Our Habits Determine Our Fate

The psychologist and philosopher William James, in his Talks to Teachers, wrote, "Education, in short, cannot be better described than by calling it the organization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior."

Education can mean other things, of course, but I've been wondering about this definition since I read it some months ago. At first blush, it seems thin and uninspiring -- the acquiring of habits and tendencies -- but what draws me to it is that it's about conduct and behavior without any mention of utility or subject matter.

For me, education has never had anything to do with utility, but I often feel alone in this. For most people, and especially policymakers, it seems the overwhelming utility of education is to get a job, to make something of ourselves, to set ourselves up for retirement, to leave something behind when we die. 

I'm fortunate to have found myself in early childhood education where I'm not usually expected to get children "career ready," although there is a great deal of pressure on its companion, "kindergarten readiness." The onus of this leads us to push children forward toward the specific skills and knowledge that we anticipate will be useful to them in kindergarten, where they will be pushed forward toward the specific skills and knowledge that we anticipate will be useful to them in first grade, and so on in a vicious cycle.

For all practical purposes, it's the same model as is used for manufacturing washing machines, each step, each grade, representing a spot along the assembly line. I like what my washing machine does for me, it's quite useful, but it will never do anything other than clean my clothing. 

But what if the endgame of education isn't utility at all, but rather the acquisition of "habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior"? What if the purpose was to allow young human beings to discover the habits and tendencies that contribute to their own, unique satisfying life, right now? So often, in our commitment to utility, I think we forget that young children are not washing machines, they do not exist to be useful, but rather to be purposeful, like, you know, a human being.

In our preschool, instead of being compelled to keep their eyes on the future, the children learn to behave and otherwise conduct themselves, right now, in ways that allow them to derive satisfaction from the present. With no one telling the children what future they must prepare for, they develop the habit and conduct of self-motivation. Pursuing a life of purpose within the context of community, means learning to work well with others. It means dealing with real conflicts and challenges and problems, right now. And it means acquiring the habits and conduct of a person with whom other people want to engage.

These tendencies -- self-motivation, working well with others, addressing challenges, being personable -- are the secrets to living a satisfying life. Indeed, these behaviors, far more than "phonetic awareness" or the ability to hold a pencil properly, are the real foundation from which a future is created rather than merely prepared for. This is the kind of education we discover when we abandon the taskmaster of utility.

When education is about conduct and tendencies to behavior, it means we are embracing what scientists are telling us about the nature of the human mind. As neuroscientist Patrick House puts it: "This must be the ultimate purpose of consciousness: to control a body."

Our minds, our thoughts and feelings, have evolved for this purpose: to control our behavior. Young children know this with their entire bodies. They live it. They know without "knowing" that their lives are defined by what they do, by the actions they take. James wrote, "Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action." This is what our children show us they understand when we stop pestering them to be still, to be quiet, and to focus on "readiness." My washing machine is always ready to wash my clothing, but it's no life for a human.

When we are made into washing machines, always ready, but only acting when someone pushes our buttons, we live for the laundry. When we understand, however, that our thoughts and feelings exist for the purpose of moving our bodies right now, we become fully integrated with life, thinking about what is in front of us, acting, receiving feedback, adjusting, and organizing our habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior that lead, right now, to a life of meaning. This is what it means to come alive, which is, for me, the only educational goal worth anything.

We don't determine our fate. We determine our habits. Our habits determine our fate.

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In this course we explore how even small changes in the way we speak with children can create environments in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. For me, this technology is the foundation of how I do play-based learning. It will transform your classroom or home into a place in which children are self-motivated to do the right thing, not because you said so, but because they've made up their own mind. This is a particularly good course to take with your whole team. Group discounts are available. Click here to join the waitlist and for more information.

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 Universal Project of Creation

When our school moved to its current location at The Center of the Universe, a group of us were standing around in the space we were to use as our playground in the side-yard of the Fremont Baptist Church. It was already a playground, but a largely disused one. The rusty, old equipment, other than the swing set, had to go, and as we stood there, we imagined what it could be.

We knew we wanted a "full body" sand pit. We had recently built one at our old place, but this was going to be a much larger one, big enough for a dozen or more kids at a time. The sloped playground was divided into an upper and lower half. Our plan was to put the sand pit at the top of the hill. It was going to be at least five times larger than our previous one.

Four-year-old Thomas had tagged along with his mother. He considered what we were planning. "It's too small. It should be huge. I should be a two level sand pit . . . With a boat in it." We went with his suggestion, which meant filling almost a third of the entire playground space with a depth of sand. It took two entire dump truck loads to fill it sufficiently. From Thomas' imagination our iconic sandpit became a reality.

"If I look around at the ordinary things in front of me -- the electric lamp, the right-angle-constructed table, the brightly glazed symmetrical ceramic cup, the glowing computer screen -- almost nothing resembles anything I would have seen in the Pleistocene," writes psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik in her book The Philosophical Baby, "All of these objects were once imaginary -- they are things that human beings themselves have created. And I myself, a woman cognitive scientist writing about the philosophy of children, could not have existed in the Pleistocene either. I am also a creation of the human imagination, and so are you."

The sand pit the children have now played in for a decade-and-a-half, that the adults have maintained, that we now take for granted as our attentions are drawn to the new and the novel, is part of this work of human imagination that we call life itself.

The Pleistocene represents the Earths' most recent ice age. It's when Homo sapiens evolved and began spreading around the globe alongside other hominoids like Neanderthals and Denisovans. We were not the smartest, strongest, or fastest, but we are the ones who survived, for better or worse, in large part because of our capacity to, collectively, imagine a new reality into existence.

Gopnik invites us to look around at this world of imagination in which we live, in which young children, generation after generation, through good times and bad, have, played their games of imagination, their "Let's pretend . . ." 

There were likewise owls and eagles and vultures during the Pleistocene. There were sharks, crocodiles, bison, sea turtles, cockroaches, wolves, and reindeer. There were mushrooms, mosses, conifers, cypress, oaks, and prairie grasses, all of which have survived to the present day. 

"More than any other creature," writes Gopnik, "human beings are able to change. We change the world around us, other people, and ourselves."

With all due respect to Gopnik, who I admire immensely, I wonder if this statement isn't a little bit biased. I mean, grasses and fungi and cockroaches have survived much longer than our flash-in-the-pan species, and they have unquestionably changed the world, including us. I mean, take wheat grass for instance. It wasn't that long ago that it was a grass amongst others, each blade producing a few kernels at a time, but it has now "trained" us humans to propagate it to the degree that it is far and away the largest food crop on Earth. We were a nomadic species until wheat and other grasses turned us into something else. Did we domesticate it or did wheat domesticate us?

Ah, but did wheatgrass begin by "imagining" an agricultural future the way Thomas did with our sandpit? Probably not, but neither did our human ancestors, who were simply playing with wheat grass, cooperating with it, finding mutual benefit from the things humans and wheat could do together. Plants have been around for some 470 million years, fungi for twice that long. Without them, we would not exist. It's not completely crazy to consider that plants and fungi invented us a mere 300,000 years ago for their own purposes.

Plants obviously don't have eyes, but they are completely covered in photoreceptive cells. Isn't that exactly what eyes are? Plants obviously don't have brains, but their interconnected root systems both look and act in ways similar to brains. They produce fruit, flowers, and shelter to lure us in, like anglers after fish. They seduce us with fragrances, flavors, medicines, and intoxicants. Is it really a bridge too far to consider that these are all products of non-human imagination?

When a newborn cries into nothingness did it imagine the loving presence that appears? Maybe not the first time or even the next, but eventually? Soon enough, we know that this baby will be saying to its friends, "Let's pretend . . ." 

Am I far-fetching? Probably, but it's a failure of imagination, I think, to not at least consider that when we imagine a future, then act to bring it about, we are acting not as mere automatons of evolution, but rather as collaborators in the universal project of creation. All it takes is a little imagination. 

This is what we do when we play. Play, human or otherwise, is nothing more or less than the engine of creation.

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In this course we explore how even small changes in the way we speak with children can create environments in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. For me, this technology is the foundation of how I do play-based learning. It will transform your classroom or home into a place in which children are self-motivated to do the right thing, not because you said so, but because they've made up their own mind. This is a particularly good course to take with your whole team. Group discounts are available. Click here to join the waitlist and for more information.

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 Be a Rare Thing in the World

The oldest sister had always responded to dogs with fear. As far as anyone could tell, she hadn't been nurtured into this fear, but rather came by it naturally. Her younger sisters didn't have this fear at first, delighting in dogs the way babies can, but before long, they began to respond to them in imitation of, or perhaps sympathy for, their older sister, running to their mother whenever a dog came near, even squeezing out some crocodile tears. The older sister, one could tell by the intensity of her behavior, continued to be genuinely terrified well into adolescence, but the younger two were clearly doing what they had learned to do. 

When we are very young, when we are babies, we respond to the world according to our own, unique inner light. We suck, we cry, we startle, we coo. Babies have no idea what is appropriate or inappropriate. Soon, however, we begin to mimic the people we see around us, mirroring their emotional responses, their behaviors, their preferences, and their choices. This is why, as adults, if we want the young children in our lives to behave in certain ways, we must role model that behavior. If we want courteous children, it starts with us being courteous to them. If we want children to be readers, we ourselves must read. This doesn't mean they will automatically and forever do what we wish, but if we are consistent, if we understand that we are playing a long game, the odds go way up that they will adopt the value, if not the exact habit, we intend for them.

James Baldwin wrote, "Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them." This is true for good and for bad. If we keep a tidy home, they are likely to, one day, keep one themselves. By the same token, we may believe that we've hidden our hypocrisies from them, or justified them, but we are mistaken. Our children notice, and mimic, both our vices and our virtues.

It's not just us they imitate. As children become teens they are notorious for imitating their peers, conforming to whatever trending "non-conformity." We see them dress the same, laugh at the same jokes, reject the same "traditional" values. Whereas we once heard our own phrases and tropes in their conversation, for better or worse, we now hear those of their friends. We tell them to "be yourself," to resist the pressure, but they must "try on" the costumes they find in their world, just as they tried on those princess dresses and capes in preschool.

When they looked up to us, and only us, their urge to imitate seemed somewhat in our control (even if we didn't always control ourselves), but now it's the world that is shaping them. Most of us understand that this must happen, but we never lose our memory of that baby, that natural child who came into our lives with its own, complete personality, untainted even by us. As they become more and more a part of the world, we hope that their "real self" is still in there somewhere, even as they seem committed to obliterating it.

The French author André Gide wrote, "If there is one thing each of them claims not to resemble it's . . . himself. Instead he sets up a model, then imitates it; he doesn't even choose the model -- he accepts it ready-made . . . The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate all this moral agoraphobia . . . What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate."

We've all felt this as we watch the young people we love, as they deny essential things about themselves in order not find themselves alone. We've done it ourselves. Every species learns through imitating others of their species, and we all, throughout our lives, at least from time to time, submit to the laws of mimicry, even when doing so means suppressing exactly that thing that makes us different, that gives us our worth.

It is the yin-yang problem of course. When others are running, we join them, and by doing so, we escape the flood. When others are jumping off the bridge, we think for ourselves, and by doing so, avoid injury or death. The later is the more difficult. Too many of us still jump off those metaphorical bridges.

When we are babies, we have no fear, no shame, no doubts, about that thing that gives us our worth. All too often, sadly, this is what we adults find ourselves trying to suppress. We can't let them climb so high or be so loud. We worry that they move too much, talk too little, cry too often, or show scant interest in this or that developmental stage. We strive, often despite ourselves, to bring them up to standards.

Then, often before we've realized it, we find that we need have only waited: mimicry and imitation are the defaults for neurotypical children. Suddenly, we're urging them to not worry so much about what other people think, to be themselves, to remember what it is that makes them unique, special, different. School doesn't help with its emphasis on standards, on obedience, on toeing the line. The children who thrive in school are those who mimic the approved role models, while every eccentricity becomes a "challenging behavior." 

Now we are faced with the most difficult thing of all: helping our children to not lose that "one rare thing" they possess, the one thing "which gives each of us his worth."

That has always been my greatest concern as a parent. That is my highest value as an educator. No one should have to fear what makes them different. Indeed, it should be celebrated, brought forward and cultivated. It's only by allowing that one rare thing to emerge that we can ever hope to find our unique purpose in life. And this should be the goal of any education worthy of its name.

The "laws of mimicry" will never go away, of course. They allow us to try out alternatives, to experience new perspectives. But imitation ought not ever be an end in itself, the way it too often is in our schools. As educators, as parents, if we want our children to flourish, to live lives of meaning and purpose, then we must, every day, in every moment, stand against fear, and give them our full-throated permission to be a rare thing in the world.

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Get your summer PD out of the way right now! In this 6-week course we explore how even small changes in the way we speak with children can create environments in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. For me, this technology is the foundation of how I do play-based learning. It will transform your classroom or home into a place in which children are self-motivated to do the right thing, not because you said so, but because they've made up their own mind. This is a particularly good course to take with your whole team. Group discounts are available. Click here to join the waitlist and for more information.

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 are Your Goals for Your Child?

I've asked thousands of parents the question, "What are your goals for your child?" It's something a lot of us ask at the beginning of a school year or when we are first getting to know a family. Far and away, the top answers are some version of, "I just want my child to be happy," or "I just want my child to love learning." These are the answers I expect, especially from first time parents. 

The good news is that their children already love learning, they were born that way, so no problem there. Our only job, and it's made far simpler by a play-based curriculum, is to do no harm.

Happiness is, of course, another matter. It's the only emotion that tends to disappear the moment you become aware of it. It's a tricky, personal, and ephemeral thing, something we spot in others, but when we ourselves are happy we daren't look directly at it. It's like those phantom movements in our peripheral vision that Icelanders say are the "hidden people," elves and fairies and whatnot, who flee when you turn their way. Because of this phenomenon, Aristotle asserted that the only way humans can ever know if they've lived a happy life is in hindsight, from the perspective of our death beds, looking back over it all. This, of course, doesn't mean that we ought not pursue happiness, only that we have to accept that the pursuit is the most important part of that project, which is, at bottom, what self-directed learning is all about: the pursuit of happiness.

So I have no problem assuring parents that their preschool goals will be met. Their children will continue to love learning because they will be free to pursue happiness within the context of a community. The problem is that we too often fail to understand that the love of learning and the pursuit of happiness must be ends unto themselves, not means to an end. It's when we attempt to wrangle these highest of goods into the service of some more prosaic result, like a grade or a score or a certificate or a job, that we begin to undermine the joy of learning, replacing it with the avoidance of corrective sticks. It's when we begin to make the pursuit of happiness into a hopeless chase after carrots that are always dangled just out of reach.

No wonder so many children wind up finding school to be a disappointment: it is the place where they are taught that learning is a chore and something like happiness must be found in the praise of adults.

"I just want my child to be happy." "I just want my child to love learning." Laudable goals, indeed, the highest. My goal for these parents is that they come to see that the only way to get there is to set their children free and to trust them to know what to do with their freedom.

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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.

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 "Disrespectful" and "Destructive" Children are Telling Us

Not long ago, I was tagged in a Facebook thread of teachers complaining about the behavior of their students. I only spent a few minutes scrolling through the comments, but most of them seemed to be coming from middle school teachers in public schools who were accusing the kids of being disrespectful and destructive. Some even provided photographic evidence of vandalism and general disregard for property.

"Uncaring" and "disconnected" parents seemed to be receiving most of the blame with the Covid pandemic coming in a close and intertwined second. Unaddressed mental health challenges were mentioned as a cause as was our namby-pamby society in which adults are no longer allowed to hit children to "teach them respect." In fairness, there were a few commenters who pointed their fingers at modern schooling itself, but they were few and far between. A huge percentage of these teachers asserted that they were quitting their jobs as soon as possible.

I clicked away after a minute or two, however, in part because I've been trying to remain conscious of my online scrolling behavior, but mostly because my personal focus is preschool-aged children, not middle schoolers.

In my conversation with author, educator, and parenting and resilience specialist Maggie Dent for Teacher Tom's Podcast she made the off-hand comment, "Teenagers are preschoolers on steroids." (There's a reason she's called the "Queen of Common Sense.")

In preschool, we say that behavior is communication. If a preschooler behaves disrespectfully or destructively we would immediately assume that they were trying to tell us that they're sad, afraid, confused, overwhelmed, frustrated, angry, or otherwise dysregulated, and it's our job, as the adults, to try to figure out what it is they are telling us. Their family life might well have something to do with it. For instance, it's quite common for a formerly single child to engage in selfish behavior while adjusting to a new baby at home. Maybe someone in the family has lost their job. Maybe there are marital problems. These kinds of things impact teenagers as well. 

In my experience, most troubling behaviors have their roots in something going on at home, but it would never occur to me as a preschool teacher to blame parents. 

When I think of the behavior of these young teenagers, most of whom are at an age that traditional cultures consider to be adults, I wonder if maybe they're the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. These teachers seemed to be insisting that this kind of behavior is relatively new, that it didn't used to be this way. These teachers seem to be reporting from all corners of the country. Now, granted, this Facebook thread, like all gripe-fests, is a self-selected group which is not inclusive of those who are not experiencing challenging behaviors or who feel on top of things, but this isn't the first time I've heard about rising disrespect and destructiveness. 

Maybe these children's behavior is the tip of a much larger iceberg. Maybe the disrespect and destructiveness isn't isolated to middle school classrooms. Indeed, it's quite clear that it isn't. Some days it feels as if the entire world is behaving like these middle schoolers.

Young children who behave disrespectfully, I've found, are the children who are treated disrespectfully by the adults in their lives. Young children who behave destructively, I've found, are the children who feel they have little choice in their lives, who feel trapped or caged or otherwise un-free to engage the world in personally meaningful ways.

One of the reasons I strive to stop scrolling is because too much of what I find there is disrespect, destruction and finger-pointing. It's not just middle schoolers, it's all of us. Perhaps not you or me, but our behavior as a culture is communicating, and what I hear it saying is "I am human, too!"

What I've found with preschoolers is that disrespect and destructiveness tends to disappear when I stop trying to control them and instead make the effort to listen to what their behavior is communicating. Often, all it takes is that: listening. When I listen, I understand that these children are only asking for the same thing all of us are asking for: to be allowed to pursue a life of meaning and purpose in a reasonably safe environment of respect. When we don't get that, we often respond with disrespect and destruction.

When I listen to young children, more often than not, I hear myself, and that is where understanding begins.

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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.

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 Four Angry Ship Builders

Charlotte said, "I'm going to build a ship," and got to work arranging the blocks.

Ships have always been a popular way for the kids to use our large wooden blocks. It's a simple build which normally involves arranging the blocks into a deck, flat on the floor. Each time Charlotte would place a block, however, one of her classmates would step on it, which frustrated her. 

"Hey, I'm building a ship!"

There was a lot of action in the block area and it got so she was chasing someone off her ship every few seconds. She responded by upping the intensity of her objections.

It didn't seem like anyone was intentionally provoking Charlotte. The situation was more a result of attempting to work on a solo project in a crowded, active area. After having been reprimanded several times by Charlotte, Henry paused for a moment to survey this corner of the rug, and in doing so he seemed to suddenly see the world from Charlotte's perspective. "I'm going to help build the ship." And with that he began arranging blocks.

Without directly acknowledging Henry, Charlotte began to chase the other kids off, still angrily, by saying, "Hey, we're building a ship!"

And Henry took on the tone as well, "Hey, we're building a ship!" Now we had two intense ship builders. 

Soon Audrey joined them, pushing large blocks into place. She said nothing, but wore a fierce, tight-jawed expression as she worked.

"Hey, we're building a ship!" "Hey, that's our ship!"

As the three angry builders made their herky jerky progress, Lilyanna, who had been dancing about the block area to the beat of some internal rhythm, and therefore largely oblivious to the builders, had as a consequence been chased off the burgeoning ship more times than I could count. As she turned a sort of pirouette on the ship deck, the builders said once more, loudly, "Hey, we're building a ship!"

Lilyanna was offended, putting her hands on her hips defiantly, commanding, "Stop!" Saying "stop" forcefully is a technique we teach the children for when someone is hurting them, frightening them, or taking their things. Some kids, however, find it so powerful that they try it out in any circumstance in which they find themselves at odds with others.

This lead to a silent stand-off, with the three builders standing face-to-face with Lilyanna, angry faces all around. Finally, Charlotte said, as if castigating the world, "This is our ship! Mine, Henry's, Audrey's and Lilyanna's!"

Then the four angry ship builders got back to work.

******

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.

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!

It Works Every Time

Einar Jónsson

The two-year-old was standing at the gate, his fingers through the slats, crying after his mommy who had left. The grandmother of another child was sitting with him. I wanted to go take her place, not because she was doing anything wrong, but because it was the first day of a summer session. I imagined the grandma was there to enjoy it with her own grandchild, and I saw it as a big part of my job to be with the kids when they struggled with the transition into their time with us. That said, there were some 30 other kids to be welcomed, along with their parents, and I had several other things to do to get things launched, so I left them there, knowing that at least the poor boy wasn't abandoned, even if he was feeling that way.

It took about 10 minutes in order to carve out the time to get to them. He was still crying. This was the first time we had spoken, other than my "I'm happy to see you" greeting when he first arrived in his mother's arms. I sat beside him on the steps, used his name, and asked by way of confirmation, "Are you sad because your mommy left?"

He nodded.

Several of my old friends had followed me, excited to see me after a break, wanting to be in my sphere for a bit to start their days. "Why is he crying?" "What's wrong?" "Teacher Tom, I want to show you that I learned to pump myself on the swings." I told them that I was going to talk to this boy for awhile, using his name again, letting them know that I would be with them shortly, saying, "We'll come find you when he's finished with his cry."

As I'd managed our space in this way, he had turned away from the gate, still whimpering, but obviously listening. When they had gone he turned his face back to the gate and resumed his cry.

I said, "You're sad your mommy left. It's okay to be sad about that. I'm going to be with you while you're sad, but I want you to know that mommies always come back. Your mommy will come back." I then verbally walked him through our daily schedule, ending with, "Then I'll read a story and mommy will come back." I had a passing thought about what I would do if this didn't "work," before remembering that the goal is not to end his crying, but rather to create a space in which he could finish his cry. Of course, it would "work," it always "works" when one person sits with another like this, calmly making statements of fact.

I asked if he wanted me to hold him. He nodded yes, but when I touched him, the recoil of his body said no. I asked if he wanted to sit beside me. He wanted to keep standing. I said, "Okay, then I'll sit here with you while you're sad about mommy leaving." After a couple minutes, one of my old friends raced up, demanding excitedly, "Teacher Tom, you have to come see our major overflow." "Major overflow" is the term the kids had coined for when they filled a 20 gallon tub with water using the the cast iron hand pump, then dumped it down the hill, creating a river with a waterfall as it plunges from the upper level of the sandpit to the lower. I answered that I couldn't come right away because I was sitting with this boy who was missing his mommy. The older girl widened her eyes, looked at him, then said insistently, "He can come watch it too!"

I asked him if he wanted to see the major overflow. Still weeping, he nodded. I stood and said, "I will go with you. I can hold your hand." He took my proffered hand, and slowly we walked to the sandpit where we witnessed the promised event, which was accompanied by big kids cheering with the kind of joy that can only come from a collective accomplishment. "Did you see it, Teacher Tom?"

I answered that we had seen it, referring of course to the two-year-old who had, it seemed finished his cry. Soon, he was engaged with the water, probably still missing mommy, but no longer incapacitated by the feelings it evoked.

This is the job. We're not here to make things better, to end the crying, or to distract them from missing their mommies. We're not even there to soothe them any more than we're there to "good job" them. Becoming soothed is their job. Cheering for their own accomplishments is their job. Our job is to be with them when they're crying and when they're cheering, speaking truth, and creating space for them to feel exactly how they feel for as long as they need to feel it. It "works" every time.

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 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.

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!

"Children Do Not Like Being Incompetent Any More Than They Like Being Ignorant"

As a child, there were certain adults who I instantly liked, whereas there were others for whom I would take an immediate dislike. It generally came down to how they treated me. If they looked me in the eye, spoke in their normal voice, laughed at my jokes, not my mistakes, and refrained from such intrusive things as patting me on the head, pinching my cheeks, or picking me up without my consent, then they were one of the "good guys."

Most adults in mixed-age social settings would just ignore me, which was fine, because I would likewise ignore them, preferring the company of my fellow children, but there were always some who would loom at me, smiling too widely, speaking too loudly, sometimes even descending into a kind of baby talk. They might have been well-intended, but I resented their insipid, prying questions, questions they would never dare ask an adult they didn't know: "What are you going to be when you grow up?" or "Are you a good boy for your teacher?" They would look around at the other adults as I obediently replied beaming condescendingly as if they were a confederacy of superior beings deigning to include the cute, precious, innocent child for a moment.

To this day, there are few things more certain to set this early childhood educator's teeth on edge than adults who condescend to children. As a boy, the irritation was with their obvious phoniness and their clear, insulting assumption that I was some kind of baby. Now, however, I understand that it is even worse. These are adults, and there are more of them now than ever, who see children not as an individual humans, but rather as an idea, a stereotype. They don't see actual people, but rather their concept of children as incomplete adults -- simple, unformed, incompetent, and so so so charmingly innocent. It's okay to command or control them, to even lie to them, just so long as they can convince themselves that it's "for their own good."

Many of these people are in charge of schools and curriculum. Many are teachers. There are even parents who start off with this attitude only to spend the next couple decades mourning the loss of their vision of what a child is as their own child proves to be an actual human being. These are the parents who think they are doing their child a service by protecting them from learning about sex, gender, or racism because they are too tender and dear to be exposed to such things.

John Holt writes, "It is condescending when we respond to qualities that enable us to feel superior to the child. It is sentimental when we respond to qualities that do not exist in the child but only in some vision or theory that we have about children . . . Children do not like being incompetent any more than they like being ignorant. They want to learn to do, and do well, the things they see being done by bigger people around them. This is why they soon find school such a disappointment; they so seldom get a chance to learn anything important or do anything real. But many of the defenders of childhood, in or out of school, seem to have this vested interest in the children's incompetence, which they often call 'letting the child be a child.'"

We are born into the shock of light, cold, and sound, then must spend our first days learning to live with it. From the moment we come into this world, we are fully aware that there is pain, fear, and that life is often unfair. We are never innocent in this life: the idea of childhood innocence is really just adults romanticizing ignorance. Our children do not need to be protected from the hard lessons of life, even if that were possible. They do not benefit from our theories about what children are and are not. They are here on this earth, like all of us, to learn what it means to be alive and our responsibility as important adults in their lives is to be fellow travelers, consoling them when the lessons are hard, helping them when the tasks are difficult, but most of all loving them as the capable, competent humans they are.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 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.

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!

They are a Head Taller Than Themselves

I was at Archie McPhee's in Seattle, the best store in the world, when I suddenly found an impossibly tiny boy at my knees. He said, eyes wide, "You're here."

It took me a moment, but I finally recognized him as one of my two-year old students. Seeing him out of context had thrown me a bit. Here, out in the world, he stuck me as so much younger than he did at school, not just smaller, but less mature, less assured. At school, he was a leader amongst his peers, always the first to try new things, bold, even a bit cocky, but here was, well, wee in every way.

This has happened to me before -- in parks, restaurants, and on the street -- running into children who seem physically, intellectually, socially, and emotionally younger than they do at school. 

Psychologist Lev Vygotsky wrote, "In play a child always behaves beyond their average age, above their daily behavior; in play it is as though they were a head taller than themself."

This is what happens when we get to know children in an environment where they have permission to play. 

When we play, we are our emergent selves. When we play we are in a state of becoming, of learning, of leaving old ideas behind, of toppling the status quo. When we play, we are making way for the new ideas, for the new status quo we are discovering, exploring, and creating through our self-selected course of study.

Parents often remark that their children are so much better "behaved" at school, more "cooperative," and more "mature." That's because at our school, they are a head taller than themselves. 

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 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.

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!

Learning to Be Alone With Your Thoughts and Reveries

I spent most of my free time outdoors as a boy. I'd like to say that's where I chose to be, and I certainly have a lot of fond memories of playing outdoors, but it's also where Mom wanted us kids to be. She might let us watch a single TV program, but then we were shooed outside so that our eyes wouldn't "turn square." Any running or rowdiness was to be taken outside. For our own good, and her own, we were turned outdoors as long as there was still light in the sky.

Usually, we didn't object, especially since outside was where the other kids were, but I also have memories of long afternoons alone in my room. I could spend hours building a fort with my blocks, then populating it with toy soldiers, good guys and bad guys. When it was finally time for the shooting to begin, I would track the path of each individual bullet from the barrel of the gun to its target which I would knock over, dead or wounded, sometimes causing them to fall dramatically from the top of a tower. In the end, the entire fort would be destroyed in slow motion, one block at a time.

Sometimes I would set up one of our family board games -- like Monopoly -- then play all the pawns as my own.

My stuffed animals had personalities, social relationships, even entire communities, complete with families, friendships and rivalries.

As I got a little older I would sort, order, and rank my baseball cards based on statistics or the poses of the pictured athletes.

And then there was always drawing, hours and hours of drawing with pencils and pens, often detailed war scenes. Echoing my block play, I would take the time to track the path of each bullet with dotted lines, making sure every Nazi got what was coming to him. (I wasn't war obsessed, but we lived near Ft. Jackson and it played a role in my imaginary life.) One of these pictures was even selected to be hung at the South Carolina State Fair.

I'm fully capable of being a social and active person, but I'm also inclined to lose myself in my thoughts and reveries. In fact, writing this blog each morning is part of that. I get up at 5 a.m. for the quiet, for the solitude, to recapture that feeling I had as a boy sorting his bottle cap collection. It's not about limiting distractions because the early morning is full of them -- the mocking bird songs, the rumble of garbage trucks, the slow, sure rising of the sun -- but maybe it is a little bit about curating them. 

I love the unmitigated rambling of my thoughts, the stewing over things, the wondering and wishing. Few things delight me more than to imagine how I would distribute a financial windfall. My wife and I call it "spending Yugoslavian dollars."

You know that I'm fully comfortable with you when I start surfacing my internal dialog in your presence. When I first started doing this with my wife she would say, "Stop obsessing!" as if my mind were plaguing me, but she now understands that I take great and (usually) private joy in letting my mind gallop to no purpose other than because it is a nice way to pass the time.

I know a lot of people who wish they could turn their minds off, who want to stop obsessing. Often they attempt to do this with distraction: watch a program, go to a museum, exercise, socialize, anything to avoid being alone with their thoughts and reveries. And, of course, smartphones have become the go-to distraction. 

A few days ago, we attended a 40th anniversary screening of the Academy Award winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk. The director, Robert Epstein, is a friend and neighbor and the theater was full of fellow friends and neighbors. We greeted one another with hugs and handshakes, but then most settled into their seats and turned on their private screens to await the opening credits. I've stopped carrying my phone with me when I go out, so I found myself alone in a crowd. I was instantly transported to being a boy in church during a dull sermon when I would imagine the heroism I would display should we suddenly be rocked by an earthquake, or the adventure we would have if the entire building revealed itself to be a space ship sent to carry us all off to another planet, or simply the satisfaction I would experience from calculating the number of people in the pews, hymnals in the racks, or panes of stained glass in the windows.

This is a skill I learned as a boy, this comfort with, and even craving for, being alone with my thoughts and reveries. I know I'm not the only one worried about what we are losing in this era of ubiquitous screens. It really is possible to never be alone with yourself. Maybe this is a skill that can be acquired as an adult, but it's not the same thing as meditation which seeks to quiet the "chattering monkeys." I'm talking about listening to those monkeys, taking pleasure in their voices, and letting them carry me where they will, or where I will. 

Maybe it's because I learned to enjoy my quiet time as a boy that it feels to me that this is the only time to learn it, but I can say that when I look back over the arc of my life, I've spent many of my most enjoyable hours alone amongst my thoughts and reveries. Maybe I've just made friends with my obsessiveness. I don't know. But I do know that many adults, and increasingly many children, have no idea what to do with their quiet time. Ready access to screens as a boy would have likely meant that I would not have learned it at all. Maybe I wouldn't even know enough to miss it.

This is not just about smartphones, however. Most young children today are spending the bulk of their waking hours in preschools and day cares, always amidst a crowd, always stimulated and distracted, always on schedule, never alone in their room, or any room. Indeed, we've come to a point where we believe it's a danger to leave a child unsupervised in a room. When do they get to track the path of individual bullets or make an entire world from stuffies? 

Yet, at the same time, we are facing a national crisis of loneliness. I can't help but think they are connected.

Maybe one of the antidotes to loneliness is learning how to be alone with our thoughts and reveries, to know how to embrace the monkeys. We focus on the smartphones, but maybe they aren't the cause, but rather a symptom.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 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.

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!