Making the Future More Certain

A couple nights ago over dinner, as part of getting to know one another, a new friend asked me about my typical day. In a matter of minutes I ticked off my ideal schedule. As I did, I noticed the feeling of control and safety it gave me. I was equally aware that this ideal I was sharing rarely came about as intended. On most days, even my early morning routine of rising at 5 am in order to have uninterrupted time to write these blog posts is interrupted or altered in some way. Yesterday, for instance, I awoke to a surprise windstorm which necessitated rushing outdoors to pull furniture into corners and otherwise anchor objects that would get blown around.

It wasn't a big deal, of course. I got a little damp and cold, but otherwise only "lost" five minutes of my morning, yet it took me several more minutes to fully regain my comfortable and productive morning rhythm.

"How quickly do we get frazzled," writes neuroscientist Dr. Judson Brewer, "when someone messes with our routine. Our brains are wired to resist change, or at least to tell us that something is off or out of the ordinary . . . As prediction machines, our brains are aiming to make the future more certain."

As early childhood educators, this balance between routine and change stands at the heart of what we do. On the one hand, we know that all humans, including young children, thrive in environments in which there is at least some level of predictability. Too much unpredictability and the brain's amygdala is triggered, which results in an elevated heart rate, a tensing of muscles, and sweaty palms, which we identify as stress or anxiety. Too little, however, especially when the routine is not of our own making, and we risk the tedium of rote and habit, and learning beyond mere memorization is, at its core, an ongoing process of having our status quo upended. On top of that, every child's balance point is different: some need more predictability than others. Sometimes this changes day-to-day depending on what else is going on in a child's life. This is why as we seek to create predictability for young children, we must also be wary of routines that are inflexible.

I spent my career teaching in a cooperative preschool, which meant that the children's parents were often with us, serving as assistant teachers. These parents would often ask me questions like, "What time do we tidy up?" or "How long will we be outside?" They were often a bit thrown when I answered, "We'll tidy up before we eat snack" or "We'll be outside until we're ready to come back inside." We had a schedule, a consistent, regular schedule, but not one governed by the clock. The children knew the order of our day -- we played indoors, we tidied up, we had some group time, we played outside, we came back inside to read a story -- but within that predictable sequence, we played it by ear.

When things were flowing, when the children were fully engaged, our time got longer. When things weren't going so well, when there was more conflict than normal, for instance, a transition might be called for. As the keeper of the schedule, I found myself constantly "listening" to the children, both individually and as a group, rather than consulting the clock on the wall. It was them, not the clock that guided our day.

For most of our species' existence, this is how time was measured: as a predictable sequence of events rather than as a series of objective, measurable points in time. While the first mechanical clocks began appearing around the year 1300, they didn't come into common usage until the 18th century, which means we've only been using clocks as scheduling devices for, at most, 300 of our 300,000 years of existence. That's not enough time for evolution to have fundamentally changed us.

Indeed, our youngest citizens, when it comes to measuring time, are much more like our ancient ancestors than are those of us who check our phones (and presumedly the time) once every 12 minutes, on average, or over 80 times per day. Unpredictability is stressful, but many of us likewise find the relentless exactitude of clock time stressful. Running late, for instance, is a stressor with which we're all familiar. This is a major stress point between parents and young children, who are often accused of dawdling, when, in fact, they are simply perceiving their routine in the ancient, more natural way: as a sequence of activities or events rather than the tick-tick-tick of a timekeeping machine.

Of course, we are not going back to a world without clocks any more than we're going to go back to a world without cars or the internet, but we can be sensitive to the fact that from the perspective of young children, we adults can get a bit crazed around keeping to our schedules. We can't expect young children to comprehend our urgency. It's not readily apparent to them. It's not something that triggers them the way it does us. And when we, for instance, skip a step in the regular routine by way of getting back on track, which we do to make ourselves more comfortable, we are inserting unpredictability that the children may well find discomforting. Hence the stress on both sides.

One of the things I've always appreciated about working with young children is the opportunity to lose myself in their way of perceiving their routines. It's actually quite eye-opening to live among people who are not checking their phones every 12 minutes, but rather allowing the moment to play itself out until it's, predictably, time for the next thing.

When a child wants to know when their mommy is coming back, I know better than to refer to the the clock, that meaningless and mysterious gadget that hangs on the wall. Instead, I remind them of the predictable sequence of the day -- we play inside, then we tidy up, then we have circle time, then we play outside, then we read a story, then mommy comes. Sometimes I have to repeat it several times, but it almost always soothes the child as their world is made more predictable. Very often, I would later hear those children murmuring the sequence to themselves, taking comfort in a more certain future.

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"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

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