Training for the Unexpected

In science journalist David Toomey's book Kingdom of Play, he writes about an animal geneticist and ethologist named David Wood-Gush who established the "Edinburgh Pig Park," a place where domesticated animals were allowed to roam freely. The idea was that they could live as closely to their natural state as possible, yet still be easily studied by scientists. It was known at the time that pigs that played more tended to healthier, so Wood-Gush and his colleague Ruth Newberry decided that understanding more about pig play would lead to more humane treatment of pigs.

Like many mammals, one of the forms of pig play is to run around. This makes sense to scientists because, according to one of the major theories about the function of play in animals is that it allows us to practice skills we might need in the future. Running is obviously a good way to avoid future predators. One thing that surprised the researchers, however, was that periodically, while in the midst of running, piglets would, for no apparent reason, fling themselves upon the ground, scramble back to their feet, then continue running. This seemed like a less adaptive behavior. Indeed, it seemed like a good way to wind up as lunch.

Newberry continued to pursue this question and, along with colleagues in the US, came up with an idea they called "training for the unexpected." In the real world, an animal is running in natural terrain, which means it's littered with tripping and slipping hazards. The pig flop-over, they speculated, was in fact practice for the real possibility of having to recover from a fall while being pursued. "We hypothesize that a major ancestral function of play is to rehearse behavioral sequences in which animals lose full control of their locomotion, position, or sensory/spatial input and need to repair their faculties quickly."

There is no agreed upon definition of what play is among scientists, but this notion of "training for the unexpected" has become central to our current efforts to understand what play is all about. Evidence of this phenomenon is all around us. Young children are famous for putting themselves into disorienting positions. I've watched countless children doing their own version of the piglet flop. Children spin on swings, roll down hills, and diverge from almost every straight-and-narrow path in order to clamber or climb. Often their "flops" are objectively risky behaviors. And we all know that once is rarely enough, they must do it again and again and again, which is the hallmark of practice or training.

It doesn't make much of a stretch to see that their dramatic play is likewise an aspect of this phenomenon. By pretending to be someone or something they are not, they are preparing themselves to respond to the surprises that life will inevitably offer them. In contrast, so much of what we call schooling is focused on the knowable, the predictable, the standard, and planning for the future, but we all know that much of life as it's lived, perhaps most of it, is about how we respond to the unexpected, the tripping and slipping. As the Yiddish adage has it, "Man plans and God laughs." Play is, in this context, how animals prepare to get the last laugh: we may fall, our plans may go awry, but because we played, we know how to get back up and keep going.

We are currently experiencing an alarming spike in childhood anxiety, with children as young as three being treated for it. This is not true of all anxiety, but much of it manifests as fear of the future, and specifically a fear that we will not be up to the unexpected challenges that lie ahead. It's not a coincidence that the incidence of childhood anxiety is peaking at the same time that children are experiencing a deficit of play. As psychologist and retired professor of research Peter Gray writes, "Over the same decades that children's play has been declining, childhood mental disorders have been increasing . . . the rise in mental disorders among children is largely the result of the decline in children's freedom." In a world in which children are not free to play, in which they are over-protected and over-managed, in which they are forever being groomed exclusively for the expected and shielded from the unexpected, we are robbing them of opportunities to prepare themselves for the unexpected. No wonder they're anxious.

When an individual piglet flops, of course, it doesn't know it's training for the unexpected. It's doing it because it's fun thing to do. It's so fun that they do it again and again. Porcine play, like human play, like the play of animals ranging from bees to octopuses to elephants, has evolved as an almost universal adaptation to world in which man plans and God laughs. We are meant to do fun things, even if they are a bit risky. As the German philosopher and psychologist Karl Groos wrote in his groundbreaking 1896 book The Play of Animals, "The animal does not play because he is young. He has a period of youth because he must play."

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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!

Death Play

Last week I wrote about talking with children about death. Actual death. The kind of death talk that comes up when there is a dead body, like a bird carcass, or a when a beloved person is, from one day to the next, no longer part of your life. 

But there is another more common kind of death talk around the preschool that falls into the theoretical or maybe even fictional category. The kind they pick up from movies or video games or older siblings. The kind of death talk that involves saying, "I'm going to kill you!" or "You're dead." It's the kind of death talk that might even make them laugh together like at a taboo subject, which, to be honest, it is.

I spent some of my own preschool years living not far from Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina. I don't remember a time when I didn't know that part of what soldiers did involved killing and being killed. Naturally, we neighborhood kids played soldier games that involved fighting wars. In these games, death involved falling to the ground, then counting to 10. We even practiced dying, making a show of our death throes like we sometimes saw on TV. It's tempting to blame modern media, but, you know, there's a lot of this kind of thing in Shakespeare as well, and before that, there were those Ancient Greek tragedies, and before that I have no doubt that humans acted out death around the campfire.

This kind of "death talk" is related to actual death, but is so abstracted from the pain, the grief, and the permanence, that it's almost a different thing. It's death play. And it's important, just as it's important that young children have permission to play with anything about which they have questions. Actual death, like I discussed last week is only one aspect of death. If we are ever going to understand anything, we must be free to examine it from every perspective. Play is how we do this and death is a subject around which we will always have questions.

It freaks us out when a four-year-old says, "I'm going to kill you!" At best it strikes us as unsavory. We worry, especially when it frightens other children. I mean, even if these young humans are unclear about what death or killing means, part of our responsibility is to ensure that children don't feel unsafe in our environments, and this sounds like a threat. We know that the child making the threat possesses neither the intent nor ability to carry it out. We know it's an experiment. We know it's play. But we worry that the other children won't know that so we tend to intervene. At a minimum we want to assure the other children that they will not be killed . . . whatever that means to them.

It always depends on the specific circumstances, but if a child says to me, "I'm going to kill you!" (and it happens), I'll respond calmly and truthfully, "I don't want to be killed." If they say it to another child, I will turn to the child being threatened and ask, calmly, "Do you want to be killed?" If they say they don't want to be killed, then I'll say, "She says she doesn't want to be killed," although quite often that child will agree to be killed the way we did in our neighborhood games.

In our modern world with what seems like 24/7 mayhem and murder, I understand if this strikes some readers as crass, unsympathetic, or even dangerous. I understand why some of us feel the urge to draw bright red lines about play that involves violence and death. I get it, but I also know that we have always lived in a world that includes violence and death. We might protect young children from it for a time, but it will inevitably get to them, especially in group settings, even if we think it's "too early" . . . And then they will have to play with it. I think most of us understand that when we kibosh anything that children really need to understand, we just push it underground, and then we lose our ability to be anything other than an authority from which to hide.

Better, I think, is to notice it, then before responding, make sure we are reacting to what is happening in front of us rather than our own prejudices and fears. My own racing heart is not an indication of what is going on with the kids. Obviously, we protect children if they feel genuinely threatened, but more often than not I find that no one is taking it nearly as seriously as I am. Most of the time they know it for what it is: pretend, play, words and ideas that are clearly powerful and significant, the kinds of real things that demand to be explored. And the way we explore is through play.

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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!

"All Wise People Change Their Minds"

As a boy, we would occasionally catch my mother in what we saw as inconsistency. Instead of denying it, she would reply, "All wise people change their minds."

It could be frustrating, but it's a response that has served me well throughout my adult life, not because it's a defense against accusations of hypocrisy, but rather because it's true.

The great American poet Walt Whitman phrased it perfectly:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes).

Albert Einstein said, "The measure of intelligence is the ability to change." Stephen Hawking put a different spin on it: "Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change." Neither of these undisputed geniuses ever took an IQ test. Indeed, Hawking famously said that they are for losers.

As educators, intelligence falls into our balliwick. Parents come to us knowing that their children are intelligent. They've seen it with their own eyes. "My Angela can already write her letters." They've heard it with their own ears. "My Marcus makes up such stunning songs." They've been present for the genius of their first word, their first step, their first mind-blowing question. They remember when this baby couldn't talk or walk or write or sing, and now they can. This child is obviously intelligent. They've seen them change, day-by-day, from a newborn into a child and they come to us educators to foster that obvious intelligence. 

The protagonist of Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower is a 15-year-old named Lauren whose special "genius" is hyperempathy. In the face of a dystopia caused by a combination of greed and climate change, she invents a religion/philosophy she calls Earthseed:

All that you touch

You Change

All that you Change

Changes you

The only last truth

Is Change

God

Is Change.

All that evidence that parents see as intelligence is a function of change and intelligence is about both our ability and adaptability when it comes to this "last truth."

If humans were fixed entities we would have perished long ago. If we didn't contradict ourselves, if we did not contain multitudes, our species would not have demonstrated the intelligence to survive. Intelligence cannot be measured by tests, but rather by close observation of behavior. As neuroscientist and author Antonio Damasio says, "Bacteria and plants are intelligent. We can tell by their behavior."

This is what we do when we observe the children we have set free to play. We take note of their behaviors, we notice, like their parents did, how they change and grow, how they shape their world and how the world shapes them. When they are being harmed, of course, we step in, but when they struggle, which is a far different thing, we stand back because change is in the offing. This is a moment for them to show us their intelligence.

Change is often uncomfortable, it requires failure and struggle, and it demands courage. When we swoop in with our "teaching" or "help," we too often rob children of this opportunity apply their unique intelligence. My heroes are those children who rebuff our interventions, shouting, "I do it!" They know that if they are to change, if they are to grow, if they are to behave intelligently, then it must be on their own terms.

We have some control of their world in the form of our classroom environments. We provide space, materials, and other people. We make them safe, beautiful, and varied. We provide opportunities for change, but it is the children themselves that must do the growing. And we can never forget that there is a whole world beyond our classroom wall over which we have no control.

Intelligence can't be measured, but it can be observed. Intelligence is about changing and adapting. An intelligent person becomes a new person with each passing day. An intelligent person contains multitudes. An intelligent person is a new person each time we meet them.

What we call schooling is far too focused on those tests for losers, those IQ tests that prove little more than the ability to pass tests. A psychologist who administers these tests to preschoolers told me that, at best, they are valid for six months because "young children change so fast." They are too intelligent for a damned test.

Play (or self-directed learning) and observation is the gold standard if intelligence is our goal. Learning is always about change and all wise people change their minds.

******

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!

Be Curious, Not Judgmental

Many years ago, I came across some very large static cling decals featuring a variety of barnyard animals. While goofing around with them, I discovered they stuck nicely to the exterior of my car: a cow, a pig, a goat, a rooster, and so on. So, I did what any self-respecting preschool teacher would do. I covered my car in them. The kids, as I'd hoped, were delighted. But not everyone was. Indeed, I began to notice that many adults, as they passed in front of me in a crosswalk or pulled up beside me at a light, would furrow their brows, even glare at me, as if trying to figure out what kind of monster would do such a thing to their car. When I smiled at them, they would look away, making it clear they had judged me to be a dubious character.

In fairness, not all adults reacted this way, but it was a common enough response that I began to remark on it to my friends. One of them speculated, "Maybe they think you're some kind of radical animal rights activist." Another pointed out that some people are automatically offended by anything that doesn't fit their preconceived notions. Yet another dismissed the glowering strangers as jealous: "They're afraid to do it to their car so they've decided they hate it on your car." Maybe they simply thought the farm animal clings to be ugly and they were wrinkling their noses in disgust. Whatever the case, it was clear that a sizable number of adults I came across were judging me based upon those innocuous animal decals.

My jeans often look like the picture at the top of this post, worn at the knees because I spend so much of my time kneeling.

Children will ask me, "Why do you have holes in your pants, Teacher Tom?" I'll tell them that they've become this way because I spend so much time crawling on the floor, getting on their level, playing with them. I'll say that they are my "church pants" because they are so hole-y, a joke that usually goes over their heads while making their parents moan. The youngest children might not ask the question at all, but I know they're curious because I feel their little fingers exploring them, caressing my kneecaps or fiddling with the dangling threads. Some of the kids have their own "Teacher Tom pants" that they wear to school, which they model for me by way of connection. "We're twins, Teacher Tom!"

Adults are far more likely to ask the same question in the spirit of judgment rather than curiosity. "Why do you have to wear those pants?" they'll ask, but what they mean is something like "Those aren't appropriate for a grown man." Again, in fairness, most adults don't say anything at all, but I've been told that my worn jeans are "disrespectful" or "sending the wrong message." I know that some take a look at my pants and consider me a slob or a hippie or a red neck. My torn jeans have caused at least some adults to make judgments about my values, my character, and my way of life, much in the way that I expect those adults were forming judgments about me because of my farm animal decals.

I've been thinking a lot lately about this fundamental difference between curiosity and judgment. When we are children, curiosity tends to be our default response to the world, but as we age, for many of us, our curiosity is replaced by judgment. It's a pity because judgment closes off while curiosity opens up. Judgment divides while curiosity connects. Judgement paints the world as broken, while curiosity paints it as endlessly fascinating. Judgment leaves us with an ever-narrowing world, one that is increasingly confined to things we already think we "know," while curiosity creates an ever-expanding world, one in which we must constantly rearrange and reconsider everything we thought we knew.

We've all known people who never seem to grow up, even as their hair grays and their skin wrinkles. These, I think, must be the ones who have discovered the secret to eternal youth: remain curious. The urge to judge, on the other hand, ages us more rapidly and thoroughly than even the passage of time. Lately, I've been trying to catch myself as I tell myself judgmental stories about the people around me and instead ask a genuine "Why?" It's not always easy because the habit of judgment is well-ingrained, but when I do it I find myself in a world of wonder, one in which happiness is at least possible.

Be curious, not judgmental. It's a lesson that every child is born to teach, but only when adults are curious enough to listen.

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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!

Talking About Death

Many of us are uncomfortable talking about death, especially to preschoolers. Of course, the subject comes up quite frequently, because, well, death walks among us. 

Some of us obsess over death, our own or that of others. Even those who are convinced that they will spend eternity amongst the angels tend to avoid thinking about death more than can be helped. It comes for all of us. When children ask us questions, most of us, most of the time, reply as best we can, then hurry on from the grim subject, often following it up with a joke or ice cream or something else to turn attention back to the sweetness of life.

I was brought up with the Lutheran version of heaven and hell, although we didn't talk much about either. This was just the answer to the question. You want to avoid the bad place and that's where it ended. It always came up when someone died. The living assure one another that they are in a "better place," and that's where it ended.

I was probably about eight when I overheard an adult joke that shifted things for me. The recently departed found themselves in a place in the clouds where there was no fear or pain. All their needs and desires were met before they were even needs or desires. The air was full of wondrous fragrance and beautiful music. At first they were delighted, but as time passed and nothing changed, they began to grow restless. One of them mentioned this to the deity in charge, "I thought heaven would be more interesting." The deity replied, "Who said this is heaven?"

Try as I might, going forward I couldn't conceive of a heaven that would not eventually become tedious. Eternal life sounded like a particularly devious vision of hell. 

I once had a girlfriend who would shut me up whenever I talked about death. We had intimate, honest conversations about everything else, but death was off the table. One time, however, I provoked her to the point that she confessed her fear that death meant that you somehow floated above it all, seeing and hearing life continuing without you, but that you were otherwise entirely disconnected from it. She feared that death would be eternal loneliness. Intellectually, she understood that this was unlikely, but death talk stirred up her fear.

The thing is, it wasn't just her. Few people I knew growing up wanted to talk about death, except through art.

The Bible offered little beyond what I already knew, but art, and literature in particular, provided ways of thinking about death that allowed me to actually consider about what it might mean. In Thomas Mann's novel Joseph and His Brothers, I was introduced to the idea that while we embodied humans may cling to life, the individual atoms in our bodies ache for their release back into their universe. And that is the joy, the heaven, of death, that we return to a perfect oneness with all that is, the opposite of my girlfriend's fear. The only thing that dies is our individual mind, which is the cause of all our misery to begin with. It's the joy of perfect peace and unity.

It was in this same novel that I came to understand that eternal life, as far as we can know, comes from the stories people tell about us after we're gone. How you live directly determines your afterlife. You can be Joseph or Herod depending on your deeds. Your afterlife is for those you leave behind. You, however, are free.

From Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel Demons (or The Possessed) I learned that my own fear of death was not a fear of death at all, but rather a fear of pain.

“Imagine . . .  a stone as big as a great house; it hangs and you are under it; if it falls on you, on your head, will it hurt you?”

“A stone as big as a house? Of course it would be fearful.”

“I speak not of fear. Will it hurt?”

“A stone as big as a mountain, weighing millions of tons? Of course it wouldn’t hurt.”

“But really stand there and while it hangs you will fear very much that it will hurt. The most learned man, the greatest doctor, all, all will be very much frightened. Everyone will know that it won’t hurt, and everyone will be afraid that it will hurt.”

When my father-in-law died, we were all grateful for the medicine that alleviated, or at least minimized, his pain. He continues to live with us in the stories we tell about him, which are not about his death, but his life. And he is free.

You may or may not take comfort in the same things that give me comfort. That's because we each must ultimately face our own death alone, even if we are surrounded by loved ones. And even if they are free, we are not, and therein lies the real pain of death: the grief of those left behind.

If you work with young children for any amount of time, you will find yourself discussing death. Hardly a day in preschool passes without someone, often joyfully, shouting, "You're dead!" It's a joke, a concept that is not fully formed, a bloodless, painless thing from action movies or fairy tales. Children may explore it from angles that disturb us. I've written here about a group of girls who took turns cooking one another for dinner. There is talk of killing and drowning and being consumed by lava (which I wrote about just yesterday).

When we scold them, when we lower our brows and try to make them see the grimness, we tend to push it underground. Maybe we've learned that death is a taboo topic, but they haven't and they need to explore it. I feel that it's better that it happen on my radar. I don't have answers, only theology and philosophy, but I can listen and help them when they feel afraid. Otherwise, their guesses are as good as mine.

Young children who have any experience at all with nature have already experienced death first hand. Dead insects. Dead worms. We once came across a dead bird while at a local playground. There might be jokes about insects and worms, but this was a moment of reverence. My first instinct had been to usher them away, to protect them from the sight, but they wouldn't have it. They gathered round like we do around a grave, hushed, each alone with their thoughts. Later, when we talked together I answered their questions with "What do you think?" Heaven was the most common prediction.

When my brother-in-law was dying from cancer, I took our two-year-old daughter Josephine with me to visit him in the hospital almost daily over the course of those last few weeks of his life. They delighted in one another. 

When he died, she asked me where he went. I told her, as my parents had told me, about heaven. Actually, the way I phrased it was, "Some people believe that we die and go to heaven," which was my way of telling her the truth. A few days later, she informed me that Chris was in heaven, drinking coffee, playing his guitar, shooting baskets, and "getting heaven ready for us."

I have no certainty about death, let alone an afterlife, but I sought to comfort her because that's what we do with death, we comfort the living. Looking back, I can see that she wasn't asking for comfort, she was asking for information. She was curious and my answer seemed to satisfy her. He died so young, it made no sense, we all suffered the loss, but I found myself wanting to protect Josephine from the sadness.

A couple years later she confessed to me that she no longer believed in heaven. "I think we all get to come back as our favorite animal. I'm going to be a bunny." I'd not discussed reincarnation with her. She may have come to the idea on her own, but it's more likely it came from another child. I told her that this is also what many people believe.

In her book All About Love, bell hooks writes, "I am continually surprised when friends, and strangers, act as though any talk of death is a sign of pessimism or morbidity. Death is among us. To see it always and only as a negative subject is to lose sight of its power to enhance every moment."

I'm not surprised. 

I still fear pain, but, most of the time, as a 64-year-old, I don't fear my own death, although I do sometimes fear the death of the people I love. How will I go on without them? I also wouldn't mind getting to watch Josephine's live continue to unfold, even if it's from that place of my old girlfriend's nightmares.

From my perspective today, I see that the only way to oppose fear is to love people right now. To let them know I love them. To let them love me. Death walks among us, not as a stalker, but as an enhancement to every moment. Death is the ultimate guarantee that life will never become tedious perfection. Death urges us to love right now, to connect right now with that joy of oneness, of peace, of unity. And it whispers to us to strive to live in a way that the stories the world tells about us when we are gone are ones we want told.

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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!

Play, Reflect, Play, Reflect

I knew that we were going to be spreading a new layer of wood chips over the surface of our junkyard playground, but it surprised me when I arrived at school. My first emotion was one of disappointment, because while it does freshen the place up, giving it a pleasing scent of cedar, I knew that it had also buried a lot of our smaller bits and baubles, things that might not re-surface for months, if ever. On second blush, however, I remembered that the kids had been kicking up quite a cloud of unpleasant dust, something with which this new layer of chips would definitely help.

As the children arrived they likewise had mixed feelings about the changes to their space. One boy hopped on a swing and started bawling, "The swings are too low now! They're for little kids and I'm a big kid!" And he was right, the thick layer of chips under the swings left precious little room for his legs to hang. After his initial reaction, however, he got to work digging out a new hole deep enough to accommodate a full pumping of the legs.

Meanwhile, another group joyfully grabbed shovels and immediately began a digging project, searching for the bare earth below.

But, over all, the new surface was simply remarked upon, then forgotten as the kids settled into the rhythm of their play.

After awhile, I began to hear the diggers discussing the prospect of a hole that penetrated to the center of the earth, perhaps even going all the way through to the other side. The older boy on the swing overheard them and said in a voice of authority, "You better not dig too deep because then you might get to the lava and it will erupt on us."

The diggers paused to reflect on that, then decided amongst themselves that this was exactly what they were going to do, dig to the molten core to release the lava. They dug out a circle of bare dirt, informing one and all to be careful because if they fell in they would be "burned up."

Before long a team of ninja fighters roved into the area, posing fiercely, boasting of their powers, and thereby (from what I could tell) defeating bad guys. The diggers paused to reflect on that, then decided amongst themselves that their pools of lava (by now they had several) were actually bad guy traps. They informed me that as a good guy, I was immune to the lava, and no longer needed to worry about falling in. The lava would only burn bad guys.

It was around this time that a loud wail went up on the other side of the swing set, a boy suddenly bursting into tears as if injured. As I approached, the crying boy pointed at another boy who was standing some distance away, "He hit me!" At this, the accused, behaving very much like a guilty party, took off for a distant corner of the playground. As I consoled the crying boy, I learned that he hadn't actually been hit, but rather had been told that he was going to be hit "a lot of times" and it had, naturally, frightened him. I asked, "What can he do to make you feel better?" to which he replied, "I don't think he'll tell me he's sorry." I asked, "Would that make you feel better?" When he answered that it would, I suggested that we at least talk to him.

By now the tears had ended. He took my hand as we started down the hill, looking for his nemesis, but didn't immediately spy him. I said, "It's like he disappeared," to which the boy replied, "Maybe he's a ghost," a joke that let me know he was no longer harboring a grudge. We made spooky ghost noises together for a minute, then he released my hand and returned to his play.

Back at the bad guy lava traps, I was informed that they had, in my absence, trapped several bad guys who had hit people "a lot of times."

Not long after that, the boy who had earlier been crying was running toward us, his face flushed with joy. He was being chased by the boy who had threatened to hit him a lot of times. "Help! Help! I'm being chased by a ghost!" And behind him, the ghost wailed and moaned in mock ghostly misery. They had obviously made amends, racing away in their game of chase.

The diggers paused to reflect on that, then decided amongst themselves that their bad buy traps were actually ghost traps. "The ghosts fall into the lava and get dead."

The older boy on the swing informed them that ghosts were already dead.

The diggers reflected on that, then decided that their lava traps made the ghosts "extra dead." Then they went back to their project of digging in the new wood chips.

******

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!

What Kind of Human Being Creates a Peaceful World?

Last week the President said, “We can’t take care of daycare. We’re a big country. We’re fighting wars.”

As play based educators, our work is rooted in building a more peaceful world through how we educate our children.

Montessori schools seek peace through independence and self-discipline.

Reggio Emilia schools through relationship and community.

Waldorf schools through moral imagination.

Democratic schools (Sudbury) through freedom and shared power.

Forest schools through connection to nature.

Indigenous approaches through belonging and reciprocity. 

It's all play based learning.

They all ask the question, What kind of human being creates a peaceful world and how do we grow that human?

We are a big country. Peace is better than war. We can’t afford to not take care of our children. We must protect our children's right to play.

******

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!

It's Like Learning to Ride a Bike

She who succeeds in gaining the mastery of the bicycle will gain the mastery of life. ~Susan B. Anthony

I recently watched a neighbor teaching his grandchild how to ride a bike she had received as a Christmas gift. It got me thinking about my own journey as a cyclist.

My first bicycle was a red Western Flyer.

Dad was going to be out of town on a business trip, but he promised to teach me how to ride when he returned which meant I had a few days to get to know my new two-wheeler before I was to receive proper instruction. Riding a tricycle had been a snap -- just jump on the seat, put your feet on the pedals and go -- but the bicycle proved to be much trickier. I could straddle the bar with my feet on the ground. I could even lift my bottom onto the seat and one foot on a pedal, but, of course, when I lifted my other foot off the ground I fell over.

At one point, I figured out how to lean the bike against a tree trunk in such a way that I could sit on the seat, with both feet on the pedals, but there was no way to move forward from this position. I got pretty good at sitting on the seat with one foot on the ground, then rocking the bike to the other side where I caught myself with the opposite foot. I spent at least an hour playing with my bike in this way, but as for forward motion, as for two feet on two pedals, I was stumped.

Mom, witnessing what she must have interpreted as my struggles, gave me a tip: "Get a foot on one pedal then push off with the other foot to give yourself some momentum." I'd never heard the word "momentum" before, but in context I understood it as you have to get going a little bit before you can get going a lot. It made a certain kind of sense, but it also struck me as something of a paradox. How do you get going before you get going?

When Dad got home, he took me to a little used dirt road that ran along behind the newly-constructed elementary school that I was destined to one day attend. His idea was that since I was likely to fall a few times, a dirt road would offer a softer fall than asphalt. The first thing he did was ask me to show him what I'd figured out on my own, which to my mind wasn't much. I showed him how I could sit on the seat properly if I leaned the bike against a tree. I showed him how I could rock back and forth. And then I attempted Mom's "momentum" move, giving it my all, resulting in my falling into the dirt. 

As he dusted me off, he said, "You already know everything you need to know to ride a bike. You know what it feels like to sit on your bike. You know how to take your feet of the pedals to catch yourself if you start to fall. You know how to balance a little. And you know how to fall."

He said, "Okay, so let me be the tree." He held the bike upright as I climbed on, putting both feet on the pedals. "I'm going to rock you back and forth a little bit and you use your feet to catch yourself." We did that a few times. "Now I'm going to help you with momentum. I'll push you a little bit while you pedal." And that was the moment that I really understood what that word meant. He held the back of the seat as I moved exhilaratingly forward. It was a sunny day and I could see his shadow on a dirt, behind me and to the side, connected to the shadow of me on my bicycle. I then forgot about Dad for a moment, turning my attentions to the road ahead. 

When I looked back for his shadow it was gone. I was riding on my own!

Then came a surge of thrill and panic as I wobbled and fell. We tried it again, but this time I started with one foot on the ground while Dad again helped me with momentum. This time he let go almost right away. I felt the momentum. I was riding again! As I got farther and farther away from Dad it occurred to me that I didn't know how to stop. I knew the bike had "coaster brakes" but it was like with the concept of momentum: I got it in concept, but I couldn't get my body to do it. Indeed, I couldn't stop my legs from pedaling forward, so I steered toward a patch of roadside grass and leapt for it, leaving my two-wheeler to careen along without me until it lost momentum and fell.

It was time to head home for dinner. Dad promised me that he'd teach me how to properly stop the following weekend.

Not knowing how to stop seemed like a very minor problem to me. After all, the riding was the important thing. And besides, I did know how to stop. It involved leaping into the grass and every house along our cul-de-sac had grass lawns. I could leap off anywhere I might want to go, which is what I did all that week. One of the older kids called me "James Bond," which I took as a cool compliment even though I had no idea who James Bond was. It wasn't long before several of the other kids had adopted my dismount technique. We even started competing to see who could get their bike to continue the farthest without a rider.

The following weekend, I showed Dad what I could do. I'd figured out how to use the brakes to slow down. I showed him how how I could go really fast. And I showed him my James Bond dismount. He congratulated me, saying, "You've learned to ride a bike."

I don't actually remember learning how to stop and dismount properly, but at some point along the way, I obviously figured that out as well. 

What I didn't know until I watched my neighbor putting his grandchild in the position to learn about momentum, balance, braking, stopping, speed, practice, falling, and freedom, was that I'd also learned a lot about teaching. I'd learned about the importance of letting go a little before the learner thinks they're ready. I learned that teaching is indistinguishable from loving. And I'd learned, that instructions and concepts are mere words until they are put into action. 

Or as the late great Bev Bos would say, "If it hasn't been in the hand and body, it can't be in the brain."

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