The Courage To Admit We Were Wrong

It's a well known psychological fact that when someone is experiencing a strong "negative" emotion like anger, fear, or sadness, it is very difficult, sometimes even impossible, to actually think. I know it's true for me. As my loved ones will attest, when I'm in the throes I've been known to dig in my heels in the most irrational ways, usually requiring some form of apology or at least mea culpa in the aftermath. 

Every parent has been there with their child: upset and unable to listen to reason. We know that as loving parents our preferred response is to offer some version of "connect to redirect," to acknowledge their feeling, to let them know they are loved, to help them first un-flip their flipped lid. Only then can any amount of "reason" take place. And we all likewise know that it's not always easy. In our less mindful moments we've all reacted to our children's difficulties with difficulties of our own, by yelling, commanding, and generally behaving as an authoritarian, which may "work" in the sense that we've frightened or shamed them into compliance, but at the possible price of long term psychological harm if it becomes too frequent.

A recent Australian study took a look at parenting styles and what is called "psychological flexibility". Psychological flexibility is vital to good mental health and resilience, and is linked a whole host of positive psychological and behavioral outcomes. The researchers found that authoritarian parenting, the kind characterized by the my-way-or-the-highway approach, predicted low psychological flexibility in their children later in life. In other words, the kids learned it from their parents: inflexible parenting teaches inflexibility. Perhaps it's not a groundbreaking revelation, but it's worth thinking about, especially in the context of a child who is experiencing strong emotions and our own response. Children are always learning from us and each time we respond to their flipped lids with connection, we are role modeling psychological flexibility.

I'm not suggesting that our occasional moments of "authoritarianism" are damaging to our children, especially if we are, on balance the kind of calm, loving, respectful, and authoritative parents our children need. Indeed, what we teach them in our bad moments is that we are human too, that everyone flips their lids at times, that we can't always hold it together, and that it's normal. That's why the apology is so important, especially when accompanied by connection. It is never too late to connect. When we have the courage to admit that we were wrong, without first demanding an apology from our children, we show them the path home from the wilderness of anger, fear, and sadness.

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What We Are Doing To Young Children In The Name Of "Instructional Time"

At the beginning of the 2015 school year Seattle's Public School teachers were on strike. They had a list of demands, most of which were ultimately met, including the requirement that all elementary school children receive a minimum of 30 minutes a day on the playground. As pathetic as that victory might sound to those of us who live and work in the world of play-based education, some schools were limiting their charges to 15 minutes of recess over a school day. This is not an uncommon phenomenon in America and indeed many other parts of the world.

As heartlessly cruel as this sounds, it's the result of administrators and teachers who have bought into the entirely unsupported myth that more "instructional time" will result in "better results," and that every moment of free play, especially outdoors, is a waste of time. Meanwhile, 17 million children worldwide have been prescribed addictive stimulants (like Ritalin), antidepressants and other mind-altering drugs for "educational" and behavioral problems, over half of them in the US. Already one in ten American students are on these drugs and the fastest growing segment are children five and under.

This from the UK: 

Tests to assess . . . children's physical development at the start of the first school year found that almost a third to be "of concern" for lack of motor skills and reflexes. Almost 90 per cent of children demonstrated some degree of movement difficulty for their age . . . The tests suggest up to 30 per cent of children are starting school with symptoms typically associated with dyslexia, dyspraxia, and ADHD -- conditions which can be improved with correct levels of physical activity, experts say.

What's to blame? Lack of physical play is a big part of it, but there's more. According researcher Dr. Rebecca Duncombe:

"Young children have access to iPads and are much more likely to be sat in car seats or chairs . . . But the problem can also be attributed to competitive parenting -- parents who want they children to walk as soon as possible risk letting them miss out on key mobility developments which help a child to find their strength and balance."

And why do we have competitive parenting: because our schools, indeed our entire educational environment, is built around the idea of competition; around the cruel caution that "You don't want your child to fall behind." Bill Gates and his ilk have succeeded in "unleashing powerful market forces" on our children and this is the result. Because we have to get them ready for the "competitive job market of tomorrow," we've herded them indoors, where they spend their days locked in being force-fed "knowledge" like it's some sort of factory farm. It's so bad that we have to drug them. It's so bad that 90 percent of our four-year-olds aren't even getting the opportunity to learn how to move their bodies properly. The only other human institutions of which I'm aware that regularly drug and confine people are prisons and mental wards.

Instead of understanding the truth about young children -- that they need to move their bodies, a lot, and preferably outdoors -- we have created a very, very narrow range of "normal" into which we are forcing our children. This is outrageous. It's malpractice. And it's on all of us for letting it happen.

I usually try to end these posts on a positive or hopeful note, but the best I can do right now is to say that at least Seattle's Public School kids are getting their 30 minutes a day outdoors . . . Unless, of course, they are being punished, because taking away recess is one of the more common "consequences" for children who can't sit still and focus. And if they fail too often, we drug them.

Parents: the more time your children spend outdoors, playing, the smarter they will be. Create it at home and demand if from our schools. Teachers: the more time your students spend outdoors, playing, the smarter they will be. Create it at school and demand more of it from your administrators. This is the science. This is what we know about children. What's happening now is nothing short of institutionalized child abuse and we're all a part of permitting it to happen.

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Teaching The Children A New Game

Among the first games we play with our babies is some version of give-and-take. We show an object to them and they take it from us wth their little fingers. As they get a little older, they often enjoy a more advanced version of the game in which they hand the item back to us, then take it again, then give, then take, delighting in the pattern, the cooperation, the interaction. Over time, we stop recognizing it as a game, it's just part of how we interact as we play with our kids. If they snatch a block from our hand as we're building them a tower together, we hardly notice it. If they commandeer the book we are reading to them to turn their own pages, we find it cute. If we're rocking a doll in our arms and our child wants to imitate us, no words are spoken as they take that doll as their own.

This is all as it should be at home, but as any parent with older children will attest, it's not a game that goes over well with other kids. As adults we don't attach any particular value to playthings, indeed we tend to think of them as rightfully belonging to the children, but other kids, be they older siblings or preschool classmates, tend to be far from sanguine about having valued things snatched from their grasp. At any given moment at this time in the school year, there is likely to be a child who is upset about it and a child who is equally confused about the fuss. After all, this is how they've learned the world of play works: I want something, I take it.

As a preschool teacher, I do not allow children to snatch things from my hands. Whenever I see a tiny fist reaching for the object I'm holding I tighten my grip and say, "I'm using this." I then follow that up with something like, "If you want it, you can ask me for it," or "You can play with it when I'm done." If the child is very young, I then relinquish it almost instantly. With older children, I might play with it for a few seconds, or even minutes, before saying, "I'm done with it. Now it's your turn." My objective is to simply role model a pattern of interaction that I hope becomes, so to speak, a new "game" for the children to play.

The other day, we were playing with our Fisher-Price toys, a significant collection amassed over the decades as families have donated their old toys to the school. The big plastic tub contains dozens, if not hundreds of those squat figurines representing both people and animals. A group of children were struggling with snatching and emotions were on edge, so I sat beside the tub, picked out a polar bear, saying as I held it up, "I found a polar bear." As I expected, one of the children immediately reached out to make a grab. I pulled it back, "Hey, I'm using this!" She looked stunned. I then said, "If you want it, you can ask me." She said, "Please?" and I handed it to her, saying, "Sure, I'm done with it now."

I then proceeded to remove other animals from the tub, "I have a tiger," "I have a parrot," "I have a bear," and so on. Children gathered around. At first many hands grabbed for the toys and I went through the process again and again. Soon, as you would expect, the children began to catch on, many of them clearly delighted with the game we were playing. Occasionally, I would answer them with, "In a minute, I'm still using it," or "I'll give it to you when I'm finished," an addition that the children accepted with apparent patience. Before long they were playing it with one another, practicing both sides of the equation.

I'm under no illusion that we will be a snatch-free classroom going forward. Old habits die hard, but we have plenty of time -- weeks, months, years -- plenty of time to learn new ones.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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Conflict Is Ugly, Messy, Fraught, And Necessary

A few days ago, a parent told me that her child loves school so much that she didn't have to nag him to get dressed and out the door, which according to her is a very big deal. I believe her, but it's sometimes hard to see because he spends much of his day embroiled in conflict. And he's not the only one. Indeed, there's a whole group of them, intense, creative kids, who spend much of their time together alternating between cooperation and bitter quarreling.

This is, of course, normal, even if it's often exasperating for adults. Whether we like it or not, conflict plays a central role in childhood play, just as it's unavoidable in adult life. Sometimes the arguments seem silly to us, easily solved, not worth the energy, such as when they fight over a specific shovel when there are dozens of identical ones lying about, or when they raise their voices over whether they've made mud "soup" or mud "stew." But what they are doing is serious business, a core aspect of learning to live in the world with other people, and our Johnny-on-the-spot interventions, however well-intended, quite often rob them of the opportunity to learn that they are capable of solving it themselves.

Naturally, we step in when conflicts take an ugly turn, such as when physical violence erupts or when a pattern of bullying emerges, but when we rush in at every raised voice, we do them no favors. Yes, perhaps it's a good idea to move closer to them when emotions begin to run high, but I've found that more often than not, children who already have relationships with one another, like classmates and friends, can find their own way through.

These past couple weeks the four-year-olds have spent a lot of time, in quieter moments, making agreements with one another. We come in from the playground with our gripes, with our concerns, with our grievances, and then we talk about them. We've all agreed, or instance, to not hit one another, to not take things, to not kick or throw hard objects. This list of rules, which we've been adding to almost every day, is already quite long and detailed. The words that fall under the heading "name calling" is robust. These are our collective aspirations for how we want to live together, our "rules" if you will. And in just a few weeks, we've already discovered that just because we've all agreed, it doesn't mean that we will all always remember our agreements -- there is still some hitting and taking and hard object throwing -- but at least now we've all started working on it, together.

"Hey, you're breaking the rules!" a girl shouted at her friend turned antagonist, "No taking things!"

"We said no screaming in people's ears and you're screaming in my ears!"

"You hit me. No hitting!"

These words have been ringing out on our playground for weeks now.

Several times a day, a child will appeal to me, such as, "Teacher Tom, she won't let me play with her. I think we should make a rule about that." And I'll respond, "Let's talk about it at circle time. I'll help you remember to suggest it." Sometimes we can agree. Sometimes we can't. Either way, the discussion is important.

Others will come to me with complaints, such as, "He took my bucket!" And I'll respond, "Oh no, what did you say?" More often than not they'll answer, "Nothing," to which I reply, "It sounds like they forgot their agreement. I would remind them if I were you." If they seem reluctant, I might coach them on the language they can use. Sometimes I agree to stand beside them as they confront their friend. Most of the time, when a child evokes the self-imposed rules, their classmates relent or offer an alternative version of events, which leads to an argument. Again, I might step nearer, but as long as they are talking to one another, even when it's heated, I know they are doing the work they need to do. If they begin to talk over one another or become overly emotional, I'll suggest they take turns, so that we can all listen. It's ugly, messy, fraught, and necessary.

I strive to not impose solutions, but rather allow the children to come to them on their own. Sometimes I take the role of mediator, echoing the children's words. "She says you took her bucket." "He says, he had it first." "She says she just put it down for a second." "He says he didn't know." And so on, giving everyone a chance to both speak and listen. This tends to give children the space to slow down, to consider, to understand, and to begin to find their way forward.

Sometimes I'll say, "I want to remind you that we all agreed to not take things from other people." I strive to take the posture that I'm reminding, not commanding. Sometimes, when there is a significant power imbalance between the children, one of them will become tongue tied, so I'll voice their words for them, "He says you pushed him. We all agreed to not push one another."

My rule of thumb, however, is to stay out of it, all things being equal, to coach, to suggest, to be near, but leave as much of it as possible to the children, to get them talking to one another rather than through me. As the year goes along, they will come to understand that resolving their conflicts is in their own hands.

It's messy and makes us uncomfortable, but children are always motivated by the real world and there are few things more real than conflict. So often, as adults, we view playground conflict as failure, but if we are to raise our children to take care of themselves and to take care of others, we have to understand that conflict is as central to child's play as running, jumping, laughing, and singing. They will only learn how to do it through practice. And, believe it or not, it's part of why they like coming to school.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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

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This Is Not Healthy

As a boy, I went to school like almost everyone, then came home and played in the neighborhood, in our yards, our neighbor's yards, in the street, in vacant lots, in construction sites, and, more rarely, in one another's garages or bedrooms. We could do that because school let out in the mid-afternoon, we had stay-at-home parents, no homework to speak of, and we lived in a world in which we didn't fear molesters and kidnappers behind every tree. We did not have organized after school programs or activities, so our mothers didn't have to chauffeur us from place. We had very few toys and most television programming was dull.

What we had was other kids. Even as young as four-years-old, mom would tell me I was driving her crazy, send me outside, and shut the door behind me. If there weren't already other kids out there, I quickly learned to go find them, going from door-to-door knocking, and asking, "Can Johnny play?" "Can Lisa play?" "Can Ralph play?" Then we would play with minimal adult supervision until our parents called us in, which was usually dinner time.

Both school and childhood have changed dramatically over the past 40-50 years. School days are longer, more strictly scheduled, and increasingly academic. School is "important" in a way it wasn't, with parents, teachers, and policy-makers obsessing over such things and test scores, grades, grit, and those mythological "jobs of tomorrow" for which our children must be prepared for the sake of our nation's economic competitiveness. Lucky children might have an hour of "free play" before bedtime or on weekends, but even that tends to be indoors, heavily supervised and often not "free" at all, with adults defining the limits of their play with rules, cautions, and Johnny-on-the-spot interventions should there be any hint of conflict, struggle, or failure.

This is not healthy. Children are human beings and as such, they must be free, free in mind and body, in order to achieve their highest potential. It's hard not to compare today's children to circus tigers, magnificent beings, locked into cages, prodded by ringmasters, and taught to do tricks for the benefit of an audience. Sure, they are safe, well-fed, lauded, and even loved, but when do they get to prowl through the jungle as they are meant to?

The rates of depression and suicide among children is increasing every year. As psychologist Peter Gray points out, children today are more depressed than they were during the Great Depression and more anxious than they were at the height of the Cold War. Suicide, suicide attempts, and thoughts of committing suicide among children and teens have doubled over the past decade. Tellingly, the rate of suicide and suicide attempts both double during the months school is in session versus summer months when it drops. And it's not just these clinically depressed and suicidal children we should be worried about: no child benefits from greater stress and less play.

We have, in a short time, fundamentally changed our view of children. Whereas previous generations saw them as relatively competent and self-reliant, even at early ages, we now tend to pathologize them as incapable and needy, even well into their adolescence and teenaged years. In our efforts to mould them into the shapes of our desires, we've taken charge of their every movement, even their every thought, controlling and shaping them, leaving them precious little time and space to prowl. In our quest to make them into shiny cogs in the economic machine we've robbed them of childhood, of the time during which the human animal develops essential social and emotional abilities, the capacity to play with, to work with, to understand, and befriend our fellow human beings. We've taken from them the essential experiences of knocking on the neighbors' doors, asking "What do you want to do?" and then setting about doing it in the unscripted, unscheduled, unmanaged way of children in their natural habitat, which is while playing with other children, outdoors, unsupervised, and with plenty of time in which to learn how to work through conflict, struggle and failure to something better.

I sometimes find myself despairing over my own part in this tragedy of contemporary childhood. I am, after all, a teacher in a preschool, a thing that barely existed in my own childhood. But, damn it, I'm striving, and I'll continue to strive, with every fiber of my being, to create a place, a culture, in which children are free to prowl, to play with one another without constant adult interference. It is not as good as I had it, but it's better than what's going on in society at large where we have done pretty much everything possible to destroy childhood to the detriment of us all. It begins with me, with us.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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

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"We're Going To Take Your Treasure!"

We've made rules in our classroom, together, by consensus, and among the first agreements we made with one another was, "No taking things from other people," an echo of the Biblical commandment to not steal. There are anthropologists who argue that prior to the advent of the Agricultural Revolution around 10,000 BC there was no such thing as "stealing" because there was no such thing as property, but, I expect, the urge to snatch some rare or special thing from the hands of another, if only to take a closer look, was still an urge with which our hunter-gatherer ancestors needed to deal. And that's really what we're usually talking about in preschool. Stealing implies taking something with the intention of illicitly and selfishly transferring ownership while snatching falls more into the category of uncontrollable curiosity.

Whatever the case, in our modern world these two distinct urges get lumped together, especially in the minds of young children who, through their play, are forever attempting to tease out both personal and social meaning. Yesterday, a group of boys were huddled together in a corner of the playground they have "built" for themselves.

"Guys, guys, I got a plan. We need to take those jewels."

"What jewels?"

"Those guys, over there, they have a bucket of treasure and we need it for our team."

They were referring to their friends, boys with whom they often play, but who were on this day playing separately. They had spent the past half hour or so collecting small shiny objects in a bucket. They were bits and bobs that anyone can pick up from the ground around our place -- florist marbles, beads, pieces of toy jewelry -- but they had named it "treasure" and now it was this treasure that these other boys were scheming to make their own.

There were a few moments of intense conversation, quiet, secretive. I couldn't hear their words, but their intentions were clear: they were planning an incursion to wrest control of that bucket, which they were going to hide and hoard somewhere in their hideout. Before long they attacked running toward the boys with the treasure, whooping, making fierce faces, wielding sticks like weapons.

The boys with the treasure looked confused at first, backing away a bit.

"We're going to take your treasure!"

"No, you're not! It's our treasure!"

The moment was tense as the two sides stood face to face. These guys have often played fighting games together, but I know these children, I've taught most of them for three years. Physical violence wasn't in the offing even as their bodies, tense and aggressively posed, seemed to indicate it. It was a moment both real and pretend, this stand-off above the sand pit. I recall moments like this from my own childhood. I knew their hearts were racing. I know that some of them at least were feeling that they were now in over their heads, that they didn't really want to "steal," but just to snatch, to see and feel and hold the treasure that these other boys had made from debris that had always been there.

It lasted a few seconds as everyone stood posed, then one of the attackers dropped to his knees, dropping out, and began running his fingers through the sand. Then one of the defenders backed away, turning his back. One by one by one I saw their shoulders drop as the tension left their bodies, leaving only two boys still standing in opposition to one another, while the others milled around no longer part of the game.

"We're using this treasure!" the defender said forcefully. "You can use it when we're finished!"

"Okay!" his friend answered from under his glowering brow as if making a threat, "We will!"

And then it was over, the aspiring robbers returning to their base, apparently satisfied with waiting for their booty and the treasure collectors once more scouring the ground for sparkling items to add to their cache.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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

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"Everyone Who Is A Problem Is My Teacher"

Teaching preschoolers keeps you humble. Even after decades, the moment you think you've seen it all, a child comes along who let's you know that you don't. That is both the blessing and the curse of our profession.

Not long ago, for instance, I found myself with a three-year-old who solved most of his conflicts by hitting or shoving other children. And he had a lot of conflicts. Indeed, it was almost as if he sought out reasons to disagree. This is not such a rare things, of course, but what struck me as most odd was that he didn't show any visible signs of emotion: no yelling, no crying, no grimacing or glowering. To me it appeared as if he were just going about this business of hitting and shoving like another child might go to work on a disassembled puzzle he found on a table. In contrast, of course, he left plenty of obvious signs of emotion among the victims of his hitting and shoving. And making matters worse, he often continued pummeling children who he had already reduced to tears until an adult intervened. Infuriatingly, he didn't even seem to go easier on younger, smaller children, treating them to the same sort of violence without discrimination. Someone along the way had obviously managed to convinced him to "use his words," which manifested most often as him saying to a child, "My turn!" as he delivered his first blow, or "Share with me!" as he shoved a child to the ground.

As you can imagine, I spent the first few days with this boy, trying everything in my toolbox; shadowing him, trying to anticipate him, stopping the violence physically when I could, and talking, talking, talking. I needed to get him on my bandwagon, I knew that, but how? I started our day together being his best buddy, hanging out with him, showing him cool things, complementing him. When he engaged in hitting or shoving, I tried reasoning, but he wasn't having it, cheerfully changing the subject, no matter how sternly or sincerely or pointedly I delivered my message about the importance of not hurting other people. I offered him suggestions for alternatives to hitting or shoving, again with no luck. The only time he showed emotion in conventional ways was when I thwarted him in his efforts, taking his hand for instance in mid-punch and saying, "I can't let you hit people." Then he would shout and cry, but not, it seemed out of any sense of remorse, but rather because he was now mad at me for preventing him from getting his way through hitting or shoving.

One day, I caught his arm from behind before he could deliver his first blow to a child who was blissfully unaware of what was about to happen. He had simply wanted the toy she was holding and was going to get it the most efficient way possible. At least that's how it seemed to me. He immediately reacted to me violently, twisting his body this way and that in an effort to free his arm from my grip. He then tried to hit the poor girl with his free hand, so I grabbed that one too. I had dropped to my knees and so we were face-to-face. He showed no emotion as he struggled against my grip. I said, as calmly as I could muster, "I can't let you hit people."

When he continued to wrestle, his eyes still on the toy he had wanted, I said, "I'm much stronger than you. I'm not going to let go because I'm worried you're going to hurt people," still striving for an even, calm voice.

It took several minutes, but finally he began to settle down, still tugging and pulling, but with lesser and lesser urgency, but he didn't stop entirely until the child with the toy moved farther away. Then he turned his back toward me and fell into my lap. I was still holding his arms, which were now crossed over his chest, with mine crossed there as well. It was almost a if he were using me as a blanket in which to wrap himself. I said again, "I'm holding you because I'm worried that you will hurt someone. If I let you, go will you hit someone?"

He didn't respond verbally, but seemed to almost sink more deeply into my lap. I let go of his wrists and simply held him for a moment. He made no effort to escape. After a couple minutes I said it again, "I'm holding you because I'm worried that you will hurt someone. If I let you go, will you hit someone?" He still didn't respond, so I continued to hold him. Then after a time I again asked the question, "If I let you go, will you hit someone?" This time he answered, "No," so I let him go. I was prepared for him to chase down the child with the toy he wanted, but he didn't. From that point on, I approached him with an offer of my lap and a hug, something he always accepted. The behaviors didn't disappear entirely, but they did lessen both in frequency and intensity.

That boy was only in my life for a few weeks so I never really got to know him, and certainly not enough to seriously entertain my suspicions about sensory integration or other potential "causes" for his behavior, but I will never forget him because of what I learned from him that day.

A couple nights ago I attended a meeting with one of my early mentors, a man named Tom Drummond. At one point, discussing a completely different topic, he said, "Everyone who is a problem is my teacher." And that's why I'm thinking of that boy, my problem and teacher, today.

 I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you! 

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

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"Stop!"

It had started as a mutually agreeable wrestling match, the kind that often break out between five-year-old boys, but one of them, for whatever reason, changed his mind and called out, "Stop!"

This is something we work on at Woodland Park, the right to assert, "Stop!" And we've all agreed that if someone says, "Stop!" to you, you must stop and listen to what that kid has to say. It's safe to say that we are all much better at the former than the latter.

In this case the boy calling, "Stop!" which he did repeatedly, continued to "be wrestled" for several seconds before he was heeded. By then he was in tears. Through those tears he said, "I said 'Stop' and he didn't stop." This was said to me, not so much in the spirit of tattling, because I'd obviously been there all along, but more, I felt, the way one reports a crime to a cop.

I said something like, "I can tell that upset you. I would tell him what you told me." Of course, the child in question was only a few feet away and heard the whole thing, but my goal was to steer the conversation back where it belonged, between the children.

"I said 'Stop' and you didn't stop."

"I did too," a true statement, even if it had been delayed.

And here's the dilemma: it's quite well accepted that when an adult feels compelled to ask a question of a young child, one typically must wait 12-15 seconds, at minimum, for a response, something adults rarely do. It simply takes most preschoolers that long to process the information and formulate an appropriate response. In reality, I know that some children, especially when focused deeply on something, like the sort of joyful wrestling in which these two had been engaged, need quite a bit longer to pull themselves together enough to respond.

Our 4-5's class had, while engaged in formulating their rules, their agreements, came up with this particularly awesome one: "Don't do anything to anybody unless you ask them first." This is a step beyond the classic "Golden Rule" in my view, because it requires one to not just consider one's own perspective, but to actually inquire about the perspective of others, in order to receive, what we're calling in our contemporary parlance, "consent."

"No you didn't! I said 'Stop' and you kept wrestling and you didn't ask me to keep wrestling!"

I'm among those who don't understand why other adults are so confused about the idea of consent, especially when it comes to adult behaviors like sex. I have no questions about our cultural attempts to shift from "No means no," to "Yes means yes," but evidentially some people do, which has fueled a backlash against what some see as "political correctness" run amuck. But these are young children here, not adults. I think it's fair to expect adult people to stop more or less instantly when told "Stop!" by a fellow human, but we simply can't expect that from five-year-olds. Their brains and bodies simply will not allow them to do it, just as the brains and bodies of infants will not allow them to walk or talk.

As I watched the poor accused boy sit there at a loss for a response, I pitied him for this moment of what could only be a confused self-reflection. He had, from where I sat, done everything in his power to respond to his friend in a timely matter, and in fairness, it had not taken even close to 12 seconds to release his grip and roll off of his wrestling mate. He simply didn't know why he had continued beyond the hard line of "Stop!"

By this time the boy who had been in tears was wiping them away, while his friend's eyes were about to crest.

I was at a loss and probably should have left things as they were, but instead, I said, "You said 'Stop' and he did stop, but not right away." The emotional event had by now drawn a crowd of both children and adults. It didn't feel right to leave things like this in light of the fact that both boys, in my view, had behaved in an exemplary manner, one standing up for himself and the other, to the best of his developmental ability, had responded according to the children's self-imposed rules and, as evidenced by welling tears, with empathy. So I said, loud enough for everyone to hear, "Let me tell you something I know about five-year-olds: sometimes it takes 15 seconds before they can do what you want them to do." Then I counted out 15 seconds using my fingers.

No one said a word for a moment. I'd spoken, perhaps ill-advisedly, out of a place of not knowing what to say, and as we sat in silence, I figured I'd just blathered a few of those nonsense words that adults so often say to children. At least, I thought, the adults had heard me. We sat this way long enough that children began to return to their play, leaving the three of us alone.

I hadn't been counting on my fingers, but I reckon about 15 more seconds had passed. That was when the boy who had stopped, but not right away, said, "I'm sorry," then burst into tears.

 I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you! 

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"Why Didn't You Tell Me?"

When our daughter Josephine was little, I decided to expose her to a little "culture" and rented the Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It had been a long time since I'd seen it. My memories were of silly dwarfs, uplifting songs, and a handsome prince. I'd completely forgotten the frightening parts, especially the terrifying early scene where the huntsman raises his knife to cut out the heroine's heart followed by her pell-mell escape through the dark and forbidding forest.

It overwhelmed Josephine. She demanded I turn the movie off, but then, to my confusion and surprise, a few minutes later she asked me to show that part to her again. Then again. Then again. We must have watched that scene a dozen times or more before she permitted us to move on. It scared her, but at the same time compelled her enough to want to confront the fear and peer more deeply into that particular abyss.

Some time ago, an online group of parents and teachers were discussing a book called The Amazing Bone by the author William Steig. Now this is a book I've been reading to preschoolers since I discovered it nearly two decades ago, but most of the people in the group felt it was entirely inappropriate, even for older children. In particular, they found this page to be disturbing:

The illustrations show masked bandits attempting to rob poor Pearl at gun and knifepoint. The text reads: "You can't have my purse," she said, surprised at her own boldness. "What's in it?" said another robber, pointing his gun at Pearl's head.

It's a frightening scene, no doubt, one that annually prompts deep and meaningful classroom discussions, taking us into our darker places.

I understand the instinct to want to protect children from disturbing imagery, and I did it myself as a parent. For the first many viewings of The Sound of Music, for instance, I would declare "The End" just before the Nazis began to pursue the Von Trapp family. When, years later, Josephine discovered what I'd done, she chewed me out. 

When she was six, she reacted even more strongly to learning that the catastrophe of 9/11 happened during her lifetime. We were approaching the hole in the ground where the World Trade Center towers had once stood. As I told her the story she angrily interrupted me, "You mean it happened since I've been alive? Why didn't you tell me?" I explained that she had been too little, just three-years-old. She scolded me, "I want to know these things! I want you to tell me the truth about these things!"

It's a story I've told before, and one I'll certainly tell again. It was a moment that changed me forever; my wee, innocent baby demanding truth. Up until then, I thought I'd been the epitome of an honest parent, never shying away from her questions, but that moment, a moment that occurred as we approached the scene, Josephine quivering in tears, caused my own conceit of integrity to collapse within me.

I hadn't told her about it, I thought, because I hadn't wanted her to be afraid. And now not only was she afraid three years removed, but feeling betrayed by her own father. I'm just glad she had the fortitude or courage or whatever it was to call me on it. I don't want to ever again be in that position, not with my child, my wife, or anyone for that matter. It's one thing when the world is crap. It's another to make it crappier.

When we lie, either overtly or by omission, especially to a loved one, we might tell ourselves it's altruism, but at bottom it's almost always an act of cowardice. It's us who don't want to face truth. When we say, "She's too young," we're really saying, I'm not ready to face the pain or the shame or the fear. 

We skip pages in books. We fast-forward through the scary parts. We distract their gaze from road kill.

I'm not saying that we should, unsolicited, lay out the whole unvarnished horrible mess before them, if only because we don't need to. It will reveal itself to them soon enough. Our job is neither to distract their gaze nor draw their attention to it. It is rather, out of our love for them, to answer their questions, to speak the truth as we know it, and to say, "I don't know," when that's the truth.

What anchors our children is not a sense that the world is perfect. They already know it isn't. They have known it since their first pang of hunger. They don't need more happy endings. They need to know we love them enough to tell them the truth, and to accept their emotions, to hold them or talk to them or just be with them. It's adults, not children who worship the false idol of childhood innocence. It's only adults who don't want to grow up.

 I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you! 

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

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