative live workshop. In the spirit of inclusiveness, I've kept the price as low as possible, so share far and wide. This is a great way to get the whole team on the same page for the New Year. Certificates are available. For more information and to register, click here: Making 2026 Our Year of Play

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

Why I Like Classic Jigsaw Puzzles

Classic jigsaw puzzles hold a special place in our classroom. They stand out as uniquely directive in that there is, in the end, only one right way assemble them. Yes, of course, a child might have other ideas. Someone might, say, build a tower with the pieces. Once a group of children used puzzle pieces as a kind of currency in the game they were playing, but for the overwhelming majority of children I've known, puzzles, be they on table tops or on the floor, say to children, "sit down, concentrate, and solve me." 

Certain toys tell children how to play with them. Balls can be used for all sorts of things, but among the things they say most loudly is "throw me," which is why, if we don't want balls flying around the classroom, we only make balls available outdoors. Puzzles are not usually the most "glamorous" thing in the room and they are often overlooked. Frequently, a child engaged in more active play will simply cruise by, dump all the pieces out their frames, then walk away, leaving a jumbled pile of pieces from several puzzles in a messy heap. It's one of the most common ways children use puzzles towards something other than the "right answers" that are built into them.

I like sitting with children as they sort through puzzles. For one thing, it's a great exercise in non-intervention. As children turn pieces around and around trying to find the piece that fits, it can take every ounce of willpower to restrain myself from offering unsolicited advice. For another, especially in a busy classroom, a child bent over a puzzle is a study in focus, their thoughts revealing themselves in the movements of their little fingers as they study shape and pattern, as they seek out the perfect fit. For most children, it's a silent, solo activity, although they might team up with friends, talking their way through a process. There is a lot for an adult to learn from overhearing those conversations. And some children especially like to have someone listening as they talk their way through it: "Like this . . . No, maybe like this . . . Turn it around and around . . . No . . . no . . . no . . ."

Puzzles are about perseverance in the face of repeated failure. They are a cycle that moves from chaos to order and back again. Many children will work the same puzzle over and over. Some years ago, I sat with a girl who was exploring this cycle, repeatedly assembling the same puzzle over and over until she had mastered it. Only after a dozen or so repetitions would she then push it aside and move on to the next puzzle. Again and again, I watched her start from not knowing and work her way to mastery. Her process was methodical and calm. There was no hurry to her careful method of trail and error as she noodled her way through one puzzle after another. As she started in on a new puzzle she would say, "This one looks hard." After mastering it, she would say, "This one is easy."

I finally couldn't help myself, saying to her, "You said that one was hard a few minutes ago, but now you said it's easy."

"Yes," she answered matter-of-factly, "First puzzles are hard, then you turn them easy." She surveyed the table where four wooden puzzles were neatly assembled. "I turned all of these easy."

I asked her if she wanted me to get her some more puzzles that she could "turn easy." 

"No, that's enough."

"How about I get out some different puzzles for tomorrow?"

"No, keep these same ones. I want to see if they stay easy." Then she opened her eyes wide at me, "Sometimes they don't!" And off she went into a world of chaos.

******

Early childhood educators, directors, homeschoolers, and parens of young children . . . please join me for this affirmative and informative live workshop. In the spirit of inclusiveness, I've kept the price as low as possible, so share far and wide. This is a great way to get the whole team on the same page for the New Year. Certificates are available. For more information and to register, click here: Making 2026 Our Year of Play

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

Modern Schools Would Have Failed Einstein

As a teenager Albert Einstein imagined chasing after a beam of light. It was a thought experiment that ultimately led to his groundbreaking Special Theory of Relativity, one of the most impactful and important science developments of the 20th century. It completely transformed our understanding of space, time, gravity, and energy. Math was later used to confirm his discoveries, but it all started with the play-based gold standard of "embodied learning."

This was the year 1895. His math and physics teachers gave him high marks, but as far as his French and history teachers were concerned he was a problem child. He bridled under their strictness, defying them, opposing them, and refusing to do the work. We celebrate his single-minded courage, but were he an American high schooler today, he would likely be diagnosed with something or other, possibly even drugged. His brilliance in math might be used as evidence that he "has potential," but it's likely that most of the focus of his teachers (and by extension his parents) would have been on fixing his deficits rather than encouraging his strengths. 

As a preschooler he was curious and loved building with blocks and working puzzles, but was also quiet and solitary. He didn't speak until he was 3-years-old. If he were in a modern preschool, I have no doubt that the focus would likewise have been on his deficits. His parents would be told that "early intervention" is "crucial." Dyslexia is a likely diagnosis. At a minimum, speech-language therapy would be prescribed. Contemporary experts retroactively speculate that he showed strong ADHD traits -- disorganization, forgetfulness, "rebellion" against teacher-proscribed learning -- and would likely have met the criteria for diagnosis.

Our schools give lip-service to the truth exemplified by Einstein that learning differences don't limit potential, but in reality they invariably treat differences as deficits, challenges, and something to be cured. This is because standard schools are simply incapable of the flexibility needed to serve all children. Any child who cannot or will not learn the way our schools are designed to "teach" show up as problems. 

Thankfully for all of us, people at the turn of the last century didn't take schooling nearly as seriously as we do today. Indeed, it was widely acknowledge that schooling wasn't for everyone, or even most. Universities ignored Einstein's poor marks in other areas, the kiss of death at today's Ivy League schools who tend to only admit straight-A students. 

Other scientists may or may not have made the discoveries Einstein made. It's unknown whether or not math alone would have figured it out. After all, the very idea that space, time, and gravity are all just aspects of the same phenomenon is so alien to our day-to-day experiences that most of us -- even as we "believe" in it -- simply can't bring ourselves to genuinely understand it. But Einstein felt free to pursue his embodied approach to life itself and we're all richer for it.

In our play-based preschools, children spend most of their days in pursuit of embodied learning, not just with thought experiments, but by actually creating levers, experimenting with rolling down hills, swinging, digging, building with blocks, and laying their hands on all manner of things. They work their puzzles, take on new identities through dramatic play, test themselves socially, explore power and exploitation, feel emotions, and generally pursue their own path in a full embrace of their own, unique "learning difference." No, they won't be able to answer those testing questions because, like with a young Einstein, their language is a lagging indicator of what is genuinely understood. Someday, they will perhaps be able to "prove" their theories, but real learning needs no proof. Or rather it is already proven, embodied, even if the others are incapable of genuinely understanding.

******

Early childhood educators, directors, homeschoolers, and parens of young children . . . please join me for this affirmative and informative live workshop. In the spirit of inclusiveness, I've kept the price as low as possible, so share far and wide. This is a great way to get the whole team on the same page for the New Year. Certificates are available. For more information and to register, click here: Making 2026 Our Year of Play

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

No One Escapes Unscarred

Typically, when I'm invited to speak, it's to audiences of early childhood educators, which means mostly women between the ages of, say, 30 and 50. The internet tells me the average age of our profession is 39-years-old. That seems about right.

Recently, however, I was invited to speak on the topic of "risky play" to a group that skewed much younger than that. There was still a good number of mid-career educators in the group, but most were college-aged. Some were even still in high school. 

The way I typically run a risky play session is to share a story of risk from my own childhood. In this case it was a story of a small group of us kids straying away from our parents while at the beach, climbing a cliff, eating strange fruit, exploring a cave, then finding ourselves walking along a busy, shoulder-less roadway to find our way back to our parents who hadn't even noticed we were gone.

I then ask my workshop participants to share some of their own childhood risky play stories.

The first woman to offer her story, an educator who appeared slightly older than the average age, told us that she and her friends had gotten their clothing wet while playing in a creek. They worried their mothers would be mad at them, so they "went into the barn, poured gasoline into a pan, set it on fire, and dried our clothes in the flame." Yikes! Harrowing, but not much more so than other stories I've heard over the years.

The next educator, another mid-career professional, told a story of jumping off the garage roof. Another talked about adventures in the woods. So far, it had all been the older people. I thought maybe the younger ones were feeling left out, so I called on a young man who appeared to be in his early 20's.

"I've been thinking about this and I don't really have any stories from when I was a kid, but I'm getting my night camping certification right now and a few weeks ago I slept outside overnight for the first time . . . It was scary because, you know, there are coyotes in the woods." As compared to the other stories it was mild, and I had questions about that "night camping certification", but I moved on to another young man who had raised his hand.

"I just took my first road trip without my parents. We got off the highway and lost data, so our GPS stopped working. We were lost for almost an hour. It was scary."

Then an even younger woman jumped in with something I found more shocking than the story about setting a fire in a barn, "I don't have any stories like that". She then swept her hand toward some of the older people, saying, "And I think your stories can't be true. No body would do those things."

I'd of course heard about this generation who has been raised under ubiquitous adult surveillance, but this moment really shook me. Those of us with genuine risky play experiences, which really can only happen when children are free from constant adult supervision, are not only the last generation with these stories to tell, but perhaps the last to really understand why these experiences are so important.

According to the data, nearly 32 percent of our adolescents will be diagnosed with anxiety, a number that continues to increase, with the median age of "onset" being 6-years-old. Major depressive disorders are similarly on the rise. This isn't a function of improved methods of diagnosis as some suggest, but rather a direct result of not enough play, and not enough risky play in particular. An ever-growing body of developmental psychology, neuroscience, and play research tells us that when children are deprived of age-appropriate risky play, they miss critical experiences that help build emotional resilience, self-regulation, and confidence. This deprivation is directly linked to higher rates of anxiety and depression.

Our evolution, which is to say our species' drive to survive, has made us, especially in the early years, seek out risk because those experiences teach us about both our limits and our capabilities. The learning comes from both our successes and failures in more or less equal measure. And when it comes to risky play, failure can result in (horror of horror) injuries.

The children we are teaching today will live their entire childhoods under adult supervision and modern adults have been taught that injuries, no matter how small, are always our fault. Parents are blamed when their child, say, scrapes a knee or, heaven forbid, breaks an arm. Educators fear being sued for even standard-issue bumps and bruises. Sure, most courts will toss those minor injury lawsuits out, but that doesn't mitigate the stress and expense of being sued, not to mention the harm of our professional reputations. The result is that we don't let kids to anything that smacks of risk.

In popular culture, the blame for childhood mental health issues most often falls on screens, smartphones, AI, video games, social media, or some other technological boogyman, but in a real sense these are the symptoms. The culture of fear and constant supervision means that parents can't just send their kids outside to play because it's "too dangerous." After all, there might be coyotes out there! These indoor, technological distractions feel safer than, say, the local playground or even our own backyards, but it's clear that what we prevent as far as physical injury is paid for in the coin of a mental health crisis. 

One of the key lessons of life is that no one escapes unscarred. Speaking for myself, I'd rather those scars be physical than psychological.

The great allure of these modern technologies for young people is that they are the last frontier in which they can escape the ever-present eye of adults, although even that window is starting to close as the cries for more regulation in the name of "safety" increase.

If we continue on this trajectory, it won't be long before these young people will be having children of their own and our stories of unsupervised play will be found only in books labeled as fiction. I have no illusion that society is going to change anytime soon, but as adults of a certain age, we are in a position to make a difference for the children who come our way. We can take one step back . . . And then another . . . And then another. We can shut up and fight the urge to constantly caution and scold. We can create opportunities for children to climb a little higher than we are comfortable with, run a little faster, wrestle, experience fire, air, earth, and water, work with real tools, hide, and witness others challenging themselves in similar ways. We must create real spaces in which children feel free to challenge themselves.

And we must keep telling our stories, even if they sound unbelievable to some.

******

Early childhood educators, directors, homeschoolers, and parens of young children . . . please join me for this affirmative and informative live workshop. In the spirit of inclusiveness, I've kept the price as low as possible, so share far and wide. This is a great way to get the whole team on the same page for the New Year. Certificates are available. For more information and to register, click here: Making 2026 Our Year of Play

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

"Comparison is the Thief of Joy"

I have noticed, walking in English parkland, that during the approach to an indeterminate object — say a large rock, with mossy growths, or a small log, the mind continues, from the minimal evidence, or sketched points of reference given, to construct the supposed creature. I have created whole ravens — heavy beaks, claws, pinion-feathers, watchful eye — from what had to be reconstructed, seen again, as a hawthorn root. ~A.S. Byatt

We've all experienced this phenomenon, seeing one thing only to discover that it's something else entirely. It happens with all of our senses. We smell vomit only to discover that it's actually parmesan cheese (both owe their distinctive odor to butyric acid). We hear a lawn mower only to find it's an old, badly-tuned VW bug. We taste soap that turns out to be cilantro. We feel dampness when the t-shirt we're touching is just unexpectedly cold. And it goes beyond the standard five senses. I've thought I was feeling dizzy while walking on a gently swaying suspension bridge. I've experienced stomach pain as hunger. I've thought I felt the first vibrations of an earthquake when I was only shivering.

These sensory "mistakes" don't typically last long as our minds reassess and reconstruct reality as we take in more information, but for some of us some of the time, say those who consistently taste cilantro as soap, it's no mistake, but rather truth. 

In recent decades, in our cultural and intellectual efforts to understand that truth can vary from individual to individual and from circumstance to circumstance, we've experimented with notions of neurodivergence and neurotypicality, but it's becoming increasingly clear that when it comes to our species (or, indeed, any species) the notion of "normal" or even "typical" is at best useless, and potentially harmful.

Modern schooling, however, is constructed upon foundations of normal and typical. The media today, for instance, is full of pearl clutching over children who are not reading at "grade level." The concept of "grade level" emerged from 19th century efforts to standardize learning, applying dubious mathematics and assembly-line methods to human children. This has lead to standardizing text, tests, and teaching methods. This has resulted in dividing children into categories of "exceptional" (those who are "ahead"), "normal" (those who live up to the math) and "behind" (e.g., not normal). But it's meaningless because the whole concept of "grade level" is an arbitrary benchmark superficially dressed up as "science" in the same way that colonists used their so-called "science" to determine that indigenous people were inferior or "behind."

The concept of neurodivergence is a step in the right direction. It's an attempt to dispense with the ugly idea of inferiority, but the gold standard remains typicality. Neurodivergence is still, according to our educational system, most often equated with being behind. But that leaves the question: "Behind what?"

Well, behind the typical children, of course. Who are these typical children? I've never met one. Typical is a statistical concept, not a human one. It's a concept that has no use or meaning other than in comparison. 

Theodore Roosevelt famously said, "Comparison is the thief of joy." Or as spiritual teacher Iyania Vanzant more pointedly puts it, "Comparison is an act of violence."

When we compare humans, and especially when we do it under the auspices of the kind of pseudo-science our schools rely on, not only do we harm children, but we rob them of the joy that is a natural part of learning. Each child, each human, stands with a unique perspective on our world, yet we persist in forcing each of them to eat the cilantro no matter what it tastes like to them.

But what of those undeniable hawthorn roots? Certainly, we can't have them going through life thinking they're ravens. Standardization requires us to compel them to see those damned hawthorn roots right now, even if their own mind is still constructing ravens. Otherwise, what? They're behind? Behind what? Just because a "typical" has already experienced the miracle of constructing a hawthorn root, that doesn't mean there is anything behind about the person who continues to construct ravens for a time. If it's important, as they draw closer, as it becomes more relevant to them, as they examine that object for themselves with their own senses, they will in their own time experience the miracle, the joy, of reconstructing hawthorn roots from ravens. 

That's what learning is. Learning is always a process of deconstructing the status quo and replacing it with something new. Learning is not, as our schools would have it, living up to a statistic called "typical."

Indeed, all our geniuses are those who realize that what everyone has assumed are hawthorn roots are indeed ravens. This is exactly the lesson we've been learning about indigenous wisdom for the past couple hundred years (see Robin Wall Kimmerer's eye- and heart-opening book Braiding Sweetgrass).

The truth is that none of us are neurotypical. And who would want to be? The truth is that none of us are behind. The truth is that we are born to commune with truth from our own unique and divergent perspectives. That's learning. That's what brings us joy. And this is why play must stand at the center of education.

******

Early childhood educators, directors, homeschoolers, and parens of young children . . . please join me for this affirmative and informative live workshop. In the spirit of inclusiveness, I've kept the price as low as possible, so share far and wide. This is a great way to get the whole team on the same page for the New Year. Certificates are available. For more information and to register, click here: Making 2026 Our Year of Play

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

The "Magic Circle": Play as the Source of Culture

"You have to go around that tree."

The boy was telling a friend how to run the obstacle course he and the other kids had created. After running around the tree, there were some stairs to climb, a clamber through the sand pit row boat, a scamper up and a slide down the concrete slide, a stop in the garden to pick a ripe berry ("or something else to eat"), a jump off of something, a balance across something else, and so on until you arrived back at the starting point. 

It was even more elaborate than my explanation and the boy being instructed listened with an intensity, asking for clarifications, obviously wanting to get it right. Then he was off as the others cheered him on. "You forgot to ring the bell!" "It's okay, I couldn't find any berries either!" "Hurry!"

He was flushed and panting by the time he'd completed the circuit. Now it was time for someone else: "Go!"

As the next child rounded the tree, the others cheered. The boy who had just joined the game, likewise joined in the cheering, naturally, because that too was part of the game, an unspoken, but nevertheless vital rule of this game of obstacle course running.

This was a game that emerged entirely from the children themselves. It was not urged upon them by an adult, although the physical space of our playground may have suggested it to them. Indeed, it was clearly a game that emerged from these children's interaction with our junkyard-like outdoor space. They had been coming here for some time. Ethologists tend to distinguish between "exploration" and "play," although I've always considered the two behaviors part-and-parcel because one so often leads to the other. Exploration is the evolutionarily functional process of answering the question of "What is this?" while play asks the open-ended question, "What can I/we do with this?" On this day, the thing they found to do, their play, was this game of taking turns running a course.

In his 1938 book Homo Ludens, Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga theorized that play is the primary and necessary condition for the creation of culture. He argued that while play is a self-selected activity, one that is entered into via an exercise of free-will, the space in which it takes place (in this case, our playground) becomes circumscribed by a "magic circle." Inside this circle, there are rules that exist by agreement of the players as long as the game continues. Those who violate those rules and refuse to mend their ways, are either expelled from the game or, if they persist, the game comes to an end. Everything that is outside this magic circle becomes irrelevant for the time.

There were no rule breakers in this game on this day, but had there been, had there been a conflict over the rules of this game, for instance, I might have felt compelled to step inside the circle which would have, in an instant, destroyed the magic. If the conflict turned violent, I would have had no choice but to intervene, but short of that, I try to allow conflict to play itself out. Often, beautifully, it results in some sort of compromise. Sometimes it leads to the formation of a second magic circle in which the rules are completely different. And sometimes it leads to, as Huizinga suggests, the exclusion of someone from the game.

This is the hard one for early childhood educators because, in the backs of our minds is the idea that no one be excluded. "You can't say you can't play." But what of the player who, say, refuses to start by going around the tree? What of the player who decides to spontaneously add tackling to the game? Certainly, they can suggest these changes, discuss them, negotiate, but if the rest of the kids are against it, it would be grossly unfair of me, the adult, to insist that the newcomer and their unilateral changes be included within the magic circle. In fact, to do so would, again, destroy the magic. I can suggest to the child who has been excluded that they create their own game, to attempt to circumscribe a new magic circle with it's own rules, but if the goal is to be part of the culture that has sprung up around the obstacle course game, then the only choice is to abide by those rules.

I like this idea that play is the source of culture, but it does require adults who see and understand the magic circle, who are able to treasure it from the outside, because like a soap bubble, the act of crossing the barrier usually makes it disappear. We can't, of course, always stay on the outside. And sometimes, on the best days, we're invited in.

"Teacher Tom, do you want to try it?"

As I ran around the tree, I heard the children cheering, but I knew it wasn't for me. It was for all of us. That's the magic conjured inside these circles -- the magic of us.

******

Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

May Your Wishes Be Granted

When our daughter was little and frightening news of the world got to her, I would try to put things in perspective, "Most people, most of the time are having a fine day." This has been true throughout all of history, even when great tragedy is unfolding in one part of it. And indeed when is it not?

Maybe it's not a great day, although someone is also always having one of those as well, but a fine one, because most things involving humans are like that -- a little high a little low, a little hot a little cold, a little smooth a little rough. Both the optimists and the pessimists are right: it could always get better and it could always get worse. 

I suspect that most of us are pro-optimism, even if we're pessimistic by nature. It's hard not to be when you're working with young children, who themselves are generally having fine days, but by virtue of the metaphor of their youth shines for us like a light into the certainty of a better future. And even if we can't help but regret in advance the equal assurance that they will suffer, it just seems that optimism is the proper stance when it comes to the young so we pull ourselves together and say, "It will heal," "The lights will come back on," "The worst is behind us."

Around the time of the Winter Solstice, I tried this out on the grown-ups, saying things like, "This is as dark as it gets, now we can look forward to more light," or "It all gets better from here!" Most thanked me, accepting my invitation to look forward with hope, but many drew back in mock defensiveness, bubbling back, "I love the dark! I love the long night!" denying my assertion that there could be anything wrong. I understand that they were looking into the dark with the certainty of their optimism, wearing it like a shield against doubt.

Hope and fear are the two sides of this coin and both are legal currency in the marketplace of the future. There are those that claim that we create reality through our attitude, that if we anticipate success we make it more certain, while the same goes for failure. And I expect there is some truth to that, although probably a lot less than the pop philosophies would lead us to believe. In her book Bright Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America, inspired by her struggle with breast cancer, Barbara Ehrenreich, calls this faith in the determinism of attitude "the new Calvinism," seeing a world in which we are all ultimately and personally responsible for the evils that befall us, be it cancer or unemployment, casting every set-back as a personal failure, having nothing to do with the pernicious randomness of disease or outgoing tide of economic recession.

Optimism is a magnificent thing. I hardly think I'd want to go on living without it. Living hopefully does not call for optimism of the blind variety, but rather the eyes-wide-open knowledge that this sure as hell can work given what I know to be true about the world and myself. Optimism backed up by thoughtfulness, experience, and confidence is always justified, but when worn merely as a prophylactic against fear, it sets us at the roulette wheel feverishly spinning away, doomed to go bust no matter what our attitude.

Pessimism gets a bad rap and I understand that. Relentlessly pessimistic people are hard to be around unless they're able to temper it with a cynic's humor, and even that wears thin after awhile. But that doesn't mean that the fear at the heart of the pessimist isn't justified. It could always go wrong. The future is full of pitfalls: we count on our wary pessimists to point them out. Whose investment advice would you be more likely to take: the optimist or the pessimist? The pessimist's, of course, after all if they're willing to place a bet on the future, you can be darned sure they've done their homework and is not relying on the vagaries of a "good vibe."

Young children don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism, especially the very young for whom the future really doesn't exist, let alone with enough concreteness to evoke hope or fear. And sure, as they get older they quite reasonably adopt the cloak most appropriate for the occasion; dressing for instance in eager anticipation of the holidays or in fearful anticipation of the doctor's needles. Rational responses both, ones that belie the reality that the gifts are rarely as incredible as one hopes nor the pain as bad as one fears: our attitude, be it hope or fear, doesn't necessarily alter reality, but rather helps us temper our experience with reality in a way to prevent the highs from being too high and the lows from being too low.

I'm thinking of all this today in the last day of 2025 because as I reflect back on the year now past with all it's ups and downs, I can't help but think of the "curse" that is usually attributed to the ancient Chinese: "May you live in interesting times."

And indeed, I have been cursed; we have been cursed. The brilliance of this curse, of course, is that it can just as easily be a blessing, because really, who would want to live in boring times? And indeed, I have been blessed; we have been blessed.

I'm going to try this year, as a resolution, as I do every year, to approach the future more like a child, setting aside the dogmatism of optimism and pessimism. I will let my feelings flourish, learn what I can from them, then wearing them on my sleeve, I'll seize the day while worrying about tomorrow when it comes.

When I succeed, I will credit those who hugged me when it was dark. When I fail, I will shrug and not heap all the blame on myself, knowing that I have no control over the weather.

There is a companion curse, also two-sided, that goes along with the more famous one. It's one we habitually evoke for one another this time of year as a blessing, so take it as you will: "May your wishes be granted."

And in the meantime, however, have a fine year.

******

Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!