Disarming

There was once a time when I felt I always had to don my armor to go out into the world. You know what I'm talking about it, of course: everything from the clothing to the attitude that I wear when I leave the safety of home. It's the way we protect ourselves from a world that we fear will harm us if it sees who we really are.

The hostility of the world is real. Black people better protect themselves in America. Gay people too. Difference, or otherness, be it based on skin color, sexuality, ethnicity, gender, ability, neurotype, or whatever other arbitrary dividing line, makes one an especially likely target. One might think that old, straight white men would have the least need for armor in our world, yet it seems that ours also weighs heavily on our shoulders.

The problem with armor, of course, is that it means we're all walking around as armed people, protective, defensive. Some go so far as to arm themselves with offensive weapons, say the aggressive trappings of toxic masculinity, but most of us take the defensive posture, hunkered down against the slings and arrows, real and imagined, and don't for a second think that other people's imagined ones aren't as real as the real ones you face. What a way to go through life.

We crave those places where we can be our authentic selves. Among friends and family and others like us we are disarmed, but to one degree or another, most of us, most of the time go through the world armed.

There is a line that I've heard from gun rights activists, "An armed society is a polite society." It comes from Robert A. Heinlein's 1942 science fiction novel Beyond this Horizon, a vision of a world in which genetic selection has been used to virtually erase "otherness," creating a world of nearly "perfect" humans. Regular duals over minor social slights is one of the ways this dystopian society keeps itself pure. It's a world of fear and boredom. It's not a novel worth your time to read, in my opinion, but it raises the question: is otherness a necessary feature of human civilization? Are we doomed to forever wear armor and fight duels?

I hope not. 

When I find myself in a world of children, I am disarmed, instantly, and I've come to recognize that this is because they are, largely, disarmed themselves. They've not yet learned to equip themselves for the battle we've made of the world. They show themselves to us as they truly are, right now, emoting, yearning, acting, hating, and loving. And this gives me permission to leave my armor at the door as well. To be disarmed is liberating. It's liberating to be amongst liberated people. In his book Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates asserts that no one has ever liberated themselves. I think that's about right: we liberate one another.

Were I a different type of teacher, in a different kind of circumstance, I might well see my job as one of teaching children in the art of arming themselves. Not expressly, of course, but what else is this idea of preparing children for life? We don't want kindergarten to defeat them, for instance, so we arm them with what we think they'll need to be "ready." Both consciously and subconsciously we help them don the armor that is so habitual for most of us that we don't even notice how tired it makes us, how much more difficult it makes even the most mundane of activities, and especially our relationships with those whose armor, because of the nature of their manufactured otherness, is different from our own. From this perspective it's a dystopia no less dull and deadly than the one Heinlein created.

In the company of children, we are invited to disarm ourselves. It's an invitation we're fools to decline. We needn't worry. They will, sadly, arm themselves soon enough. Our little classrooms are no match for the wider world, but today, at this moment, we as parents and educators have the power to liberate the children in our lives and, indeed, we owe it to them. After all, they liberate us from our armor, they disarm us. It's only right to return the favor. Being amongst liberated children as they bicker and bawl and strive and agree gives us a glimpse of a disarmed life. It's what gives me hope.

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Tired of butting heads with kids? Scolding them? Bossing them around? Do you feel like they just don't listen? Sign up now to take advantage of New Year's pricing for my new 6-part e-course, The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think, in which I pull the curtain back on the magic that comes from treating children like fully formed human beings. This course is for educators, parents, and anyone else who works with young children. It's the culmination of more than 20 years of research and practice. I've been speaking on this topic around the world for the past decade and know that it can be transformative both for adults and children. For more information and to register, click here. Thank you!

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The Radical Idea of Treating Children Like People

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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What I Miss

Most of the time these days I manage to make peace with the pandemic, but there are other days when I wallow in what I miss.

I miss the feeling of little fingers exploring my knee cap through the holes in my jeans as I read from a story book.

I miss the blast of overheated breath against my cheek as they excitedly whisper their news in my ear.

I miss the warmth of tears spreading through the fabric of my shirt and onto my shoulder as I hold them after a fall.

I miss the dampness that soaks through the seat of my pants when I sit on wet ground in order to be eye-to-eye with them.

I miss being genuinely eye-to-eye.

I miss living my days in a place where whenever I need to hold someone's hand, all I have to do is offer it and it will be embraced.

I miss overhearing the dance of bickering and agreement of children clustered together in private negotiation.

I miss those moments when we all fall silent, then, as if on cue, burst out in laughter.

I miss the moments before the children arrive when I await them in the last bit of silence.

I miss closing the door behind the last child to go home, then standing there to listen to them playing on the playground without me.

I miss the scent of the tops of their sweaty heads.

I miss living against the background of the bubble and babble of children at play.

I miss the gifts they bring for me, the special leaves, the bouquet of dandelions crushed lovingly in a fist, the portrait they made of me last night before going to bed.

I miss gently squeezing the last drops of snot from their noses.

I miss trusting them and to have that trust justified.

I miss spontaneous debates over our own rights and responsibilities and how to balance them with the rights and responsibilities of others.

I miss liberating them for a few hours each day in a world that is forever telling them what to do.

I miss being in the presence of so much love.

I miss spending my days learning from free people who grieve quickly, then come to accept their world as it is today, right now, engaging it without wasting a moment on what is missing. 

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Tired of butting heads with kids? Scolding them? Bossing them around? Do you feel like they just don't listen? Sign up now to take advantage of New Year's pricing for my new 6-part e-course, The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think, in which I pull the curtain back on the magic that comes from treating children like fully formed human beings. This course is for educators, parents, and anyone else who works with young children. It's the culmination of more than 20 years of research and practice. I've been speaking on this topic around the world for the past decade and know that it can be transformative both for adults and children. For more information and to register, click here. Thank you!

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The Absurd Myth of the "Self-Made Man"

In Rudolf Erich Raspe's story The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the baron saves himself from drowning in a swamp by pulling himself out by his own hair. It's a ridiculous episode in a comic story about a character who notoriously weaves wondrous tales that are clearly untrue. 

We're amused by the absurdity of it, yet too many of us, in the real world, act as if we believe in the equally absurd myth of the "self-made man," this idea that success comes from the capacity to pull oneself up by one's own bootstraps. It's a persistent and even harmful lie we tell ourselves about what it means to to succeed. Popular culture is full of Baron Munchausens, dressed up as solitary heroes. John Wayne made a career out of playing them in the movies, dodging the bullets that kill lesser soldiers or cowboys, defying all convention, applying his unique courage, vision, and grit to single-handedly saving the day. In the real world, of course, there are no Rambos or James Bonds. They are fictional characters as ridiculous in their way as Baron Munchausen. To believe in them outside of a fantasy world is to buy into a kind of Neo-Calvinism, where the degree to which we are doomed is the degree to which we have failed to pull hard enough on our bootstraps.

In preschool, we tend to emphasize such things as sharing and cooperation. After all, they are such wee ones that, naturally, they can't be expected to grapple with their own bootstraps, but once school starts in earnest, we increasingly caution them to "do their own work" and to keep their eyes on their own paper. When they seek help from anyone other than the teacher, we call it cheating. We grade, test, and rank them individually in the spirit of the self-made man myth without an inkling of the absurdity of it all.

Keen vision, self-motivation, and grit are all fine things, of course, traits that serve us in life, but in the real world, I've found, if we aren't relying on other people, we will, inevitably, fail. No surgeon saves a life on their own, for example, they require the cooperation and support of a vast network of her fellow humans. We don't pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps because it is an impossibility, and to insist that someone can is a cruel joke. Success in the world outside of fiction and school, involves pulling others up by their bootstraps (or hair) and in turn they pull us up by ours, taking turns being the one who helps and the one who needs help. It's called working together, teamwork, cooperation, which has always been the source of any human success. 

If we are truly in the business of preparing children for life we must start seeing the myth of bootstraps for what it is, an absurdity, and instead place projects of collaboration as the center of education, which is to say the collective creation of knowledge, because that is ultimately the greatness of humanity.

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Tired of butting heads with kids? Scolding them? Bossing them around? Do you feel like they just don't listen? Sign up now to take advantage of New Year's pricing for my new 6-part e-course, The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think, in which I pull the curtain back on the magic that comes from treating children like fully formed human beings. This course is for educators, parents, and anyone else who works with young children. It's the culmination of more than 20 years of research and practice. I've been speaking on this topic around the world for the past decade and know that it can be transformative both for adults and children. For more information and to register, click here. Thank you! 

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The Death of a Hero

Over the weekend I learned that Hank Aaron, one of my great childhood heroes, died. He was my favorite baseball player on my favorite team. He was known for hitting home runs, but it's hard to argue that there has ever been a better all-around player than Hammerin' Hank, although as a boy these nuances didn't play into my calculations. I only knew that he was a man who was doing remarkable things and I wanted to be like him.

I only saw him play one time in person. My family traveled to Atlanta for a game between the Braves and the St. Louis Cardinals sometime during the late 1970's. We were seated in the upper deck above the third base line. I'd brought my glove with me, hoping, expecting, to catch a foul ball, preferably off the bat of Hank Aaron, one of the few true celebrities in my life. I rarely even saw him play on television. They didn't broadcast all the games back then the way they do today. I learned most of what I knew of him by reading about his exploits in the sports pages of the newspaper, our family's subscription to Sports Illustrated, and studying the statistics on the back of his baseball card. 

He is the holder of many records, but the one for which he will always be remembered is breaking Babe Ruth's all-time home run record of 714. I was watching on TV, everyone was watching on TV, when he finally slugged 715 on April 8, 1974. I cheered and danced around our den joining the millions of Americans who witnessed the moment together. It was pure joy for us, but it wasn't for him. As a Black man in America, a man on the verge of breaking a white man's hallowed record, the run up to that moment was fraught. He was abused by racist fans, receiving sacks full of hate mail and thousands of death threats. This wasn't something the media covered at the time. At least I didn't hear of it, but I remember wondering what Aaron meant when he said, while celebrating the record, that he was glad it was over. He retired two years later, still hitting home runs.

Hank Aaron continues to be a hero of mine and not just because of the childhood memories. He was a civil rights activist, he was a groundbreaking baseball executive, and he seemed to do it all while maintaining a squeaky clean image. He had to be that much better than everyone else on the field and off. I didn't know as a boy just how remarkable his success was: to succeed like he did as a Black man in America, he had to be extraordinary in every way. I honestly don't know how he would have fared in today's media environment, but from everything I know about him, he earned every bit of his acclaim, both professionally and personally. And even so, he knew, we all know, there were still those who rooted for his failure, even death, because of the color of his skin and the fact that he had the audacity to break the record of a white man.

Mom always cautioned us about heroes and didn't like us to even use the word, except when referring to comic book characters, but Hank Aaron's inspiration is one of the primary reasons I played baseball right up to early adulthood and continued, perhaps even in pale imitation of him, upon my "retirement" to coach teams right up through my mid-30's. It was this experience, coaching, that allowed me my first taste of working with young children, an experience that to this day informs my practice. 

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Aaron as a player was his consistency. He wasn't necessarily a flashy player. He didn't hit the longest home runs. He didn't awe us with acrobatic defensive plays. Yet year in and year out for 23 years, he went out there and expressed a workmanlike joy, being a man his teammates and coaches and fans could count on. When I was a boy, I wanted to be like him because of what he did, his athletic exploits, but today, I seek to be like him because of how he did it.

There are those who insist that we ought not look so far afield for our heroes, that they can and should be found closer to home, that those who provide and care for us are more deserving of that appellation. I see the point, but there's also a role for those we place on pedestals and gaze upon from a distance. Many of the heroes of my youth have let me down, but not Hammerin' Hank, not Hank the Bank. When his own home run record was broken, controversially, by Barry Bonds in 2006, he was among the first to congratulate Bonds, even as others, to this day, consider it a fraud, saying:

"I would like to offer my congratulations to Barry Bonds on becoming baseball's career home run leader. It is a great accomplishment which required skill, longevity, and determination. Throughout the past century, the home run has held a special place in baseball and I have been privileged to hold this record for 33 of those years. I move over now and offer my best wishes to Barry and his family on this historical achievement. My hope today, as it was on that April evening in 1974, is that the achievement of this record will inspire others to chase their own dreams."

I am not the only one Hank Aaron inspired. And he was not the only one who inspired me, but the hole I feel in my life right now, tells me how important his example has been. Even as a boy I knew I would probably never do what he did, but a part of how he did it, still lives in everything I do. 

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Sign up now to take advantage of New Year's pricing for my new 6-part e-course, The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think, in which I pull the curtain back on the magic that comes from treating children like fully formed human beings. This course is for educators, parents, and anyone else who works with young children. It's the culmination of more than 20 years of research and practice. I've been speaking on this topic around the world for the past decade and know that it can be transformative both for adults and children. For more information and to register, click here. Thank you! 

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This is the Story of Our Lives

When I was a boy, my parents tell me, I was obsessed with the family lawn mower, becoming excited whenever dad rolled up his shirtsleeves to tackle the grass. One day, from the backseat of the car, we heard the put-put-put of an unmuffled VW Beetle and I, according to family legend, began to shout excitedly, "Mower! Mower!" This is the story of how our family came to refer to this distinctive type of car as Mowers, a term that still comes up when it's "just us."

It was years before I came to understand that the rest of world called them Beetles or Bugs and that Mower meant nothing to anyone. Before coming to that understanding, however, there were arguments with playmates over who was right. I eventually even won over a few of the kids on my cul-de-sac, but ultimately I was forced to give it up as the evidence of the wider world began to pile up against what I'd learned when the world was just my family.

It's an experience we all have as we begin to move outwards from the home of our birth. It's one of the primal stories of humanity: we are home, we leave home and have adventures, then we return home. We find it in our mythologies, legends, and fairy tales. It is the plot line of many of our children's favorites, from Where the Wild Things Are to Alice in Wonderland to the Dora the Explorer. It's an evergreen theme because it is an evergreen experience.

Children grow up and discover that the world is not as it seemed from within the four walls of their homes. Humankind as a whole does the same. ~Carlo Rovelli

Going out, learning something new, then coming back. The experience changes us because learning changes us, and we find that what we come back to, the world within our four walls, is changed as well. I distinctly recall returning home after being teased by an older boy to scold my mother about how wrong she was to use the term Mower. In fact, that was the moment she told me the family story, revealing to me a truth about my own family, what I'd considered the known universe, about which I'd been totally ignorant. The fact that I'm still reflecting on this more than half a century later, is evidence that this seemingly small thing was a profound, or at least jarring, discovery.

I'm sure it was already ancient wisdom when Hereclitus wrote 2500 years ago that "The only constant in life is change." We live according to the arrow of time, even if scientists tell us that time is a mere figment of our collective imaginations. And time is another word for change. Indeed, we seem to need change, which is why we stray from our four walls in the first place. There must be more, we tell ourselves, and there is. But after a time the wild rumpus becomes too much and we seek to return home, only to find that it isn't as we left it, both because our experiences have changed us and because even home must follow the arrow of time. It's the story of our days, our month, our years, and our lives. 

It's the curse and blessing of our species to forever seek to move from not knowing to knowing. We become restless so we step out. Our adventures are stimulating, but eventually we are frightened or discombobulated or overwhelmed or tired and return home, but we can never go back to not knowing, even as we sometimes try to forget. Eventually, however, the new knowledge becomes one with the known universe and we once again set out on our adventures. This is the story of our lives.

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Sign up now to take advantage of New Year's pricing for my new 6-part e-course, The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think, in which I pull the curtain back on the magic that comes from treating children like fully formed human beings. This course is for educators, parents, and anyone else who works with young children. It's the culmination of more than 20 years of research and practice. I've been speaking on this topic around the world for the past decade and know that it can be transformative both for adults and children. For more information and to register, click here. Thank you! 

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!

What If Children Aren't Idiots Who Must Be Taught to Think

Much of what passes for education, not just in the US, but around the world, starts with the premise that children aren't all that bright, that they are essentially lazy, and that they can't be trusted to know what's best for themselves. Of course, few of us would admit to thinking such thoughts about preschoolers, but there are plenty of adults who will authoritatively assert these criticisms about older children, like teenagers.

Having worked with young children for most of my adult life, I can assure you that every one of them is a genius (a conclusion that is supported by NASA), they are far less inclined toward laziness (if it even exits) than most adults I know, and concerning matters beyond safety, schedules, and courtesy, who am I to tell a child that I know better? The teenagers I've known don't tick any of those stereotyped boxes either, but even if I stipulate that the haters are correct, that many, if not most, teens are ignorant, lazy, and self-destructive, then my question is: How did they get that way? I mean, honestly, how did they un-learn their genius, their motivation, and their ability to make good decisions for themselves?

Is it just in their nature? Are children doomed by biology to become surly, indifferent, and slothful? I doubt that. It makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective. No, to the degree that it's true, it's something we do to them, and from where I sit all signs point to it being a self-fulfilling prophesy.

"I'm beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think." ~Anne Sullivan

Our entire school system is based upon the premise that children are reluctant learners, that they must be compelled, coerced, tricked, and driven. Not only must we adults rein them up to the wagon for their own good, but we are then required to entice them toward a pre-determined destination with carrots, while always threatening from behind with a stick. Is it any wonder that after a few years of this, they lose their will? We give them "education" as a kind of meaningless drudge, as an authoritarian exercise that seems almost designed to break their free will, even as we insist we are attempting to instill the opposite. How can it end any other way when you've been robbed of your right to control what, how, and when you are to learn? We squander their genius by making them jump through our hoops.

"Learning is the human activity that least needs manipulation by others. Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful activity." ~Ivan Illich

Children either come to hate school because it has been rendered meaningless or, perhaps worse, they become creatures of the system:

The anxiety children feel at constantly being tested, their fear of failure, punishment, and disgrace, severely reduces their ability both to perceive and to remember, and drives them away from the material being studied into strategies for fooling teachers into thinking they know what they really don't know." ~ John Holt

Play-based education is self-directed learning. We start from the premise that children are geniuses, that they are naturally self-motivated learners, and that when left to pursue activities that they themselves find meaningful, they will come to discover what truly is best for themselves. This approach to education accords with what we know about the human instinct to learn: to become critical thinkers, to collaborate, and to create. Our traditional school system is not based upon evidence, but rather habit and the false premise that children are idiots.

"You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources? Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource!" ~Utah Phillips

There are those who nevertheless defend our current system, based on arguments that without "rigor" and compulsion children will never learn the value of "hard work." If they are to spend their days at their self-selected activities, how will they ever learn to put their nose to the grindstone? To do what they are told? To jump through society's hoops? These are the arguments of those who will forever attach education to the economy, as if we exist to serve it, rather than the other way around. It's a view of children as valuable natural resources, which means that we have a right to exploit them in the name of a greasy buck. "Hard work" is code for doing things we don't want to do and no free human, no matter how much they practice, gets good at that, except perhaps for people who have been broken, a fate I'd not wish on anyone. If you want to see real hard work, swing by a preschool playground where children are busy pursuing their own freely chosen meaningful activities: no one on earth works harder.

I have never met a child who is not curious and curiosity is the human urge to learn made manifest. Schooling seems to be designed to erase that curiosity and replace it with mere performance.

"This is really what the whole debate over compulsory schooling is about. Do we trust people's capacity to be curious or not?" ~Astra Taylor

 

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Sign up now to take advantage of New Year's pricing for my new 6-part e-course, The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think, in which I pull the curtain back on the magic that comes from treating children like fully formed human beings. This course is for educators, parents, and anyone else who works with young children. It's the culmination of more than 20 years of research and practice. I've been speaking on this topic around the world for the past decade and know that it can be transformative both for adults and children. For more information and to register, click here. Thank you! 

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!

Ideas for What to Say Instead of "Be Careful"

Awhile back, I riffed on what is popularly called "risky play," what author and consultant Arthur Battram argues we should call "challenging play," what I want to re-label "safety play," and what one reader pointed out used to just be called "play."

Whatever we call it, most people who read here agree that we need to give children more space to engage in their self-selected pursuits, even if they sometimes make us adults nervous. At the same time, it can be difficult it is to break the habit of constantly cautioning children with "Be careful!"

Adult warning to "be careful" are redundant at best and, at worst, become focal points for rebellion (which, in turn, can lead to truly hazardous behavior) or a sense that the world is full of unperceived dangers that only the all-knowing adult can see (which, in turn, can lead to the sort of unspecified anxiety we see so much of these days). Every time we say "be careful" we express, quite clearly, our lack of faith in our children's judgement, which too often becomes the foundation for self-doubt.

Sometimes people ask me about alternatives, such as saying, "Pay attention to your body." For me, "pay attention" has the same flaws as "be careful." They are both commands that give children only two choices -- obey or disobey. On top of that, they are both quite vague. Better, I think, are simple statements of fact that allow children to think for themselves; specific information that supports them in performing their own risk assessment. This reminds me of the "good job" or "well done" habit many of us adults have acquired, in that we know we ought not do it, but can't help ourselves. So, in the spirit in which I offered suggestions for things we can say instead of "good job",  here are some ideas for things to say instead of "be careful."

"That's a skinny branch. If it breaks you'll fall on the concrete."

"I'm going to move away from you guys. I don't want to get poked in the eye."

"That would be a long way to fall."

"When people are swinging high, they can't stop themselves and might hit you."

"That looks like it might fall down."

"Tools are very powerful. They can hurt people."

"I always check to make sure things are stable before I walk on them."

"Sometimes ladders tip over."

"You're all crowded together up there. It would be a long way to fall if someone got pushed."

"When you jump on people, it might hurt them."

"You are testing those planks before you walk on them."

"That's a steep hill. I wonder how you're going to steer that thing."

When we turn our commands into informational statements, we leave a space in which children can think for themselves, rather than simply react, and that, ultimately, is what will help children keep themselves safe throughout their lives.

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"Be careful" is just one of the ways that well-intended adults, through the words we habitually choose, create a reality for young children in which they are discouraged from, and sometimes even "punished" for, thinking for themselves. In so many ways, both overt and subtle, adults unwittingly tend to shut down critical thinking, replacing it with a reality in which mere reaction and obedience is rewarded. 

If you are keen to dig deeper into this phenomenon and to learn how you as an educator or parent can transform your language in ways that empower real learning, then my new six-part e-course, The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think, might be a great way to start your New Year. This is the culmination of more than 20 years of research and practice. I've been speaking on this topic around the world for the past decade and know that it can be transformative both for adults and children. Special pricing ends soon. To learn more and to register, click right here. We need more critical thinkers in the world! Thank you.

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