What We are Saying is Radical

I sometimes forget how radical our ideas are about young children. I forget that not everyone trusts children even if most people say they do. I forget that most adults are convinced that children must be guided, coerced, tricked or otherwise manipulated to do "right" things, even as they genuinely profess a belief in their innate goodness. I forget that out there, outside our bubble, grown-ups might proudly say they want "kids to be kids," yet their behavior demonstrates that they can't imagine them thriving absent a background of near constant correction, "good jobs," and unsolicited advice. Most people think that we agree with one another about children, but once we get talking, they start to realize that what we're saying is radical.

It's the radical idea that children are fully formed people, due the rights and respect due to all the other people. When we treat adults as untrustworthy, when we seek to guide, coerce, trick or otherwise manipulate them, when we correct or offer false praise or unsolicited advice, we are generally considered to be jerks of the highest order. Yet somehow, many of us, maybe most of us, live in a world in which it's considered normal to treat children this way.

Do they need us when they're young? Of course they do, in the way that seeds need gardeners to make sure the soil is well-tended, that it is protected, and that it gets enough water, but the growing, the sprouting, the leafing, the budding, the blooming, and the fruiting is up to the plant.

I am spending more time these days outside of our bubble, interacting with adults who seem to genuinely want to do the right thing by children, to do better by children, but who are stuck with outmoded ideas of what children are. They have no notion that, from an historical perspective, what they think is normal is not: for children to spend their days doing what the grown-ups tell them to do, to sit still, to spend all those hours indoors, to move from place to place driven by a schedule rather than curiosity. Recently, I was in a meeting with a pair of partners interested in investing in educational matters. Their own children had both been in cooperative preschools like the one in which I taught for nearly 20 years. One of them said, "On my first day working in the classroom I was down on my knees helping the kids build with blocks. Teacher Sandi tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'This is the children's project, not yours.' That was a real eye-opener for me."

I know Teacher Sandi. I know exactly how she said it. I've done it myself, often to highly accomplished professional people "slumming" for a day in the classroom. This kind of thing, as simple and as obvious as it sounds to those of us who have dedicated our lives to progressive play-based education, is for most people still a radical idea. Sometimes the thought of making the changes that need to happen seems overwhelming. It makes me want to crawl back into the bubble and stay there, focusing on the children of the parents who get it. But then I'm encouraged by how readily this radical idea can also become an "eye-opener," just as it was for me as I set out on the same journey more than two decades ago, and just as it continues to be.

Most of what I've learned from and about young children over the past two decades comes down to un-learning the modern lessons of "parenting," schooling, and the capabilities of children. I've discovered that if I am to do right by children I must release control, shut up and listen, get out of their way, and love them. And whenever I'm challenged, whenever things are not going well, I've discovered that the answer always lies in returning to the radical idea of treating children like people.

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Registration for the 2025 cohort of The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think closes at midnight tonight! What children need most of all is is to be treated with dignity and respect. In this course we explore how even small changes in the way we speak with children can create environments in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. For me, this technology is the foundation of how I do play-based learning. It will transform your classroom or home into a place in which children are self-motivated to do the right thing, not because you said so, but because they've made up their own mind. This is a particularly good course to take with your whole team. Group discounts are available. Click here to join the waitlist and for more information.

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!

When Our Words are "Loose Parts"

"No climbing to the top!"

When our daughter was in kindergarten, her school installed an amazing rope-and-steel climbing structure. The kindergartners were forbidden from climbing to the very top, which meant that adults were always hovering around the thing, "reminding" the children when they got too high. 

One day, I asked her if she was loving the new climber. She replied, "It's kind of in the way. No one plays on it." When I asked her why, she just shrugged, "It's just not fun."

Awhile back, I posted some thoughts on The Theory of Loose Parts. Appropriately, it is an idea that has emerged from the field of architecture about how the best learning environments are those in which we have permission to shape and manipulate our surroundings, and the things found within our surroundings, to suit our needs, ideas and curiosity.

It's a theory that's generally thought of in terms of the physical environment, but no matter how loose the parts, no matter how flexible the space, if the environment does not grant permission to engage freely, then the children, as loose parts theorist Simon Nicholson puts it, will still be cheated.

That's what happened at our daughter's school. The adults, in their concern about safety (or perhaps liability), had sucked the joy out of it. They would have been better off not installing the thing at all. Or installing a shorter one. Or, the way we did it at Woodland Park, not have a climbing structure at all, but rather provide the materials -- scraps of wood, shipping pallets, car tires, ropes -- from which the children could build their own "climbers."

And at our school, that's what the children did. None so high as the one on our daughter's kindergarten playground, of course, but always just the right height for the children creating it. Not only that, these impromptu structures were never in the way because the moment the kids were done with it, the parts were on the move, being put to other uses. 

But this didn't happen just because we provided the parts. It wasn't even just because they were "loose." This kind of self-motivated play can only happen when children know they have permission to follow their curiosity.

At our daughter's school, the adults specifically forbid a certain type of exploration, but much of the time we let children know they don't have permission in more subtle ways. 

For instance, if you listen to the things adults are saying to children at play -- "Come here!" "Slow down!" "Be careful!" -- we hear mostly commands. Research finds that 80 percent of the sentences adults speak to young children are commands. And an environment full of commands is not an environment of permission.

We also hear a lot of school-ish questions, "What color is that?" "How many marbles do I have in my hand?" "Do you know what letter that is?" Implied in these types of questions is the idea that the adults know better than the children what to think about. But even more open-ended questions like, "What do you think will happen if you put one more block on your tower?" tend to steer children into adult approved "places" in which the parts are no longer loose. When we ask questions, we compel children to divert from their own course and onto the one we've chosen for them.

There are times for commands and questions, but if our goal is to create the kind of loose parts environments that allow children to learn at full-capacity, then we are well served to consider even our words as loose parts. When we strive to replace our commands and questions with informational statements -- "That color is red," "I have marbles in my hand," "This is the letter R" -- we are offering children information, facts, that they, like with any loose part, can use or not use.

Instead of the command "Get in the car," we might state the fact, "It's time to go" and let them do their own thinking. Instead of the command "Be careful!" we might say, "The ground below you is concrete and it will hurt if you fall on it." Instead of school-ish questions to which we already know the answers we might instead simply speculate aloud, "I wonder why the sky is blue," leaving it there for the children to consider . . . or not. 

Of course, we might also choose to just not say anything at all which is when our "third teacher," the environment, often does her best work.

We will be discussing this and much more in my course, The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think, a deep dive for educators, parents, and other caregivers who want to transform their relationship with young children by transforming how we speak with them . . . Or sometimes by not speaking at all! Registration is closes tomorrow at midnight. Click here to learn more. I'd love to see you there!

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If you're interested in learning how to transform your own words into the kind of loose parts that allow children to think for themselves, please consider registering for my course The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think. This 2025 cohort will examine how the language we use with children creates reality . . . for better or worse! We will explore how the way we speak with children creates an environment in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. Group discounts are available, but hurry because registration closes at midnight, Tuesday, May 20. Click here for more information and to register.

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!

There's a Hole in My Sidewalk

There is no evidence that Albert Einstein said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," although he often gets credit for it. Novelist Rita Mae Brown was the first to use it in print, although she probably learned it from Alcoholics Anonymous.

The Woodland Park Cooperative Preschool is housed in the lower level of the Fremont Baptist Church, a congregation that serves its community by providing space for several 12-step programs. There was one very early morning group that met in a room adjacent to the school rooms and shared our kitchen space. As I prepared for the children, I tried to honor their privacy, but I couldn't help but overhear much of what was said. Over the years, I got to know several of the regulars quite well and, to some extent, I was considered an "honorary" member of the group.

That quote about insanity punctuated many of the stories people told of their struggles, usually expressed as an if-I-didn't-laugh-I'd-cry-all-day joke. It never failed to raise a chuckle of recognition.

I'm grateful for that unique experience of preparing for the children against the background of these stories of former children. I couldn't help but think of it that way. Obviously, I strive to "teach" or help raise the kids in my care to avoid the trap of addiction, to protect them, to equip them with the coping skills and self-esteem that I hoped would allow them to not fall into this particular brand of "insanity." At the same time, I found myself chuckling along as well. This isn't just a caution for addicts . . . Or maybe we just need to expand our definition of what addiction means because I don't know any adult who can't identify with the sentiment, who hasn't found themselves once more digging themselves out of a familiar deep hole.

Last night, my wife and I went to an open mic event to support a friend. There were a couple dozen performers, one of whom recited a poem by Portia Nelson called "There's a Hole in My Sidewalk." It made us laugh. It sounded familiar and not just because its message was universal. This morning I awoke knowing where I'd heard it before. Years ago, one of the AA regulars read it to the group. It made me chuckle back then as well.

Chapter One

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost . . . I am helpless.

It isn't my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don't see it.

I fall in again.

I can't believe I am in the same place.

But it isn't my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there.

I still fall in . . . it's a habit.

My eyes are open.

I know where I am.

It is my fault . . . I get out immediately.

Chapter Four

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

Chapter Five

I walk down another street.

When we see this story playing out in the lives of others, as we so often do as adults who work with young children, it's so painfully easy to see it coming. We might even shout, "Watch out for that hole!" but they fall in anyway. We're frustrated. It would save them so much pain if they would've just listened to us. We're the adults and they're the children so we, of course, pull them out of that hole, dust them off, bandage their wounds, and hope that they now know what they need to know about that hole in the sidewalk. But more often than not, there are more chapters to come.

This is one of the most difficult parts of working with young children. On the one hand, we know that experience is our best teacher. As Oscar Wilde wrote: "Experience is the name we give our mistakes." At the same time, we're there to help and most of us can't bear sitting by as a child suffers and struggles, so of course we help them. We dust them off and bandage their wounds as best we can, then worry if we've somehow, in our solicitude, prevented them from learning what they needed to learn.

One of the things I know from my years of being AA adjacent is that none of us can do it alone. Indeed, that's what 12-step programs are all about. Of course, I want the children in my care to grow into adults who can "stand on their own two feet," but at the same time none of us are capable of doing that. Not all the time. We all have our sidewalks. We all have our holes. We all live our chapters. If we always steer them around the holes in their sidewalk, we know that they will promptly fall in the moment we stop holding their hand. But at the same time, who's going to let a child fall into a hole? It's tempting to want to help by skipping ahead to Chapter Five, but that isn't the way stories or learning works. Without those middle chapters the ending is meaningless. 

It's a tricky balance that we walk as important adults in the lives of children. Most of the time, I find it in viewing my role as a colleague or fellow traveller. I share my own experience as we go along by pointing out the holes that I can see, but I'm aware that there are an infinite number of holes that I can't see. Life is about falling into them and climbing back out: that's where the learning is. It's hard, sure, and painful, but if it's rendered a little less so if we don't have to do it alone. If nothing else, that gives us someone with whom to chuckle as we start digging ourselves out, because, you know, it's a pretty good joke.

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What we can do, and what children need more than anything, is to be treated with dignity and respect. In this course we explore how even small changes in the way we speak with children can create environments in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. For me, this technology is the foundation of how I do play-based learning. It will transform your classroom or home into a place in which children are self-motivated to do the right thing, not because you said so, but because they've made up their own mind. This is a particularly good course to take with your whole team. Group discounts are available. Click here to join the waitlist and for more information.

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!

For Better and Worse

"Teachers often notice the cracks before the data does. Right now, many teachers are seeing a sharp drop in focus during reading and writing (thanks to cell phones) and a growing dependence on AI to think and write. We're not heading for a learning crisis. We are already in one."

"Too much screen time in elementary school is delaying reading and writing skills, weakening focus, and hurting social development."

"Children will not be able to read the founding documents if they can't read cursive."

Over the past year I've made the conscious decision to cut way back on my social media consumption. Specifically, it's the endless scrolling. I still jump on to communicate with old high school friends and to interact with Teacher Tom readers, of course, but the endless parade of posts and messages that populate my feed are a monumental waste of time. 

I have better things to do, like watching the clouds and listening to birds.

When I joined Facebook almost 20 years ago, my feed was almost exclusively messages and posts from people I knew, but now it's mostly just whatever the algorithms have decided I should see. And lately, it's been memes about how things like smartphones, AI, social media, and the death of cursive are ruining our children and threatening humanity's future.

We obviously didn't have smartphones or social media when I was a boy, and we all learned cursive, painstakingly. Back then, the technology that was going to ruin or lives, turn our eyes square, make us soulless, flabby zombies, was the "boob tube," broadcast television. The adults were always going on about it. I remember our first TV set, a black and white Zenith that, if we adjusted our antenna properly, gave us three, maybe four, channels. Looking back it seems quaint. Even after we got a color set, we probably only watched for a few hours a week, but nevertheless, TV was going to be the ruin an entire generation.

Then along came cable with its 57 channels (and nothing on). That was really going to ruin us, but for a television-native like me, it didn't change my viewing habits at all . . . That is, until MTV came along when I was 18. That's where all the cool stuff was. It was the soundtrack for party time and we particularly enjoyed that the adults were worried that Madonna or Adam Ant or even Tina Turner (for crying out loud) were going to definitely ruin us. But for us kids, it was all just TV, the milieu in which we had lived our entire lives. We knew how to swim in it. By then, our parents might have gotten sucked into the TV-all-day habit, but we had figured out how to turn it off and on, and change the channels, to suit our lives.

By the time smartphones and social media came around, however, people of my generation were people of our parents' age. We dipped our toes into this new technology and found ourselves completely sucked in. We made and continue to make all the mistakes: compulsively checking our phones, endless scrolling, engaging with the trolls, not reading anything longer than a paragraph, and embarrassing ourselves when we forget that in this new world, every place is a public one.

Our children, however, have never known anything else. Like TV was for me, this is the water in which they've always lived. I worry more about myself than my kid.

At the turn of the last century, composer John Philip Sousa, amongst others, predicted calamity due to the advent of recorded music. "There are more pianos, violins, guitars, mandolins, and banjoes among the working classes of America than in all the rest of the world . . . But once machine music arrived, children, understandably, turned on the machine and sat at home to 'listen to the machine's performance' rather than engaging in study to learn how to play the piano, violin, or harp themselves." 

He wasn't wrong, but would any of us today give up our "machine music"?

A century earlier, the older people were panicked over locomotives. Humans, they said, were not made to move at such high speeds. It would, they worried, ruin us.

There was a similar concern during the Victorian era over the mind-rotting habit of reading novels.

Centuries earlier, the concern was over the printing press and how mass literacy would be the downfall of humanity.

This fear of technological change goes back as far as humans. Socrates was famously opposed to the introduction of the phonetic alphabet, fearing it would mean that the young would lose the ability to remember, to recite (it was common in his day for even every-day-Joes to be able to recite Homer from memory), to think and  to know. We know about this because Socrates' student Plato was using new the technology of the phonetic alphabet to write it all down. If the ancient Greeks had had social media, I can imagine Socrates might have posted his own meme: "Too much reading is delaying memory and oral storytelling skills, weakening focus, and hurting social development." 

And, like Sousa, he wasn't wrong. I imagine there were those who predicted that the wheel or fire or stone tools were going to be the ruin of our species.

Here's the thing: people who worry about the latest technologies or the loss of old ones aren't wrong. Indeed, every technology I've mentioned here has dramatically altered what it means to live as a human even if our babies are still being born with the same basic biology as they did in Socrates' time. Smartphones have changed us. Social media has changed us. AI is already shaping our brains in ways we can't yet imagine. Just as literacy, the printing press, and high speed travel have made us into a different animal. Every technology changes us, it upsets the status quo. Things that we once considered central to cognition and essential for being "educated" have faded, while alternative ways of being and doing have risen.

For better and worse.

I have no doubt that today's new-ish technologies will cause a decline in literacy, in a traditional sense, in future generations. Indeed, Marshall McLuhan predicted as much during the early days of television. He figured that we were entering a new age with a new type of literacy that went beyond the confines of 26 letters. He is also not wrong.

"Today man has developed extensions for practically everything he used to do with his body. The evolution of weapons begins with the teeth and the fist and ends with the atom bomb. Clothes and houses are extensions of man’s biological temperature-control mechanisms. Furniture takes the place of squatting and sitting on the ground. Power tools, glasses, TV, telephones, and books which carry the voice across both time and space are examples of material extensions. Money is a way of extending and storing labor. Our transportation networks now do what we used to do with our feet and backs. In fact, all man-made material things can be treated as extensions of what man once did with his body or some specialized part of his body."

That's what technology is.

Each one of these extensions causes us to lose something that once defined our species. We may wish to go back to using our teeth and fists, relying on our own "fur" for warmth, and living in a world of barter, but we've "evolved" beyond that. Perhaps it's the curse of our species, but we have learned to steer the evolutionary process through our technologies. And our technologies, in turn, steer us.

We may rant and rail against these things -- I sure do -- but our young children are simply living in the world in which they find themselves, not pining over a lost past, but rather making the most of getting there needs met in the present. Fifty years from now, they may well bemoan the death of the screen (like we do with the decline of cursive) or fret that their own children never even pick up their phones (like we do about reading books), but right now they're simply doing what children have always done: seeking connection and meaning in the world they find before them, the world we have created for them. We worry because their experience isn't our experience. They'll never have to adjust an antenna, get to slam a telephone receiver, or lose a bar bet because they can't remember how many home runs Hank Aaron hit.

And you know what? The advent of audio books and electronic reading devices, technology, have contributed to increased book sales over the past couple decades, after years of decline. But what is leading the charge are actual printed books. And "young adult" books are leading the charge. It's actually us older people who don't read as much any more. We're too busy scrolling through our social media feeds.

This doesn't mean that I don't worry. I worry specifically that our young people are losing the ability to connect with one another. I worry that our very young children are spending too much of their childhoods attending to screens rather than watching clouds and listening to birds. I worry that our older children are shopping for dates on apps. I worry about all of this because I am a product of my own experience, my own technologies . . . And I'm not wrong.

In the meantime, I strive to introduce the children in my life to the world as I know it and to discourage those things that I think are harmful. But my influence as a teacher, or even a parent, is limited. I worry, but I also have faith that this incredible generation, like every other incredible generation, will learn how to thrive, in their way, in the milieu in which they find themselves. All I can do is give them my best while I can, then cheer them on as they go about the project of creating themselves in a world they didn't create.

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And speaking of technology . . . What we can do, and what children need more than anything, is to be treated with dignity and respect. In this course we explore how even small changes in the way we speak with children can create environments in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. For me, this technology is the foundation of how I do play-based learning. It will transform your classroom or home into a place in which children are self-motivated to do the right thing, not because you said so, but because they've made up their own mind. This is a particularly good course to take with your whole team. Group discounts are available. Click here to join the waitlist and for more information.

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!

Treating Children Like People Rather than Their Challenging Behavior

Over the last two decades, I’ve worked to understand challenging behavior in children. And more often than not, I find that the problem is me, not them.

 

When I look back on my day and feel it was largely spent dealing with uncooperative children, I’ve learned to look at myself.

 

When I feel that I’m “losing control,” I’ve learned to look at myself.

 

And when I resort to threats, scolding, or other authoritarian tactics, I’ve learned that the problem is definitely me.

We’ve all been there. I know this because my inbox is full of messages from educators and parents desperate for help.

 

It used to frustrate me, for instance, when children refused to participate in group activities like clean-up or circle time. I now know that they weren’t reacting to the activity as much as to the way I was speaking to them about it. Psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists agree: the language we use creates reality. And so often, the way we speak with children leaves them with little choice but to ignore us, resist, or otherwise behave in ways that we label as challenging.

Eventually, through much trial and error, I discovered how so many of us inadvertently create environments in which the children in our lives are actively discouraged from thinking for themselves. No wonder they rebel! Over the years, I’ve developed a comprehensive approach to communicating with young children in a way that frees them up to rely upon their own better angels instead of the constant direction of adults. The result is a 6-week course I call The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think. It delivers a whole new paradigm, built upon thoughtfully changing how we actually speak with children . . . and with everyone else, for that matter. 

It’s a way of creating a new reality through language in which so-called “challenging behaviors” in children are greatly reduced and in many cases eliminated; where children are enabled to make their own decisions; and where adults are freed from the need to behave like authoritarian task-masters.

It’s an approach that frees children to think for themselves, while enabling educators and parents to create a world in which children listen and cooperate, not because they said so, but because they've chosen to do so.

The best part of all of this is that when you adopt this "technology," you will find yourself being the kind of teacher or parent you always imagined yourself being -- one who is the calm, confident, authoritative (not authoritarian) presence young children need in their lives.

If this sounds like something you want to know more about, click here.

In the meantime, in the coming days, when confronted with challenging behavior, pause for a moment to ask yourself, "Is it me?" And if it is, ask yourself how you would want to be spoken to if the shoe were on the other foot. Because at the end of the day, the "technology" I'm talking about is the one of treating children, even very young children, like people rather than their challenging behavior.

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In this course we explore how changing the way we speak with children can create environments in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. It will transform your classroom or home into a place in which children are self-motivated to do the right thing, not because you said so, but because they've made up their own mind. This technology is particularly powerful when the whole team is on board. Group discounts are available. The 2025 cohort is enrolling now! Click here to secure your spot and learn more.

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!

Without Bossing Kids Around

In a comment on yesterday's post about my course The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think, a reader asked for more specific examples of how we can step back from the language of command. I would assert that in most preschool classrooms, the time we tend to boss the kids around the most is when it comes time to tidying up so I thought I'd start there.

When my wife Jennifer and I bought our first house, I spent the first weeks wandering from room-to-room, into the yard, and out to the garage thinking, This is our room. This is our yard. This is our garage. I even once lay on my back in the lawn and told myself, "This is our piece of the sky." I was telling myself those things, because it didn't yet seem real. It wasn't until after I'd mowed that lawn a few times that I began to believe it. It wasn't until I changed the furnace filter, pruned the forsythia, and repaired a cabinet hinge that it was really felt like ours. It was only then that I could get down to the business of living in that house, and caring for it, instead of just wandering its rooms like a guest.

The children often call our school, "Teacher Tom's school." I remind them, "It's not my school, it's your school," but it's more a statement of aspiration than reality until they've started taking care of it themselves, and the place most of the children start is clean-up time.

As a cooperative preschool with all those extra adults in the room, it would be easy to just leave it to them and it would get done, and done well, in about 5 minutes. Instead, however, I instruct the parents to leave as much to the children as they possibly can, even if it takes a half hour and even if the results leave a lot to be desired. Rather than being an annoying, yet necessary part of our day to hurry through, this act of coming together to care for our school is the single most important community building activity on our daily schedule.

Here's how it works . . .

The song

I announce clean-up time by beating my drum and singing, to the tune of the Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs song Heigh Ho:

Hey hey

Hey hey

Put everything away

Into the place

In which it stays

Hey hey

Hey hey hey hey hey hey

It typically takes a few weeks, but before long, most of the kids, most of the time, go into action with the first beat of the drum. The rest might need a couple minutes to finish what they're doing, and that's understandable.

Speaking informatively

I expect the adults to avoid bossing the children around with directional statements like, "Pick up the blocks," or "Put the dolls in the crib," but instead strive to make simple informational statements like, "There's a block on the floor," or "The dolls go in the crib." This might sound like a distinction without a difference, but it's important. Humans instinctively resist being told what to do, even preschoolers, and this is especially true when it comes to an activity like clean up. When we command children, we give them two options: obey or disobey. But when we provide information, we open up a space in which they can think for themselves. It's clean up time. I could help clean up. There's a block on the floor. I could put it on the shelf. 

I'd rather focus our energies on coming together to take care of the school than in power struggles between adults and 3-year-olds. Informational statements are the only way I know how to do that. When we respond to a child's complaint of, "I don't wanna clean up," with an informational statement like, "It's clean-up time," we are avoiding a time sucking battle of the wills by not giving them anything to fight against.

I cruise the room, making informational statements like, "We need lots of help in the drama area," "The stuffed animals go in the basket," and "There are counting bears under the table." The trick is to be patient. The kids aren't always going to respond right away. You need to give them a chance to process your statements and make decisions for themselves, because that's the kind of space informational statements leave for the children -- a decision-making space. This isn't about obedience, it's about allowing children to make their own choices, then verbally noticing when they take action to care for their own school: "Max is helping clean-up the drama area," "Alex is putting the stuffed animals in the basket," "Sophia is picking up the counting bears from under the table."

I'm not praising them. I'm not saying, "Thank you." It's their school, of course they're taking care of it. I'm merely making a point of noticing the children who are participating in clean-up time, just as I would notice the children who were participating in circle time by raising their hands.

When children continue to play during clean-up, I give them informational statements like, "This is not playing time, it's clean-up time," or "That's closed. We're cleaning up now." I then follow it up with a directly applicable informational statement like, "The playdough goes in the playdough container."

When a child wants to talk to me during clean-up time, I ask, "Is it about clean-up?" If they say, "No," I answer, "You'll have to save it until circle time because it's clean-up time now. I only want to talk about clean-up." My own desires and opinions are informational statements and during clean-up time I'm a single purpose clean-up machine.

When a child simply retires to a corner with a book, or sits quietly, I let it go. That child will eventually join us, if not today, then in the future.

And finally, when all else fails, in those rare instances when a child steadfastly continues to play in a way the disrupts or impedes the group activity of clean-up, they are given the choice to either join clean-up or "stay out of the way." A few children make this choice, but most give it up after a few seconds, opting instead for the action taking place in the room.

"Big projects": planning ahead

Two years ago, a parent remodeled her kids' bed room and donated a nice set of shelves and cabinets that gave us a lot more "in classroom" storage space, so much so that we even had room to store our large wooden blocks near our block play area rather than out in the hallway. As we were setting up to start the school year I instructed a couple parents to move the blocks. Malcomb's mom Carol said, "Aw, really? It won't be the same place without the kids taking the blocks to you in the hallway."

She was right and I relented on the spot. Taking the big blocks into the hallway is a "big project" and it generally involves well over half of the kids. As I wait to receive the blocks, I sing my observational statements to the children, usually forcing it into the tune of our clean-up song:

I see

Sarah

Bringing a medium block

And here comes Marcus

With a big one.

Hey hey

Hey hey hey hey hey hey

Hey hey

And Peter is pushing his

Across the floor

While Alex

And Orlando

Are working together

Hey hey

Hey hey hey hey . . .

They have to carry those heavy blocks, some larger than they are, from the classroom, up two steps, and around a corner to were I'm waiting. The doorway causes a bottleneck where they are forced to negotiate that small two-way space while managing heavy, bulky blocks, and the stairs are a real hazard for some of them. It takes a real team effort to make this work and it's wonderful to see all the different ways they do it. Some try to carry 3 blocks at once, while other single blocks are ushered into the hallway by 5 sets of hands. Some push blocks across the floor, while others carry them on their heads. And all the while I'm singing to them, informationally, "Hey, hey, hey hey . . ."

It's useful to plan at least one "big project" clean-up activity every day. Removing wet things from the water table to drip dry on towels can be one of those projects. Moving large objects like our boxes from one place to another will do. Turning over a table that's been tipped on its side can be made into a group effort ("I need lots of strong people to turn this table over!"). So can bringing chairs back into the room from the hallway ("We need 6 chairs at the green table and 4 at the blue table.")

The "big project" is one of the best ways to get everyone involved and there is no better way to build community than engaging in a big project together, shoulder-to-shoulder.

The story of us

When the school year starts, participation on some days might only be around 50 percent, but I have faith that if we (meaning the adults) remain consistent in our commitment to speaking informatively and not worrying about incidental things like how long it's taking or how well it's done, most of the children, most of the time will get involved.

I approach clean-up time with the steadfast expectation that every child will pitch in and that every parent will join me in speaking informatively about what needs to be done. Realistically, an adult needs to step in and handle anything that require sanitizing or to put the finishing touches on the sweeping, but most of the time, the kids do most of the work.

That said, like with any preschool activity, there are always a few kids who opt out, but by mid-year it's rarely more than 1-2 kids each day, and they quickly see that they're missing out. It's hard to resist carrying a block or two out into the hallway where Teacher Tom is singing a silly song, or joining your friends in the effort to right-side-up a heavy table.

I spend most of my time on most day simply narrating what I see happening, naming names. "I see Marissa hanging up costumes." "Jody and Marcus are working together on the Legos." As I do, I feel as if I'm telling the story of us. And most children, most of the time, when left to make their own decisions, opt to be part of that story.

It's not my school, after all, it's the kid's school. And the only way to make that true is to take care of it together. 

******

This post is an example of The Technology of Speaking With Children at work. In this course we will explore how the way we speak with children creates an environment in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. Registration for the 2025 cohort is underway right now. This technology is particularly powerful when the whole team -- teaching or parenting -- takes it together to get on the same page. Group discounts are available. To secure your spot and to learn more, click here.

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