"Ah, So This Is Who I Am"

I can't remember a time when people weren't talking about finding themselves.

The idea is that once we find ourselves, we can then be ourselves, which sounds pretty good. The problem I'm having is that this thing called "self," at least for me, is a moving target.

When I look inward I see a mishmash of memories, emotions, behaviors, and perspectives; I see a series of events stretching back over a certain period of time in which I've played a variety of parts; I see a physical body that no longer is made from even a single of the atoms with which it was born; and I see a future in which I am to a greater or lesser degree liable to do pretty much anything.

It's hard to connect it all together as a story that adds up to something I can definitively call "self" because I've been all things, done all things, felt all things. As Walt Whitman wrote in his great poem Song of Myself, "I am large. I contain multitudes."

Young children don't bother themselves with such navel gazing, of course, yet we see them daily discover who they are through their play, which is, at bottom, the act of asking and answering their own questions.

Buddhists say there is no "self," which would mean that maybe the kids have it right. Maybe self isn't something we find, but rather create, every day, day after day, by going where our curiosity takes us. And maybe, it's only at the end of our days that we can in our final moments look back over it all and say, "Ah, so this is who I am."

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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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The Problem With Literacy

One of the most entertaining parts of being a parent is collecting the charming, cute, and sometimes profound things your child says while in the process of learning to talk.

I've written before about how my family, to this day, will refer to VW Beatles as "mowers" because I once mistook the put-put-put of its engine for our family's gas powered lawnmower. A boy at school once said, "Those lights are looking at me" when they flickered on in the middle of the day. A girl insisted she wanted it to be "a day with pink music in it" when she wished to listen to rock music, equating the performer with that name with the entire genre. My own three-year-old daughter once sat silently in the backseat of the car musing on my having said, "Nothing is perfect" before quietly adding, "Except everything." As an infant, she would speak a word to me, consistently, that I can only write as "A-goo," although the way she spoke it contained a kind of gurgle in the back of her throat and a sort of coo and gentle smile that simply can't be captured in written language. I knew it meant "I love you."

We giggle at the mistakes and the mispronunciations. We are moved by their idiosyncratic metre and metaphor. We are awed when they use their new tool, their language, to show us a world in which nothing is perfect . . . except everything.

This is an ancient, ancient thing they are doing, this learning of language, as old as humans. And while the use of vocalization to communicate is hardly unique to our species, we have polished and refined it over time until it is one of the things that defines Home sapiens. For most children, they emerge from the womb expressing themselves vocally, sending their complex and insistent messages into the world that compel us to react with feeding, soothing, swaddling, cuddling, or whatever else we perceive they may be needing or wanting.

These "words," from the start, are active agents in the world, real things. In his novel As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner compares a "man of action" with a "man of words" finding the later lacking because, in a nutshell that does not do Faulkner's genius justice, actions speak louder than words. But I beg to differ. Words are our very first actions. Speaking the "words" that instinctively come to us from the moment we are born is the key to affecting change, to securing comfort, to everything. 

One might argue, "But those aren't proper words," then, I ask, what is a word? A dictionary definition might say it is "a distinct meaningful element of speech or writing." Certainly these first vocalizations are distinct meaningful elements of speech. The only difference between these words and the ones we typically think of as words is that they haven't been processed through the elaborate literacy machine that has arisen to standardize language. 

But not only does spoken language pre-date literacy, it does so by millennia. Socrates famously worried when he saw the Phoenician alphabet being adopted by the Ancient Greek world around him, a process that reduces our oral expression to a small collection of symbols representing a very narrow range of possible human vocalizations, then further confining it with grammar and punctuation and spacing and spelling. He was concerned, I think rightly, that the phonetic alphabet would make us less vital and intelligent and, indeed, less able to understand one another.

We tend to force the spoken language to follow the rules of the written. The purpose of grammar might be to aid in understanding, but can a comma really replace the pregnant pause of an actor or a child waiting before adding the phrase "except everything"? Oral language has volume, pitch, facial expressions, gestures, rhythm, and an infinite number of sounds at its disposal. What is a comma in the shadow of all that? The comma condenses it all into a dense dot, wrung of most of its unique and special meaning, until it just tells us to pause like a machine, then move on.

Oh, but babies are pre-literate. They are not limited to 26 letters and the rules of how to use them. Theirs is the ur-language with the full force of words in it. It's where the active magic, our real language, continues to survive. Our babies speak it into the world, charming, cute, and profound, each of them expressing not according to what limits us, but according to the limitlessness of our potential. 

Today we rush to force literacy onto even our babies, telling them earlier and earlier that theirs is the improper way to use words. When we do, I wonder if we short-circuit the natural development of language, robbing it of its magic, channeling it into the narrow, utilitarian paths we've created for it through the dictatorship of literacy. The least we could do, I think, is to wait a bit, to have patience, to give them time and space to become fully and truly orally literate, to explore the full range of human language before making them fit all of that magic into a few symbols, dots and dashes.

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If you're interested in taking a deeper-dive into how our language impacts our relationships with young children; if you are keen to learn more about alternatives to commands, punishments, and rewards; if you're interested in speaking more respectfully and lovingly to young children, please consider registering for my e-course The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think. This will be the final cohort of the year. In this limited registration 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. Click here for more information and to register.

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Are Anxiety And Depression Natural Adaptive Responses To Adversity?

There is little in human history that compares to what we expect of school children today. The nearest precident was child labor during the early Industrial Revolution. Even during that era when children were routinely employed as cheap labor, as dangerous and prone to abuse as it was, the kids were allowed plenty of physical movement, many spent their days outdoors, and at the end of the day, no matter how taxing the work, they knew they were meaningfully contributing to their families. Our schools, while less physically hazardous, restrict children to spending most of their days indoors, seated, silent, doing work that is, at best, expected to payoff decades down the road.

By 1833, Britain began passing laws against child labor, citing it as economically abusive and hazardous to physical health. Today, as schools in the US and elsewhere have been increasingly restricting movement and reducing recess while simultaneously ratcheting up academic pressures, our children, even as young as three, are experiencing levels of anxiety and depression at alarming levels. Studies consistently find that the incidence of anxiety and depression are five to eight times greater today than they were 50 years ago and suicide rates have quadrupled. 

If we were talking about physical injuries or illnesses, we would certainly be passing laws against certain school practices, but our society's lack of awareness and understanding about mental illness means we instead blame the kids, or their genes, or their parents, instead of looking at the test score coal mines that we call schools. So what we have done is to medicalize these disorders and conditions, which largely means prescribing medications, an approach that has done nothing to curb this pandemic of mental illness we are currently facing. 

In a recent paper, a team of biological anthropologists tell us that despite the wide-spread use of anti-depressants:

Most studies find that the prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders have remained constant over time. From 1990 to 2010, for instance, the global prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) remained around 4.4% and for anxiety disorders was 4%. There is little evidence that increased treatment rates reduce suicide rates, and there has been no appreciable decline in cross-national suicide rates, which vary dramatically across countries and regions.

These same researchers also point out that evidence continues to show that so-called antidepressant medicines perform no better than do placebos.

Their suggestion is that perhaps we are mistaken when we approach anxiety, depression, and related conditions as disorders. Increasingly the evidence suggests that these are natural, adaptive, responses to adversity, not chemical imbalances. 

Anxiety is an extreme form of what we usually call worry, which is one of the ways we've evolved to avoid danger. 

Anxiety is characterized by fear or panic, irritability, hyper vigilance, racing heart, loss of sleep, and other symptoms associated with fight or flight responses, which also seem to be functional responses to genuine social and environmental threats . . . These characteristics suggest that these "disorders" . . . might be functional responses to adversity.

So what about depression?

Depression is characterized by persistent sadness, low mood, and anhedonia, which, like ordinary sadness and grief, are probably forms of "psychic pain" that adaptively focus attention on adverse events that would have reduced fitness . . . so as to mitigate the current adversity and avoid future such adversities.

Looked at from this perspective -- that anxiety and depression are adaptive responses to adversity rather than diagnosable illnesses to be cured through medical intervention -- our path seems clear. Just as our ancestors recognized that the way to reduce physical injuries and workplace related illnesses in children was to remove children from the places that were harming them, it behooves us to recognize that school, or at least the way we are currently doing school in much of the Western world, is harming our children and either radically reform them or abolish them altogether.

I'm not a biological anthropologist, nor am I a doctor. I know that the medical approach has helped many people suffering from mental illness, including members of my own family. I'm aware that I've simplified here and there remain gray areas, but as a play-based early childhood educator who has worked with thousands of young children, I've lost count of how many happy, motivated, "typical" children I've sent off to public schools only to have them diagnosed, drugged, and otherwise medicalized. Something happens between here and there, and the most obvious thing is that they have gone from a lifestyle of self-motivation, curiosity, relationships, and play to one of sitting silently, indoors, being told not only what to do, but what to think. Without question, being confined and shut up indoors all day would make me anxious and depressed.

There is a well-known study about addiction which I wrote about here. In a nutshell, the researchers concluded that addiction is not so much about the individual or the so-called addictive substance, but rather "the cage" in which the lab rat finds itself confined. This new paper makes me think about the cage we call school. It's a metaphor that we, as people who love our children, should at least begin to consider.

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If you're interested in learning more about alternatives to commands, punishments, and rewards; if you're interested in speaking more respectfully and lovingly to young children, please consider registering for my e-course The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think. Please consider joining this last cohort of the year, examining how the language we use with children creates reality. In this limited registration 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. Click here for more information and to register.

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"Ohne Strafe" (Without Punishment)

We were recently out to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant with our dog Stella. She's been to many restaurants with us and was, as is typical, under the table, working on a bone we had brought with us to occupy her as we dined. We were seated at a table in what had been, pre-pandemic, roadway, which meant that the city sidewalk bifurcated the outdoor dining area. There were many passersby, some with their own dogs who often, sensing the presence of Stella, pulled toward her in a friendly, curious, or aggressive manner. Stella remained unmoved by any of this, looking up, but otherwise focusing on her bone.

Suddenly, a young man on a noisy skateboard came barreling through our midst. The sound and fury startled all of us. Stella responded by dashing out at the man, causing him to jump from his skateboard. Then as he stood there as Stella gave him a couple of solid, scold-y barks. The man seemed furious at first, but then, from under several other tables, came the sound of other dogs joining Stella. He picked up his skateboard and walked away, while our fellow diners cheered the dogs, especially Stella who returned to me with her ears down in apology. I told her she was my good girl and she calmly went back to her bone.

I recently used a metaphor comparing how we often go about "teaching" children and how we "train" dogs. Several readers pointed out that we shouldn't even try to train dogs in this way.

"Good dog trainers don't train this way," wrote Peggy, "They foster love and mutual respect, and comfortable structure."

I've lived with dogs for most of my adult life and I can honestly say that I myself have never tried to "train" any of them. Or rather, I've taken a few "obedience" classes over the years with, at best, mixed results, probably because neither I nor the dogs have been particularly interested in obedience. We did, however, over the course of the decades, come across trainers who we considered to be "dog whisperers." There was one in particular, Joe Bodemann, who would care for our chow Vincent when we were living in Germany. Frankly, what attracted us was his large sign that promised he taught animals "ohne strafe," that is, without punishment. 

I was not interested enough at the time to find out what that meant, but it sounded good. From the very first, Vincent loved Joe. We found this encouraging because his natural instinct upon meeting strangers was a kind of aloofness, but with Joe he cuddled right in. From the start, Joe talked of our dog, a dog amongst many in his world, as unique, immediately identifying personality traits that we ourselves saw in him. When we returned from trips to fetch Vincent from Joe's place, he would be thrilled to see us, but then fall into a kind of depression lasting several days, which told us that he missed Joe. We took that as a good sign and continued to board Vincent with Joe. We think Vincent considered this time away from us as a kind of holiday with his buddy Joe.

When I consider my relationship with the many dogs in my life, that phrase, "ohne strafe," has been a guiding one. The love, mutual respect, and comfortable structure has always come ahead of obedience. And still, ohne strafe, our untrained dogs have successfully and delightfully, flown in the cabins of airplanes and ridden in the coaches of trains. They have stayed in nice hotels and eaten in fine restaurants. They usually walk with me. They usually come when called. They usually stop barking when I ask them to. And, yes, they usually don't lurch out from under the table to protect us from overly aggressive skateboarders. I know that many traditional trainers would consider this to be a failure in that the dogs don't always obey me, but if that were the case, honestly, I'd feel as if I'd somehow broken them. No healthy being, human, animal, or even plant, always obeys the commands of others. 

When I struggle with my dogs' behaviors I begin by trying to figure out what has gone awry with our relationship or our environment, which is exactly where I go when I struggle with the behaviors of the children in my life. Usually, it has to do with my having inadequately listened or not having fully considered that my expectations were somehow unrealistic or unclear. Usually, I find the solution in how I speak or in adjustments to the environment ("structure"). Most of what we call "misbehavior" has to do with a breakdown in the relationship, because children, like my dogs, genuinely do want to do the right thing, to fit in, and to be a beloved, respected member of "the pack."

No one likes to be told what to do, including children and dogs, and everyone wants to be loved and respected. Expectations of obedience compelled through strafe is both cruel and lazy. It puts everyone into a strict, impersonal hierarchy. When we genuinely listen, and by that I mean listen with our entire selves, when we love, and when we seek mutual respect, we create the space for others to belong. When we know we belong we usually do the right thing.

And when we do, out of fear and instinct, occasionally lurch after disruptive skateboarders, that is just evidence that we are human, even if we are dogs.

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If you're interested in learning more about alternatives to commands, punishments, and rewards; if you're interested in speaking more respectfully and lovingly to young children, please consider registering for my e-course The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think. Please consider joining this last cohort of the year, examining how the language we use with children creates reality. In this limited registration 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. Click here for more information and to register.

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Is Your Child's School More Concerned With Power Than Love?

Psychologist Carl Jung wrote, "Where love rules there is not will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking." This, I think, is an important thing upon which modern educators in general, and early childhood educators in particular, could stand to meditate.

I strive to place love at the center of my practice, as I know is true of most of my colleagues. We genuinely love the children we teach and they love us. I've witnessed this to be widely true wherever I've visited. It's perhaps our greatest reward (because it sure isn't financial). When it goes as it should, we spend our days loving and being loved, swimming in it, breathing it. Our job is to keep them safe and to otherwise simply be there, loving them and helping them as they figure out how to connect with, to love, more people. This is the foundation of not just all learning, but all living in the fullest sense of the word.

When I look at our habitual idea of schooling, I see a lot of loving individual teachers working in a system in which love has been pushed to the side, and where power therefore predominates. From our earliest years, we are judged by our educational system, one that pretends to know what is normal and to then acts to enforce it. The French philosopher Michel Foucault sees this as an exercise in power, a form he calls "normalization," in which our souls are imprisoned by expectations and standards and this has characterized our schools right up to our current era of high stakes standardized testing which has come to dominate the educational experience for most of our children.

It's a system of power that appears largely designed to create "normal" children rather educated ones, where those that cannot bend to the will of the system are labelled, then subjected to increasingly overt forms of power, right up to the use of force, which is ultimately a failure of power. They must either "learn" how to behave or find themselves rejected. It's a power, however, that isn't derived so much from the threat of force as from the capacity to label: this one is "normal" and that one is "abnormal," and it can only exist as a poor replacement for the love that should stand at the center, but has been pushed aside.

I watched a baby on my flight home from visiting our daughter in New York over a long weekend, and what I saw was a free human. Sure, he was 100 percent dependent upon the adult humans in his life, yet because love clearly stood at the center of his relationships with those important adults, this dependency didn't translate into them exerting power over him. Instead of "behaving," he shouted when he felt the urge, grabbed whatever was within reach, bounced furiously, cried from his belly, and everyone around him considered this to be "normal." You do too. This is just what babies do. By the same token, when his two-year-old brother whined or cried or kicked the seats in front of him, people around me shook their heads and pursed their lips, as if to say, "This mother needs to gain control over her child," to exert power over him. That is to say, this slightly older human cannot be allowed to be free.

Thankfully, this mother on this six hour flight did not replace her love with power, but I couldn't help but reflect that it was, sadly, only a matter of time.

Of course, we are all subject to Foucault's normalized power. We allow society to exert its power over us. We don't shout and cry on airplanes, even when we may often feel like it. And when one of us does "lose it," the rest tend to agree that he ought to be removed from the plane. Although if we think beyond our own comfort and the arbitrary confines of "normal," I expect we can all see how love would be a more appropriate response to that troubled individual than an exercise in power.

I know there are some teachers who have become creatures of the system. I came across them in my own schooling: those who allow their will to power to dominate, who see success in terms of well-behaved, properly drilled students, turning out passing grades and high enough test scores, normal kids prepared for normal lives. Thankfully, most teachers have not lost touch with love and who, despite the demands of the our habitual schools to normalize children, set their love between the children and those demands, putting love first, especially for those who would whine and cry and kick the seats in front of them. These teachers are my heroes.

Our schools are not unique in having replaced love with power. Indeed, it has become the main focus of most of our institutions and professions to label what is normal and what is not, then to work to make as many of us normal as possible, to exert power over not just how we behave, but ultimately who we are.

It upsets me when I think that these free humans that we teach will all too soon find themselves increasingly subject to this normalized power, the systematic hammering down and smoothing out, the judgements and labels.

Ah, but we have love on our side. It is perhaps the only revolutionary force in that it is the only thing that can supplant power. When we celebrate heroes, it is always because they have loved where others would control. It is always because they have chosen to empower rather than exercise power. I am inspired by thinking about all of us preschool teachers out there in the world in our church basements and living rooms, our classrooms and playgrounds, fighting the power by simply loving. They think we are weak, but we are strong. We are the revolutionary force the world needs and we will win when we love.

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If you're interested in learning more about alternatives to commands, punishments, and rewards; if you're interested in speaking more respectfully and lovingly to young children, please consider registering for my e-course The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think. You have until close of business Sunday to be part of this cohort as we examine how the language we use with children creates reality. In this limited registration 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. 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!

Quitting

When our daughter was eight, she wanted to take piano lessons. Knowing many parents who had been marching their children through learning to play an instrument, I was surprised. I'd honestly never experienced a child that young who had actually asked for it. Most had simply been told, "I signed you up for lessons."

Her school offered lessons after school. That's exactly what she had in mind, so I signed her up with a bit of a swagger. Amidst all those kids who didn't want to be there, mine was self-motivated, and given her love of music, I had high expectations. She started off okay, but it wasn't long before the daily practice expected by her teacher became a grind, which impacted the lessons themselves. After all, it was no fun having someone scold you. So, I began to prod her to practice, gently at first, then as she became more resistant and surly I found myself grinding my teeth, not because I particularly cared whether or not she knew how to play the piano, but because I wanted to protect her from the growing anxiousness over disappointing her teacher every week.

I never went so far as to try to guilt her into practice (Your mother and I paid good money for this!), nor did I want to feed into her anxieties (Your teacher is expecting you to practice!). I definitely wasn't going to threaten punishment or offer rewards. It was hard to watch her struggle, but in the back of my mind was this notion that it would be good for her to learn to "finish what she started."

It's a rationale we've all heard, perhaps even voiced, to justify compelling kids to do things they no longer want to do, but when I look back over my own life, the list of things I've quit is quite long. Do I have regrets? Yes, a couple, but none from my early years. For the most part I look back on the relationships, jobs, and activities I've given up on in the spirit of "good riddance." I feel the same way about books I've abandoned, movies I've walked out on, and meals I've left unfinished. Indeed, what I see is a history of learning when and how to move on. Like anything worth doing, quitting takes practice.

I wasn't surprised when our daughter, in tears, told me that she wanted to quit learning the piano. She told me she felt ashamed each week as she went in unprepared, that she dreaded it, that her tummy felt bad whenever she even thought about it. That was more than enough for me. She was worried that she was somehow letting me down as well. I told her that the fear of letting others down is always a risk of quitting, but if they really care about you they won't want you to be miserable.

Once she realized she could quit, the air was suddenly fresher. As we both let go, the relief was palpable, but more invigorating was the empty space, the infinite space, that opens up when we've finally made the decision to quit. I took her keyboard down the cellar and we both agreed that it made the family room feel more spacious. Then, in the same spirit, we wrestled the unused family treadmill down there as well. We then went to the store and picked out a big bouquet of sunflowers to put in a vase in a corner of our lives that was now free for the next thing we thought we might like to try.

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If you're interested in learning more about alternatives to commands, punishments, and rewards, please consider registering for my e-course The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think. You have until close of business Sunday to be part of this cohort as we examine how the language we use with children creates reality. In this limited registration 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. 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!

Familiar Strangers

There are many people who I don't know, but with whom I regularly come into contact. I think of them as familiar strangers. Perhaps I pass them on the sidewalk or the hallways of my building. Maybe they're a security guard in a place I like to go or drive the bus I regularly take. My instinct is to begin to acknowledge them with a friendly, "Hello." Even a smile or a nod of recognition would do. But unless they look up to make eye-contact with me, I pass on by without saying or doing anything beyond anticipating that the contact. I suppose you can say that I'm waiting for consent to engage.

I don't like using the word "consent" in this context because, in fact, eye-contact is really not a clear affirmation of consent, but if they do look up at me, I'll at least smile. I want them to know that I see them, that I've seen them, that it's okay, that I welcome them. Most of the time, that other person smiles back, says, "Good morning," and that is the beginning of one of those small social bonds that makes, for me, life a little less anonymous, more familiar and pleasant. 

There are many, however, who never look up no matter how long I wait for their eye-contact. I just want to be friendly, but I shouldn't judge them. I know that for many the effort of even that eye-contact is too much. Or perhaps to be more precise, it's not the one-off eye-contact that exhausts them or makes them anxious, but the prospect that if they do it once, they'll be expected to do it every day. It might even escalate from polite smiles to a daily grind of verbal greetings and small talk: HowareyouIamfineLookslikerainArethosenewshoes . . .

I'm disinclined to impose myself on others and I know that even eye-contact can be an imposition to some, even as there is a part of me that feels like it would be rude to not make eye-contact with a fellow human I see so regularly. So I wait for it without insisting upon it.

There was a time when the refusal (as I framed it) of eye-contact left me feeling slightly abused or ignored, even offended. What a jerk! I'd think as they passed me by with their eyes on the ground in front of them. How rude! But who am I to force myself on others? Who am I to insult them, even in my own mind, when I don't know anything about them other than the fact that we are regularly in the same place at the same time? Perhaps I remind them of someone who once hurt them. Maybe they are painfully introverted. They could be suffering from mental illness like anxiety or depression, which are both all too common. They could be grieving or calculating or thinking a great thought that will one day transform the world.

That said, I'm sometimes with people who don't have my scruples about imposing themselves. My wife, for instance, will not only smile, but call out to these people, "Good morning!" or even more mortifying to me, "I love your jacket!" It puts me on edge, but most of the time, these familiar strangers respond as my wife hopes, often even with seeming joy at being singled out for notice. Sometimes we all stand there on the sidewalk for a time chatting beyond the confines of small talk. Occasionally, those people upon whom she has imposed herself become, with time, actual friends. 

Living in a world with other people is a complicated and infinitely nuanced thing. As my wife will point out, she first met many of her best friends by doing what I would consider imposing herself on them. Still, I wait for the eye-contact. And I know that even that is too forward for some people -- I've seen the fear in their eyes when they make the mistake of looking up and find me waiting for them.

We can't go through life imposing ourselves on one another nor is it healthy to ignore one another. Most humans are born with a drive to connect, but what that means is clearly different for each of us. My friendly gesture can be another person's hostile act. There are those for whom this whole discussion is an outrage: Here we go again with the political correctness! Why can't we just be natural with one another? There are others who feel, perhaps, that I haven't taken it far enough. 

I wonder about all the people who have been intimidated by me because they sensed my waiting for their eye-contact. I wonder likewise about all those best friends I have allowed to pass unknown, who would have been thrilled to have the excuse of a broad compliment or a greeting to connect with me. And then, I must wonder about the world of relationships beyond the relative superficiality of those I have with familiar strangers. 

This is the real work of humanity: connecting. Staying connected. Re-connecting. If we were electrical appliances we would just plug-in to those standardized sockets and be done with it, but of course, are not appliances, nor are we standardized. We are born with a unique shape. Life makes us even more uniquely shaped. If we are to connect with one another as equal and free humans we must turn ourselves round and round with each new person the way a child does when trying to fit a piece into a puzzle. It will be both uncomfortable and rewarding. We will often fail to make the kind of connection we seek, but we must also know to never give up because without connection life is colorless, hostile, and without meaning. 

That is the work we do in preschool, but it is also the work we do throughout life. 

I will not impose myself on you, but know that I'm always waiting for eye-contact. Also know that if you call out to me, I will not ignore you. From there, I hope, we can figure it out because that, I think, is what we're here to do.

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"We Have A Deficit Of Wonder Right Now"

We tend to complain about children and their electronic devices, but from where I sit, it's the adults we should be worried about. 

It really wasn't that long ago that I had to be reminded to carry a quarter in my pocket in case I needed to use a public pay phone to call home. I rarely remembered my quarter and I even more rarely needed it. Yesterday, I had a moment of actual panic when I realized I'd left my smart phone at home when I went to the grocery store. What if there's an emergency? What if I miss an opportunity? I talked myself out of the silly overreaction of returning home to fetch my phone. Nevertheless, during the next half hour of shopping I re-discovered my phone "missing" at least three more times. Then when I got to the register, I had another brief panic as I reached for my phone to make payment via Apple Pay. It took me a moment to remember that I was still carrying my wallet in which I keep my debit card, something that I reckon is on the same path to irrelevance as pocket change.

When I got home, the first thing I did, even before putting away the groceries was to check my phone.

The preschoolers I teach are pre-literate, which means their brains have not yet been shaped by the process of compressing human verbal expression into a meager 26 crude symbols and a handful of punctuation marks. They are also, for the most part, pre-device, which doesn't mean they are device-illiterate, but that they don't find themselves impelled to thumb on their screen every few minutes.

Throughout the day, I check the weather, the sports scores, my messages. I take a look at news headlines, my social media accounts, my bank balance. I pay bills, shop, find my way, order takeout, and distract myself with games. I hardly consider myself a "power user." I'm just your average middle-aged person who appreciates being able to extend myself into the world in ways that would have struck the quarter-in-the-pocket era me as superhuman. Just as automobiles, corrective lenses, and hearing aids "enhance" us, our devices make us super-connected, super-efficient, and at least potentially super-informed.

If my pre-teen comic book reading taught me anything, however, it's that superpowers come at a cost. In those old Marvel Comics the most common downside of superpowers was a feeling of alienation from the rest of the world. Some of these superheroes were even ostracized or feared. Many suffered under the burden of responsibility. Their human selves were in some way or other weakened or harmed by their powers. 

"Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody, 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I'd just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now." ~Tom Waits

As I observe young children at play, I see pre-device humans, people who don't need authoritative answers to everything, who are perfectly fine living in a state of wonder. This is part of the price we pay for becoming superhuman. Wonder has served humans for millennia. Not knowing. Not having everything explained. Mythologizing.

I've recently begun to actively reject my superpowers for an hour or two every day, leaving the house without devices, on foot. I find a place far from home where I can sit and watch the sky and make up stories about the clouds or the wind or the arc of the sun. I wonder about the trees and what they might be thinking about me. I wonder about the birds that land in the perceived safety of my stillness. I don't call it meditation. I call it wondering. I don't know if I'm doing any healing from the deficit of wonder that came with my superpowers, but it is at least a momentary salve and a reminder that the children possess something that I may have lost. 

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If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

"Ready for a book that makes you want to underline and highlight? One that makes you draw arrows and write 'THIS!!!!!' in the margin? Then you are in for a treat." ~Lisa Murphy, M.Ed., author and Early Childhood Specialist, Ooey Gooey, Inc.

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Are We Teaching Toward Understanding Or Are We Just Enforcing Rules?

It seems that a lot of our neighbors have lately added pets to their lives. Everywhere I go, there are puppies straining at the ends of their leashes, impulsively lurching after an up close sniff of whatever has caught their attention. Often it's me they want to get at. Of course, their owners hold them back, usually apologizing, sometimes feebly saying something like, "Leave it."

Personally, I enjoy when these balls of fluff frolic against my shins, but I likewise know that responsible dog owners teach their puppies to "leave it," especially when the "it" in question is a human being. But for now they are all driven to get as close as they can, to invade my personal space in order to engage their sense of smell. It's part of dog culture, so to speak, which is never more clearly on display than when we're at the off-leash areas where there is no delicacy about nosing into even the most private nooks of personal space. I'm sure there are exceptions, but most dogs don't seem to naturally require, nor do they naturally respect, personal space. It's something about which they must learn.

Although, I wonder if they ever really "learn" it. Sure, dogs can be trained to keep their distance from humans unless invited, but I doubt they ever understand what it's all about. They've learned that their beloved human wants them to keep their distance. They might have learned that there is a punishment connected to forgetting or a reward offered for remembering. They may have even transcended the carrot-and-sticks paradigm and internalized it as "good dog" behavior, but I doubt they ever come to comprehend why. Their brains, being dog brains, are simply incapable of grasping our human concept of the sanctity of personal space, even as they are capable of heeding the "rules" surrounding it.

When it comes to dogs, that's probably good enough, but too often, it seems, we adults act as if this is good enough for children as well. The other day, a child at the supermarket was repeatedly, and joyfully, shrieking in the sort of high pitched way that only toddlers can. His mother shushed him several times, but it only stuck for a few seconds before he would begin shrieking again. Finally, she leaned into his stroller and said, motioning toward me apologetically, "When you scream like that it hurts other people's ears." That did the trick: she had given him the why instead of just the rule and his brain was clearly ready to understand. 

This reliance upon rules as a replacement for understanding, especially when it comes to teaching children, is pervasive. Indeed, that's the way mathematics is most frequently taught. Children memorize algorithms that will lead to the correct answer whether they understand the concepts or not. We drill three-year-olds how to sound out words before they're capable of actually reading. This is what standardized tests measure, not understanding, but whether or not certain rules have been internalized. We instruct children in such classroom rigors as walking in lines, raising hands, and sitting on their bottoms, then we wonder why so many of them persist in breaking those rules. So we scold, cajole and punish until they know they must do those things even if they don't understand why. This is the way we train dogs.

Teachers are in the business of understanding and understanding must precede algorithms and rules. When a child understands that what he is doing hurts the ears of others, he then understands why he shouldn't shriek inside the supermarket. It's not until a child is capable of understanding that letters and numbers are abstractions that represent words and numbers that he can actually understand reading, writing, and ciphering. It's not until a child's brain has developed beyond a certain level of self-centeredness that they understand that raising hands is a fair way to make sure everyone gets a turn. (I still don't understand walking in lines and sitting on bottoms, except as crude crowd control measures, something in which I've never been interested.)

Sometimes as adults we must rely upon rules because the children for whom we are responsible are not yet developmentally ready for understanding, although whenever we find ourselves relying too much on rules, we must ask ourselves if what we are expecting of the children is appropriate. I mean, if we need rules and algorithms, then maybe the kids simply aren't capable of understanding and we're just, at best, wasting everyone's time. Then all we're really teaching is obedience and I think that's an immoral and dangerous thing to do.

In every thing we do as educators, we must ask ourselves, are we teaching toward understanding or are we just enforcing rules? Because there is a difference and it is important.

This is why we leave children to their play. This is why we strive to create environments in which they can explore, experiment, question and discover without requiring a slew of adult mandated rules. We want them to start with understanding, in their own way, in their own time, and according to their current capabilities, which is to say their developmental stage. It's only from there that the algorithms and rules will ever make any sense at all.

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If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here! 

"Ready for a book that makes you want to underline and highlight? One that makes you draw arrows and write 'THIS!!!!!' in the margin? Then you are in for a treat." ~Lisa Murphy, M.Ed., author and Early Childhood Specialist, Ooey Gooey, Inc.

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!