The Natural State of a Hoarder is Misery

Preschool is a time for children to experiment with community and their place in it. One of the things they experiment with is hoarding. What happens when I manage to control all, or most, of a valuable resource?

Of course, they probably don't frame the question so clearly. More often than not, a child who likes, say, Hot Wheels, will keep adding to their collection until they have all of them. A boy once took a fancy to our giant plastic insects, put them in a pile and sat on them. It happens because it seems like more or all might be better, but it doesn't usually play out that way.

In many classrooms, the adult steps in, first cajoling, and then commanding the child to "share." This, in my view, is not sharing, but rather compliance to authority, which is not something I'm interested in teaching. Experienced children may give in, sullenly, but those who have not yet resigned themselves to being bossed around will fight back. They refuse, they resist, and they shout, "That's not fair!" contrary to the adult's intent, which is, after all, fairness. The lessons learned in this scenario aren't about hoarding, but rather about the ability of the powerful to use force to get their way.

I want children to learn from their experiments. One of the words that I teach the children in my care to understand is "hoard" (another is "exclude") because I want to be able to point it out when it's happening. I don't do it to shame anyone. In fact, I try to state it as a simple fact. 

Someone will complain, "Mary has all the dolls!"

And I'll respond matter-of-factly, "Yeah, she's hoarding them."

If someone complains, "That's not fair!" I'll respond with something like, "You can use them when Mary's done hoarding them." I'll even smile at Mary to assure her that I will not interfere with her experiment. And I genuinely don't because I recognize that she is about to start learning the great lesson about hoarding: the natural state of a hoarder is misery.

The boy who sat on all the giant insects was at first nagged by his classmates to let them have some, or even "just one," but he held firm. After a while, the kids gave up, opting to play with something else, and more importantly, someone else. Slowly, you could watch the boy begin to sulk until before long he was a picture of misery. As he sat there, this previously valuable resource became less and less valuable until it was so worthless that he abandoned it.

One time I was sitting around a table with four 4-5-year-olds. One of them, Phillip, had collected most of the play dough and was sitting with his arms around it possessively. He seemed to enjoy rejecting the other children as they begged him for a chunk. As they bickered, I began to gather up the tiny bits of play dough that remained on the table, eventually gathering a small ball of the stuff about an inch in diameter.

I said, "He doesn't have all the play dough. See? I have some too." I then began pinching off portions of it, saying, "I'm going to give a piece to you . . . And you . . . And you." As the rest of us began making tiny balls and cookies and swords with our bits of play dough we were chatting, laughing, and showing off. Meanwhile, Phillip was looking on with a grim expression, probably beginning to feel miserable in his isolation.

I looked around at everyone's faces. The children with the least were clearly enjoying themselves. I said, "Alex is smiling. Sonya is smiling. Salvador is smiling . . . Phillip is not smiling." We all sat there for a second, just looking at each other's expressions. Then Phillip broke into a huge smile before breaking off large chucks of his hoard to share with the rest of us. I said, "And now everybody is smiling!" 

Both Phillip and the boy on the bugs experienced something the central to hoarding which is that though they may have had a monopoly in terms of possessions, the rest of us had something far more valuable: the happiness that can only come from participation, connection, and friendship. 

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

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!

Agreements We Make With One Another

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then, the wagon in place, a small miracle happened. The girl who had started it all, easily lifted the heavy cauldron all on her own, placing it into the bed of the wagon. As it turns out, it could have been carried by a single child, but they had collectively agreed that together was better, even if that made things more complicated, perhaps even more difficult. The agreements were the important things.

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

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

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Because We Live in a Society

My wife and I have lived with dogs for most of our 40 years of marriage.

Our first dog came before our daughter was born. He was our gateway "child." One of the responsibilities of a dog owner in an urban or suburban place is to pick up after it. The concept disgusted me: turning a plastic bag inside out, grabbing it with my hand, and carrying it until I came across a trash can. Honestly, I often skipped it when I didn't think anyone was watching.

That said, it irritated me when I came across unpicked poo. What slobs, I would think. Don't they realize they live in a society? Then one day, my hypocrisy hit me. How can I expect other people to pick up after their dog if I myself sometimes let it lie?

Today, I always pick up after my dog, not because I've come to enjoy it -- it's still an annoying, unpleasant task. And not because I'm worried about any kind of punishment or public shame, but because, well, we live in a society. 

At preschool, one of our health and safety requirements is that every person who comes into the school starts by washing their hands. This goes for both children and adults. Indeed, we enter our school through a room with a sink. At the beginning of the school year, we remind the children, "Don't forget to wash your hands," but typically, by about this point in the school year, reminders are no longer necessary: they enter, stash their stuff, then hop up on the stool to wash their hands. Often, you hear them reminding their parents.

They do it because it's what we do; because they are part of a society. They are not doing it to avoid punishment. They are not doing it because they are concerned about being shamed. It's a responsibility that each of them has assumed. I suppose you could say it's part of the price of entry into our little community. Or perhaps more accurately, hand washing could be understood as one of the small daily rituals that hold us together.

Parents and educators often want their children to be responsible. We assign them tasks or chores and tell them that they are "responsible" for getting them done. We scold them for being "irresponsible" when they fail or neglect them. But I don't think this is how responsibility works. We assume responsibilities, not because others are dictating to us, not because we will otherwise be punished or shamed, but because, quite simply, we live in a society, and this is what we do.

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

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!

"To Daily Converse About Virtue"

"Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good," said Socrates, according to his student Plato, "I am better off than he is -- for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know."

This is one of his most famous assertions. Whether it's true or not, can be debated. Self-evidently, he knew more than nothing. My mother used to say, whenever I thought I'd caught her in an inconsistency, "All wise people change their minds." It was a frustrating parry in the same way I imagine Socrates' claim was frustrating to those who sought to debate the famed orator.

And he was quite famous in his lifetime, at least in Athens where he spent most of his life. When he was still a relatively young man, Aristophanes' play The Clouds was first performed, portraying Socrates as a ridiculous intellectual clown teaching young people to undermine traditional beliefs. He was sufficiently famous even then that audiences were expected to recognize him. 

It's hard not to compare him to, say, The Beatles, who were initially laughed at, then criticized as corruptors of youth. Or maybe he was more like a modern influencer, who many of us old people view as lightweights, at least until one of them pops through our bubble and we find ourselves outraged at the things they are saying. I'm not saying that any of them are Socrates, but then again, the Beatles were a bunch of silly mop tops before they became icons.

The Beatles, of course, didn't have the internet, but they did have radio and television, which allowed them to "converse" directly with their young audience. Today, most of us know about Socrates through Plato's writing, but Socrates himself wasn't a fan of the phonetic alphabet and its ability to lock things down. As he complained, if you want to question the written word, it cannot reply. Things that are written are fixed, whereas direct discourse between people allows for the kind of public square give-and-take he was, and still is, famous for.

Another of Socrates' most well-known assertions is that "the life which is unexamined is not worth living." But what he actually said (again, according to Plato who was writing it down) was, to me, far more interesting. The fuller quote from his Apology, in which he was defending his life against accusations goes, ". . . the greatest good of man is to daily converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that life which is unexamined is not worth living."

"The greatest good of man is to daily converse about virtue."

The Greek word that gets translated as "virtue" is aretē, which carries a broader meaning of excellence and fulfilling one's potential. He's not advocating for endless conversations about being morally upright, but rather asking what it means to live well, to be a good human. In other words, what he is advocating is something far beyond mere introspection. He is calling for conversations, daily, in which we engage our fellow human beings about what it means to be fully human.

I doubt anyone would have cared about Socrates had he been content to sit in his ivory tower examining his life and writing books about virtue. What outraged the establishment to the point that they condemned him to death was his insistence on conversing about it in the public square.

He was condemned by a jury of what was, by tradition, comprised of 501 fellow citizens (all free men). Apparently, his death sentence was decided by a slim majority, illustrating one of Socrates' objections to the kind of direct democracy practiced in Athens at the time: the tyranny of the majority. Without protections like "freedom of speech" and "freedom of assembly" his ideal of "daily converse" was a dangerous thing.

It doesn't seem that Socrates thought of "free speech" in the way we do today, as a legal protection for everyone. He was more focused on the moral obligation to speak one's truth and ask challenging questions, even if it did lead to ridicule and even death.

Although Socrates is recognized as one of the foundational figures of our Western traditions of thought and philosophy, his notions of democracy were different from how we understand it today. Indeed, he wasn't a fan, even though, in the end, he accepted his democratically decided fate. 

Our current experiments in democracy are attempts to fix the flaws of ancient democracy. The written US Constitution along with The Bill of Rights and the mechanisms of amendment were an attempt to balance majority rule with individual rights. It was intended as a living document, one that could be changed, just not in a willy-nilly-wims-of-the-moment fashion. It was, one might say, intended to be an ongoing, daily, conversation among we the people; a dialog about excellence, fulfilling potential, living a good life, and, yes, virtue. The fact that it has evolved beyond the framer's original ideas about gender, race, and other matters is evidence of this.

The fact that so many of us avoid politics is evidence that we are failing. I've long believed that "voting" is the bare minimum of democratic participation. The real work and promise of democracy is the conversations we have with our fellow humans. That includes through the media, social and otherwise, but perhaps even more central are those conversations we have with the actual humans in our lives -- our neighbors, those with whom we do business, in our churches, our workplaces, and above all, in our schools.

Preschoolers engage in daily converse about virtue. It happens every day, all day long as they express their opinions and show their emotions. It happens in each negotiation, in each agreement, in each decision about with whom and what we play. In my role as an adult who works with young children, my responsibilities are clearly defined as keeping the children safe and doing what I can to ensure their physical and psychological needs are met. And as a member of the community (one who perhaps knows "nothing") my role is not to direct, but to interact as much as possible as an equal. The rest, then, is up to all of us, and that is to engage in daily converse about excellence, living well, being righteous, and to discover, together, what means to be fully human.

This is a life worth living.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

Brains Do Not Grow in Captivity

We now know enough about the brain to realize that its mystery will always remain. Like a work of art, we exceed our materials. ~Johan Lehrer

When our daughter was a preschooler, authority figures informed parents that the human brain was fully formed by around five-years-old. After that, there would be no new brain cells, which was why, they told us, the early years were so important. These were the scientific facts. Just a few days ago, a parent of a preschooler told me that the director of her child’s school told the assembled parents that the human brain was “90 percent developed” by five, information which she conveyed to me in a kind of jittery breathiness that betrayed both awe and panic. I recall feeling similarly about these scientific facts. 

The problem with these facts is that they were not facts 20 years ago and they are not facts today. They are the product of a debunked theory about human brain development. Sadly, these non-facts were, and still are, being used to support the toxic academic pressures being applied to our youngest citizens.

It seems that the earlier “facts” were based largely upon studies done on monkey brains in a laboratory. When skeptical scientists more recently tested the theory on monkeys living in their natural habitat they found that not only do their brains continue to produce new brain cells throughout their lives, but they produce a lot of them. It was being held in captivity that caused their brains to stop producing new cells. This has now been confirmed in birds, rats, and other animals, including humans: when animals are free, their brains grow, when they are not free they don’t.

Play is the “natural habitat” of young humans. Traditional schools are, at their core, a form of captivity. Longer school days, more academic instruction, developmentally inappropriate expectations, less time outdoors, standardization, and high stakes testing are causing children’s brains to stop growing. The cure, according to science, is to set our children free, to let them play: that is how brains grow.

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Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

I Fought the Temptation to "Correct" Them

When my grandmother-in-law died, she left us with a set of The Great Books, a 54 volume set of renowned works by European men, from Homer to Freud. Published in 1954 by Encyclopaedia Britannica, this was meant as a comprehensive study guide for adults interested in learning about intellectual underpinnings of the Western world. The idea was that students would encounter the original works, rather than textbook summaries, and, more importantly, the curriculum was built around conversation, debate, and inquiry rather than to simply deliver direct instruction.

The Great Books approach to higher education had been underway decades before this set was published, versions of it having been adopted by several respected universities, including Columbia, University of Chicago, Notre Dame, and St. John's College, which to this day organizes its entire undergraduate program around it.

Over the years, I've cherry picked volumes to browse, reading, say a bit of Plato here or a passage from Goethe there, but largely they've lived with us ornamentally, or, as I often say about books on the shelf, aspirationally. 

My attention was drawn to these books recently when I read that schools in South Korea have begun adopting the Great Books seminar approach by partnering with St. John's. Hwacheon High School began offering the program as a two-credit course in 2025. Five other schools in Chuncheon offer seminars using readings from Plato and Thomas More, and the Incheon National University has adapted it for Korean students and is currently extending it into local schools.

At first, this confounded me. Why would Korean schools be embracing a deep dive into this curriculum of "dead white guys." I mean, certainly Korea has its own rich intellectual and literary tradition to draw from, and apparently they have included Asian thinkers, but the point isn't the specific content. The stated goal, according to educators, is for Korean students to discover a new way to learn. They want their students to learn by speaking as equals, questioning one another, and exploring ideas without being expected to reach a single correct answer. This, of course, is a reaction against school cultures that have traditionally been more hierarchical and lecture-based.

Equally important, I think, is that they are consciously seeking to move away from vocational training and toward supporting students to become facile, confident critical thinkers.

This is happening in Korea as US universities and high schools are moving away from reading entire books altogether. 

Of course, as a preschool teacher, I've always worked in schools in which the students don't read any books at all. Or rather, books are read to the children. And then, invariably, they are discussed, not as lessons to be learned, but very much with the goal of becoming facile, confident critical thinkers. 

One of the greatest reading episodes of my life involved a reading of The Little Red Hen. This classic morality story involves a hen who finds some grains of wheat and decides to do the work of planting, tending, harvesting, grinding, and ultimately baking it into a loaf of bread. At every step of the way, she asks the others, "Who will help me?" to which they reply, "Not I." As an adult, I know the intended moral of the story, but when we got to the end where the hen, justifiably, refuses to share the bread, the children were confused and outraged.

"Why didn't she share?"

"They're hungry and she's eating all the bread!"

"That's not fair!"

I fought the temptation to "correct" them, but rather allowed the discussion to unfold as the children, together, determined that the little red hen was a jerk.

Another time we were collecting books for a fundraiser. The intent had been picture books, but one of our families donated a bunch of paperback novels, among them William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. People my age know that this book is difficult and dense, made particularly confusing by the fact that the narrator of the first quarter of the book is a grown man, Benjy, with a severe intellectual disability. A five-year-old brought it to me. I told him, "That's a grown-up book. You'll probably have to read it when you're in high school."

"Let's read it now."

It was a sunny day, so we took the book outside and I began reading it to a small assembly of preschoolers. I figured they would wander off before I'd reached the bottom of the first page, but I was wrong. For the next week, we read and discussed this book on the playground, as a group. Not only that, but the children, together, were able to discern exactly what was going on ("They're playing baseball." "No, they're playing golf." "He's hiding from them." "He's trying to get their golf balls."), something I'd struggled with as a teenager. They made me stop to define words, and they were particularly interested when I skipped over the N-word. "What's so bad about it?"

Our policymakers are forever talking about the "jobs of tomorrow" and how our schools must "prepare" our children for them. What BS. No one can possibly predict what jobs our preschoolers will be applying for 20 years from now. They're just blowing smoke. They're, at best, talking about the jobs of today, but more often than not, they're talking about the jobs of yesterday. It will be today's preschoolers who will be inventing those jobs of tomorrow.

What we do know, however, is that whatever the future holds, we will need those critical thinkers. 

That's what educators in South Korea are thinking about. Maybe we should too.

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Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

The Examined Life

Most young children go through a stage in which they ask, "Why?" No matter what you answer, be it thoughtfully, jokingly, or through clenched teeth, they reply, once more, with "Why?" When our daughter Josephine was in this phase, she encountered another girl who was likewise in it. After going down the "Why?" rabbit whole for several rounds, Josephine finally, in exasperation, said, "Stop asking that question!"

"Why?" is endless. Even when we attempt to shut things down by finally replying, "That's just the way it is," "Why?" is legitimate. It's among the many questions that philosophers have been asking since before there were philosophers. And at the bottom of it all, we know that the truth, the one that every free person must ultimately confront is, "I don't know." And that leaves us with no choice but to turn it around, What do you think?"

I don't know if every teacher must be a philosopher, but as early childhood educators who value inquiry, philosophy is part of the job description.

A person working with young children must constantly confront questions that philosophy has wrestled with for millennia. What is a good life? What is justice? What do we owe one another? What is freedom? What constitutes knowledge? Who has authority, and why? What does it mean to be a person?

Working with young children is necessarily a philosophical undertaking, whether or not the adult recognizes it.

These aren't abstract questions in a preschool. They come up when two children want the same shovel, when a child refuses to join the group, when someone gets hurt, or when an adult decides that a child's behavior needs correcting.

And the adult must respond philosophically. Even the choice to not intervene is a philosophical choice.

Both the beauty and bane of working with young children is that these newly minted human beings have not yet fully internalized the assumptions that the rest of us take for granted. They question things that we've stopped questioning, not necessarily because they're consciously pursuing truth, but rather because the world's conventions are not yet self-evident to them.

They have not yet discovered the frustrations or fear that some of us feel when confronted with yet another "Why?" They haven't yet become so worried about making mistakes or of offending others to know that they are poking around at the unexamined certainty that so many of us cling to in order to survive another day.

"Why?"

It's a profoundly Socratic question, one that pushes the boundaries of knowledge just a little bit further, then a little bit further, and so on. It will always, at some point become uncomfortable which is why we so often attempt to wrap it up with a joke or, like Josephine did, a command to knock it off. But the only valid response, I think is the turn-around, "I don't know. What do you think?" because, with free people, that's where the answer ultimately lies.

And naturally, young children crave certainty. They want to know they are loved unconditionally, for instance. They need to know they are safe and that their basic physiological and psychological needs will be met. They are very young and providing this foundation is the first responsibility of the adults in their lives. And this is what leaves children free to ask "Why?"

Every teacher operates from assumptions about human nature, learning, obedience, freedom, and the purpose of education. A teacher who believes children must be controlled is operating from a philosophy just as surely as one who believes children are competent and deserving of autonomy.

The difference is that the second teacher might have examined those assumptions, while the first might simply have inherited them. Of course, the reverse is also possible.

Socrates, perhaps the best-known teacher in Western history, didn't advocate for a particular philosophy. He simply insisted that we examine the beliefs by which we live.

When children ask "Why?" that is what they are doing. 

And as educators, we owe to both the children in our care, and to ourselves, to examine who we are with children, moment-by-moment, and likewise ask ourselves "Why?"

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!