When We Let Young Children Lead

One of the reasons I'm inspired by working with young people is that they lack a deep sense of "pastness," largely because they have so little individualized past to sense. As older humans, our birthday evokes and includes every birthday we've ever experienced, but for a two-year-old this birthday is the birthday. This leaf is the leaf. This puddle is the puddle.

I feel privileged to be with them as they begin the lifelong process of creating a past that will be stored in memory and referred to -- consciously or unconsciously -- for the rest of their lives as episodes in the story of what they know, how they feel, what they expect, and, most importantly, who they are.

Some philosophers, like John Locke, believed that memories constitute our personal identity, our consciousness. More contemporary thinkers and scientific researchers tend to believe there is more to identity than "pastness" alone, but no one doubts that memory is a vital aspect of what we call our selves. For one thing, our memories are the only evidence we have that we are continuious beings that have existed and will exist (fingers crossed) in the future. It's in memory that we store our ideas of our personality, abilities, and flaws. Without memory, we wouldn't know that we can succeed or fail; what and who we love and what and who we hate; what we crave and what we fear. Memory is, in many ways, who we are, and for many of us, memory can be a kind of trap.

In her novel An Accidental Man, one of her characters insists, "I've told you I'm not a continuous being. My words cannot be used as evidence against me." It strikes me that this is the state in which we find very young humans, neither defined nor trapped by anything that has gone on in the past. After all, they are babies. Their entire life is about growth and change. Their bodies, their brains, their emotions are, from one day to the next, discontinuous, a series of not necessarily connected presents. As adult outsiders looking in, we of course can't help but find threads connecting their past with their present. It's what we've learned to do to make sense of the world. But for these young children, there simply isn't enough past in their lives to provide evidence of continuity. In other words, they are being born anew with each experience of themselves in the world.

These young humans are relentlessly living in the present because, for them, there is very little evidence of the past and none of the future. This is what inspires me. When I'm with them, I'm privileged, when I let them lead, to be free of the cage of my past as I'm down there on the floor, eye-to-eye, shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing breath, as our heads press together over whatever mote that has, right now, sparked our mutual curiosity.

"I understand that forgetting can also be incredibly dangerous," writes Kate Eichhorn, author of the book The End of Forgetting, "But there are times when the ability to forget and be forgotten is integral to social transformation." Her point is not that we should try to somehow stuff our bad memories, but rather that a normal part of personal and social growth involves more forgetting than most of us realize. Today, however, we live in an era in which forgetting is becoming increasingly difficult. Youthful indiscretions, mistakes, and embarrassments live on the internet forever, which leads more and more of us to pre-edit ourselves in order to craft the story we want told about ourselves, rather than, you know, just living.

And "just living," for me, means these moments during which I can escape into the present alongside my young guides who understand what the physicists know: the past and future are illusions. Existence, in reality, is neither continuous nor discontinuous, but rather an ever-emerging now.

In another of Murdoch's novels, The Flight from the Enchanter, a brother advises his sibling, "Live in the moment, Sis. And remember, you're the person who decides how long the present is."

This is the lesson I learn when I drop to my knees and let young children take the lead: this leaf is the leaf.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

My One and Only Political Endorsement

There is at least one major US party candidate running for a statewide office who believes that women should not have the right to vote. The fact that at least 40 percent of the electorate will nevertheless vote for him is staggering, although ultimately it's this attitude about women that will likely sink his campaign. The 19th Amendment passed a little more than a century ago, so most of us can't remember a time, let alone imagine a time, when over half the adult population was banned from the ballot box and this man's irrational ideas will be his undoing in the "free marketplace of ideas."

Contemporaneous opponents of women's suffrage argued that adult women could not be trusted with the vote, insisting that they were not intelligent enough, overly emotional, too easily manipulated, and lacking in the "real world" experience necessary to make rational decisions. When pressed, these opponents got angry, resorted to name calling, and behaved irrationally, just like this modern day candidate for statewide office. 

Previously, the same arguments were made for disenfranchising Black adult men: not intelligent enough, overly emotional, too easily manipulated, and lacking in real world experience. Irrationally, the man running for statewide office is a Black adult man.

I'm simplifying, of course, sexism and racism in America cannot be summed up in a couple of paragraphs, but my point is that to most of us, these arguments are, on their face, bigotry, and fairness demands equal political, economic, and other rights, including a say in our national project of self-governance. At bottom, the women's suffrage movement, like all civil rights movements, was based on notions of fairness.

Every now and then, I float the idea of granting voting rights from birth, meaning that any citizen, no matter their age, have the right to vote. I don't suggest this because I'm hoping to spark a civil rights movement, but rather because I find it both fascinating and worthy of reflection that the primary arguments used to disenfranchise children are almost identical to those used for the disenfranchisement of women and Black adults: not intelligent enough, overly emotional, too easily manipulated, and lacking in real world experience. 

Is it fair that 74 million citizens, over 22 percent of the population, are, by law, left without a direct say in their own governance based on these very same arguments? 

But more to the point, what does it tell us about our attitude, as a society, toward young children? I mean, it's common knowledge that the concerns and needs of children are typically at the bottom of every public policy priority list. One in five of these citizens live in poverty. Childcare is an underfunded and therefore often a make-shift operation. Public spaces are increasingly child-free, and those that aren't ban such necessary childhood needs like running, shouting, singing, and dancing. Increasingly, we've segregated our children into pink collar ghettos like preschools and fenced off playgrounds, and even then people complain about the noise and disorder. This is what always happens to categories of citizens who do not have a say in society. It makes it easier to ignore them.

Generally speaking, the only time children's "issues" get breathing room in our society is when it comes to schooling. Decisions about schools are largely made by policy-makers who were put into office without any input from children (the people most impacted by their decisions), business people who are hoping to turn a profit off the backs of children's labor, and economists (it's always economists) who tend to take a mechanistic (e.g., behaviorist) approach to problem-solving. Actual educators are rarely consulted. Parents, who hopefully have their own children's interests at heart, are our children's best hope for having their point of view represented, but as anyone in education knows, it can be like pulling teeth to get most parents to take an interest in schools beyond the free childcare being proffered. Wouldn't it at least make sense, if we really cared about fairness and are unwilling to grant them a vote, to institute some form of shadow school board comprised of children, who could offer their opinions and ideas? We all know that politicians only respond to two things: money and political pressure. Kids are not legally allowed to have their own money (a topic for another day perhaps), so maybe this would at least give them a modicum of say over the institutions in which they are mandated to spend an outsized part of their early lives?

Yes, young children are developmentally different than adults, but as an adult with over six decades under my belt, let me assure you that we all go through "stages" throughout our lives: development is not just a childhood thing. My wants, needs, and perspectives are today vastly different than those of my, say, 30's or 40's, which means I have different priorities than I once did. But no matter how old I get, no matter how physically and mentally enfeebled I become, even if I'm objectively not intelligent enough, overly emotional, too easily manipulated, and living a life far outside the real world experience of the majority, I cannot be disenfranchised. I know many young children, even preschoolers, who are more mentally and emotionally competent than, say, dementia patients who continue to vote despite their condition. In fact, NASA's own testing finds that 98 percent of five-year-olds qualified as "creative geniuses" (e.g., facile divergent thinkers) whereas only 2 percent of adults do. Wouldn't it be smart to at least try to tap into this amazing developmental capability? 

If you've read this far, you're probably going along with this exercise of reflection, although from past experience I know that some readers are feeling quite angry. And while I do believe that we ought to consider lowering the voting age to something like 16, please know I'm not actually suggesting that we give newborns the vote, but it's instructive, I think, to consider why we don't and what we, and our children, might gain from fuller rights of citizenship. 

In the meantime, as we begin casting our ballots, I'm making my one and only political endorsement for this election cycle. Our children are, by far, the largest segment of US citizens who are disenfranchised, and whether you find this situation tenable or not, they are counting on you to represent them in the voting booth. I endorse asking children about their needs, wants, and dreams. I endorse listening to them. I endorse listening to them not just with your ears, but with your whole self, then allowing their views to influence your own. The decisions we make today are being made, in part, on their behalf, and will have a direct impact on their lives both today and in the future. I endorse considering this obligation to represent children as something sacred. They are, as always, counting on us.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

What "Good Parenting" Means

"It's the people we love the most who can make us feel the gladdest . . . and the maddest! 

Love and anger are such a puzzle! It's hard for us, as adults, to understand and manage our angry feelings toward parents, spouses, and children, or to keep their anger toward us in perspective. 

It's a different kind of anger from the kind we may feel toward strangers because it is so deeply intertwined with caring and attachment.

If the day ever came when we were able to accept ourselves and our children exactly as we and they are, then, I believe, we would have come very close to an ultimate understanding of what "good parenting" means. 

It's part of being human to fall short of that total acceptance -- and often far short. But one of the most important gifts a parent can give a child is the gift of accepting that child's uniqueness." ~Mister Rogers

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

What if Being Good at Things Wasn't the Point of Doing Them?

Our daughter played on a middle school soccer team in a league that didn't believe in keeping score. The kids, of course, simply kept score themselves, always knowing in the end who had won and who had lost. They knew that not keeping score wasn't part of the real world and they mocked the charade.

That said, her team was not very good, losing all of their matches, often by double digits. The girls were aware of this and mocked that too. I played on losing sports teams as a boy. Adults would try to buck us up, to assure us that today was our day, that we possessed the talent to win and we would win if we just stuck to it. They assumed that we must be down in the dumps from all the losing, but I don't recall feeling that way. Sure, I would have preferred to win, I suppose, but more important was getting together with my buddies and playing baseball or football or basketball. The camaraderie was everything and I saw that with our daughter and her friends. They loved playing bad soccer together, even as we adults worried about their self-esteem.

We ought not to have worried, of course, but it's hard. We live in a culture that emphasizes winning. It's not enough to be good at something, let alone to merely dabble in it. One must strive to be best and when someone falls short, we think, it must have shame attached to it. In school, we grade our children, ranking them according to how well they do some on some arbitrary thing like math or spelling or self-control. Indeed, our schools are in many ways set up as judgement factories. What else is this fear of "falling behind" all about if not winning and losing? Why else is failing the worst thing you can do? How else to you explain adults telling children, "You can do better." It's so embedded in our mentality that many of us can't imagine education without the competition.

Author Kurt Vonnegut told this story: "When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of 'getting to know you' questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What's your favorite subject? And I told him, 'No, I don't play any sports. I do theater, I'm in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.'

"And he went, 'Wow, that's amazing!' And I said, 'Oh no, but I'm not good at any of them.'

"And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: 'I don't think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you've got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.'"

What if, as educators, we were all free to take this approach? What if the point wasn't being good at things and rather simply doing them? What if we stopped keeping score? What if the goal wasn't creating winners, but rather interesting people? 

"And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn't been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could 'win' at them."

What if we understood education this way?

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

I Watched Her Start from Not Knowing and Work Her Way to Mastery

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.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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 Agreements We Make With One Another

There was no reason for me to be close, so I kept my distance. There was no reason for me to be a part of their game, so I remained invisible.

It probably began days, if not weeks, before I understood it was a game, but it came to my attention in the form of a girl filling a plastic witch's cauldron with things she had scavenged from around the playground.

A friend said some words to her. Maybe he asked, "Can I play with you?" but it was more likely something along the lines of "What are you doing?" which is typically a better playground question if the goal is to be invited in. So then they were filling the cauldron together, discussing each item, coming to agreements over what went into the mix and what was cast aside.

A decision was made to add water to the cauldron. By now it was heavy with the debris they had purposely, even meticulously collected. But it wasn't too heavy so it only took one of them to carry it over to the cast iron hand pump. While the girl held the cauldron, her friend began filling a smaller bucket, which they then poured over their collection. As they worked together, another child joined them. After a discussion that may or may not have included the phrase, "I've got an idea," they agreed they would forego the unnecessary step of the bucket and slide the cauldron itself under the flow of water.

Agreement, however it is arrived at, stands at the center of our preschool, as it does in life itself. Conflict, all conflict, emerges from the inability to agree. These children were not playing a game; they were living.

The children took turns pumping until the cauldron was full, or at least as full as they collectively agreed it needed to be. Now it was too heavy for a single carrier, so they circled around the cauldron and lifted it together. Walking with it was a complicated matter: they had to agree about where they were going, at what speed, and who would have to walk backwards or sideways. Maybe it was still too heavy. They staggered a bit under its weight before another friend joined them, dashing in to slide his arms under cauldron. It was still too heavy, but when another playmate tried to squeeze her body in amongst them, it became clear that they could lift it, but not effectively carry the heavy thing, even when they all worked together.

They agreed they would need to put it down, which they did, carefully, not spilling more than a drop or two.

As they discussed their next steps, someone said, clearly enough for me to hear it, "I've got an idea! Let's use the wagon!" This was met with approval, with the exception of one girl, the girl who had tried to squeeze in. She objected. "I'm using it." I had previously noted her idly pulling the wagon, alone, watching the cauldron situation from afar. She had abandoned it briefly to help.

"Please!" the other children begged. "We just need it for a second." The girl stood with her back to the group, apparently considering what to do. It wasn't long before she relented, "Okay, but I want it back when you're done." Another agreement.

Now the challenge was how to get the wagon to where the cauldron sat on the ground. It sat on the other side of the row of tree stumps that line the upper level of the sand pit. One child attempted to lift it, but when the others didn't join his effort, he gave it up in favor of what the group decided was a better idea, which was to pull it around to the side with the slope. It appeared to be the work of a single child, so the others stood around watching as he wheeled the wagon the long way around. He struggled, however, when it came to the steep part of the slope, so other children, spontaneously, pushed from behind.

Then, the wagon in place, a small miracle happened. The girl who had started it all, easily lifted the heavy cauldron all on her own, placing into the bed of the wagon. As it turns out, it could have been carried by a single child, but they had collectively agreed that together was better, even if that made things more complicated, perhaps even more difficult. The agreement, not the project, was clearly the important thing.

The project, this project of life itself, continued to play out for some time as the wagon, propelled over difficult terrain made its way in stops and starts around the space, eventually winding up back where the whole thing had started. The cauldron hadn't, after all, mattered. The debris and water it held didn't matter. Whether it was a witch's brew or a soup didn't matter. Indeed, even where they were going with it didn't matter. All that mattered, all that ever matters really, in the end, are the agreements we make with one another.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

How We Grow in Emotional Intelligence and Agility

Being a preschool teacher (or the parent of young children for that matter) is exhausting, largely because at any given moment, someone is experiencing a big emotion and letting the rest of us know about it. I doubt there is any less anger, sadness, fear, or frustration in a typical workplace, but there's an expectation that adults should have already learned the cultural "display rules," those unspoken rules by which we know what emotions a person may express in a given place and time. Adults who are regularly "out of control" emotionally are generally not tolerated for long, whereas with preschoolers, a great deal of the developmentally appropriate learning they are doing is focused on figuring out their culture's display rules, and that begins with expressing your emotions.

Our job is exhausting because it calls for us to support young children in this vital aspect of early learning, requiring the often heavy lift of what psychologists call "emotional labor" on everyone's part. We are with them as they feel their emotion, often empathetically feeling it right along with them; we help them name it; we join them as in trying to understand it; and remain shoulder-to-shoulder and heart-to-heart with them until they've emerged on the other side. 

This is the job and this is the way young children learn the emotional display rules that most of us take for granted. Too many of us mistakenly believe that we can simply "teach" these rules by shaming (e.g., "Don't be such a baby"), dismissing (e.g., "Oh, that's nothing to get angry about"), commanding (e.g., "Stop that nonsense at once!), scolding (e.g.,"You're driving me crazy!"), and punishing (e.g., "If you don't pull yourself together, you can forget about ice cream"). This behaviorist approach, may produce temporary results in terms of children who have been bullied into compliance, but what children wind up learning is to be ashamed or afraid of their big emotions. Instead of figuring out healthy ways to feel and express, they learn to replace that with obedience to authority figures. Indeed, the behaviorist approach seeks to exchange authority figures for self-regulation, which means that all bets are off when the authority figure isn't present.

Not only that, but the behaviorist approach requires the psychologically unhealthy practice of "stuffing" emotions on command. And everyone knows that you can only stuff emotions for so long before they force their way out, usually in destructive ways.

As an early childhood educator, I strive to avoid imposing emotional display rules on children, drawing the line at physical violence. That means there's going to be some bawling, screaming, and shouting, often a great deal of it, as the children do the difficult, exhausting work of figuring it out, with me there, not as their leader or teacher, but as their colleague and guide. Simply put, if the goal is self-regulation, then we must create safe environments in which young children are free to practice self-regulation.

In many ways, this is the core work of the early years because ultimately it doesn't matter how academically precocious a person is, if they aren't capable of getting along with others, their life, and life of people around them, will be miserable. A big part of this, is learning to understand and obey any given culture's emotional display rules. But equally important is coming to recognize when toxic display rules (i.e., the ones imposed by behaviorists) must be broken, because at the end of the day, that is how we grow in emotional intelligence and agility.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!