Authentic Childhood

The joke is that kids can't wait to grow up and adult wish they never did, but it wasn't necessarily true for me. For whatever reason, adulthood never looked all that great to me. I mean, sure, I did envy the fact that they could eat as many cookies as they wanted without asking first and I wouldn't have minded a later bed time, but when I considered the two life-stages, there was really no comparison.

When adults asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I knew to have an answer ready. I'd seen the expressions of disappointment when I replied, "I don't know." Adults wanted to dream through me, so I would say, "baseball player" or "Batman" or "Danny Partridge" because those were the things I pretended to be, but I knew that adulthood for a boy probably meant doing what my dad did, which was to leave each morning to spend the day in an office doing something with road maps. Not horrible, but not as good as being a kid.

At least they way we got to be kids. Today, I'm aware that I was one of the lucky ones. I'm not saying that my childhood was perfect, by any means, there were plenty of heartbreaks, failures, and pain, but it was authentic. Mom believed in childhood play. We had a few chores, I suppose, but mostly what Mom urged us to do was, "Go outside." So that's what we did, my brother and I. Outside was where we found the other  kids. Outside was where we found a world that was not under adult supervision. Outside was where time existed as a kind of balloon that kept getting bigger rather than the irreversible arrow of the adult world in which there were schedules and where time could be wasted. When we played outside, not a second was wasted, even if all we were doing was using pine needles and pebbles to dam up the water running in the gutters or turning our little red wagon into a race car.

"I can be down with school as long as school is down with authentic childhood," says Kisha Reid, founder and director of Discovery Early Learning Center and founder of the "Play Empowers" advocacy group while speaking with me at the Teacher Tom's Play Summit. Kisha's own childhood, as she describes it, resembled my own, in that she too has fond memories of roaming her neighborhood with friends, not wasting a single moment. In her I've found a kindred spirit. "Authentic childhood means what the child naturally needs and does when no one's telling them what they need and want to do."

When I talk with Kisha, every time I talk with Kisha, I'm aware that she is expressing my own motivations as an early childhood educator. Yes, I know a "teacher" is supposed to be all about "learning," even in a play-based program, but I think people would be shocked by how little I actually think about what or how or why the kids are learning because as far as I'm concerned "education" is just a fortunate byproduct of an authentic childhood. I know it's happening just as I know that muscles are built as children climb or run or dance. When you center the fitness aspects of climbing, running, and dancing, however, you diminish it, making it into an adult-ish drudgery called "exercise." The same thing happens with play: when we center the "learning," that is the moment we de-center the child, turning childhood into mere schooling.

This is why Kisha doesn't even call her program a school, instead telling parents that it is "a place for childhood."

"I think authentic childhood could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, from different walks of life," says Kisha. "For one child that could be sitting up in the loft and reading books all day . . . Then there's another child who literally comes in jumping all over the place, banging the drum, screaming, "We will rock you!" and moving his body and being big and loud. And that's his authentic childhood. It's almost like if we did that when we're young, we could make space for differences in adulthood, in humans, in accepting everyone for their differences as opposed to getting into this funnel where we're trying to create cookie cutter adults."

Kisha speaks to something deep within me when she talks about her work with young children and their families. I see my own motivations in her life's work to create a place for authentic childhood. 

Like Kisha, I find myself constantly drawing on my own experiences as a boy who really didn't want to grow up. I've figured out how to talk about "learning" and "education" because it's expected of me, but it is the gift of authenticity that I seek to pay forward. There are not enough Kisha Reid's in the world, but imagine if there were. Imagine if we all replaced "school" with "a place for childhood." Perhaps then we could discover authentic adulthood and none of us would ever have to grow up.

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To watch my entire interview with Kisha, please join us at Teacher Tom's Play Summit. What if the whole world understood the power of trusting children with the freedom to play, to explore their world, to ask and answer their own questions? What if everyone respected their right to learn in their own way, on their own time? What if we remembered that children must have their childhoods and that means playing, and lots of it? Teacher Tom's Play Summit  is a free, online conference that takes place June 20-25. Click here to get your free pass to all 24 of our incredible sessions with early childhood and parenting experts and thought leaders from around the world. Every one of these people are professionals who have placed children first. You will walk away from this event transformed, informed, challenged, and inspired to create a world that respects children and sets them free to learn and grow. Together we can, as presenter Raffi sings, "Turn this world around!"

"I can be down with school as long as school is down with authentic childhood." "Let's take over the world!" "Authentic childhood means what the child naturally needs and does when no one's telling them what they need and what to do." "Loose parts are anything you can't kill yourself with." "When I'm watching children and observing them . . . I'm deepening my knowing of myself and they're doing the same thing." "I think that we need to stop thinking of school as a separate thing from living." "I don't stand so solid in my beliefs that I won't question things when they're not working for children." "Just lose yourself in the magic of childhood."

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