If Adults Could Learn to Trust Children

As an enthusiastic, new parent, I once made myself vomit from rolling down a grassy hill one too many times. It had likely been a couple decades since my last grassy hill and I'd remembered it as joyful, but the actual experience was anything but. The same goes for swinging. I'll sometimes sit on playground swings, but anything more than a couple back-and-forths and I'm done.

It's part of growing up. Young children crave swinging, rolling, and spinning. That's because they need it. It helps their nervous system to mature and organize. I've written before about how we've never found a need to make rules surrounding out our swing set, a place where there are often as many as a dozen kids engaged in getting their sensory fix, activating the fluid filled cavities of their inner ears, instinctively developing their sense of balance, finding their centers. It's yet another example of how children, when left to their own devices without the constant direction of all-knowing, all-protecting adults, know what is best for themselves.

Of course, they are "just" playing, and no matter how much science there is behind what they do, the play always comes first. Indeed, it is a failure of our modern world that we feel we must prove play's value with science. Play, like love, like wisdom, like life, is a pure good: that it is supported by science should strike us all as a "no duh" revelation.

One girl was working to go "all the way upside down."

Another girl had persuaded an adult to wind her up in the tire swing, "Higher . . . higher . . . higher . . ." in anticipation of a wild, out-of-control ride.

Yet another girl was opting to keep matters under own hand, twisting the chains herself, then allowing her body to more slowly spin-drop until her dragging feet brought her to a stop. They played their spinning and swinging games over-and-over, not vomiting, thrilling at their dizziness.

They were playing, following their instincts, joyfully. It was everything to them. If adults could learn to trust children, it would be everything to us as well  . . . Although perhaps not for us.

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Sometimes it seems like the most challenging part of our job is dealing with parents. At the same time, we all know that it takes a village to raise a child. As preschool educators, we don't just educate children, but their families as well. For decades, I've been working in a place that puts the tricornered relationship of child-parent-educator at the center, and over that time I've learned a great deal about how to work with families to create the kind of village every child needs and deserves. I've assembled what I've learned course called Partnering With Parents in which I share my best thinking on how educators can and should make allies of the parents of the children we teach. Click this link to register for the 2025 cohort and to learn more. Discounts are available for groups. Registration closes at the end of this week, so act now!

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