How To Change The Games Children Play

In the days following the horrors of 9/11, several of the children at our daughter's preschool began to fly toy airplanes into block towers, over and over. They were clearly, through their play, processing the events. Every day, children are doing this as they play, preparing themselves in one way or another for the world they perceive awaits them. Hunter-gatherer children tended to play games of hunting and gathering. Contemporary children play games of housekeeping or driving cars or shopping.

Sometimes the "purpose" of their play is obvious to us, even if it isn't conscious on their part. The girl who plays hospital games in the weeks after her own visit to the emergency room obviously isn't telling herself that she needs to "process," but she is driven to it nevertheless, and it shows up in her freely chosen activities. Perhaps more often, however, the child's "purpose" isn't as evident, leaving thoughtful adults to ponder since the children themselves cannot tell us. If you ask a child who is, for instance, playing superhero, why he is drawn that particular game, he's likely to respond, "Because it's fun!" which is likely true even if it's not the whole story. Most of us would agree that there is something about being powerful or masculine or protecting others at the bottom of this type of play.

Some argue that a child playing superhero is just imitating something he's seen on TV and that if we took away his access to the boob tube he would stop playing the game. Maybe, but that doesn't explain why even the children I've taught who don't have television often play similar types of power games, even if they call themselves something else, like "bad guys" or "firefighters." No, the fact that this type of play comes up year-after-year, mostly among boys, tells me that they are not merely aping media messages, but are rather seeking to understand or practice something deeper that they don't just want, but need to understand, or for which they must practice. I would make the same assertion about girls, and it's mostly girls, who play princess games: we might personally reject the cult of feminine beauty, but the ubiquity of this sort of play across the years tells us that it is something that is "important" to process or practice or understand.

When we see "violent" games, when we see games based on superficial beauty, it's tempting for some of us to try to put a lid on it, or to steer children away from it, or to somehow create environments in which this sort of play doesn't emerge. As a young parent, I misguidedly and half unconsciously attempted to raise our daughter as a "tomboy," dressing her in overalls, buying her Hot Wheels, taking her to sporting events. I'll never forget the day as a two-year-old when she came across a heavily bejeweled princess crown at a friend's house, popped it on her head, looked me in the eye, and said, "You don't know what girls do," then proceeded to wear a crown, daily, for the next three years.

I see the same phenomenon happening these days with technology and smart phones in particular. Almost every school in America has instituted limitations on their use. The nation of France has recently outright banned children under 15 from using their phones at school "amid fears that students were becoming too dependent on and distracted by their smartphones." I have no doubt if given the choice, most school-aged children would chose their phones over the adult-directed curriculum from which they are being "distracted." What's happening on their phones is, from their perspective, much more important. And as to becoming dependent? Look around. The whole world is becoming dependent. The kids are just trying to process, understand or practice for the future, just as those kids flying toy airplanes into block towers were trying to make sense of the real world events that had come into their lives.

I'm not arguing that we should allow children access to new technology willy-nilly or that there is nothing we can do about violent games or beauty games. What I am saying is that children will always show us the future, as they perceive it, through their play. And children are incredibly adept at seeing through our envision-a-better-world smokescreens to zero in on what skills, habits, and knowledge they will need to live in the real world, and then to set out to understand or practice or process it, often to our chagrin. In one sense, when children play, they are holding up a mirror. If we don't like what we see, it's on us to make changes, both personally and societally. We will know if we've succeeded only when the children change the games they play.

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Speaking It Into Existence

A couple years ago, Tom Drummond, one of my earliest teaching mentors, the man who introduced me to the technology of speaking with children, dropped by the school. He was particularly interested in our green house and our new "farming" program. After about an hour, we parted. As we did, he said, "You're doing great work. I'm glad you're in the world." We were standing on the wooden walkway that overlooks our playground. I replied, "Thank you. And I want you to know that none of this would be here without you. Everything here is a result of how you taught me to speak with children."

We tend to think of reality as a set of facts that exist outside of ourselves, things that are true in equal measure for everyone, and in one way it is, but we also create reality for ourselves, day-after-day, by the way we behave, believe, and especially in the way we speak. When we speak informatively with young children, from a place of warmth and connection, striving to avoid commands and minimizing our questions, we create a certain reality not just for those kids, but for ourselves and those around us. When I look at our playground, our green house, our classroom, I see them as visible echoes and amplifications of the technology to which Tom introduced me two decades ago.

After Tom left, I went back to puttering around, then before leaving went indoors to wash the dirt from under my fingernails. Being a Friday afternoon, the building was empty except for a pair of contractors who we had hired for a project. As I passed by the room in which they were working, one of them called out to me, "Hey, do you work here?"

"I'm the teacher of the preschool."

"Good. You're the guy I need to talk to." As he approached me, I could tell he was agitated. He was moving quickly. I imagine his heart rate was elevated. "Do you know the guy in the dress? The transgender person or whatever?"

All morning long one of our neighborhood's street people, one of Pastor Gay's men, had been hanging around the place, mostly just lounging on the lawn and smoking butts in the designated area. He was wearing a kind of a skirt, more like a small blanket tied around his waist, but I figured that's who the contractor meant. I said, "I think I know who you're talking about."

"Well, he just tried to come in the building and when I told him I couldn't let him in, he threatened me."

"Oh no. Thanks for not letting him in."

"I just wanted to warn you. He seems like he's about to go off."

"Is he still here?

"Yeah, he's just waiting right outside the front door. He says there's supposed to be a meeting here, but I was told not to let anyone in who doesn't have a key."

"Well, there are a lot of 12-step meetings in this building. Maybe he just got the time wrong. Listen, I know him. I should talk to him."

"He seems pretty irrational. We'll come with you."

When I opened the front door, I found at least a dozen people there, all familiar faces, people who regularly attend 12-step meetings at the Fremont Baptist Church in which our school is housed. Amongst them was a very large person in little black dress, fishnet stalkings, and four-inch heels -- one of the regulars.

Someone said, "Oh, thank god you're here. There was no key in the key box and we have our meeting now."

I replied, turning to the contractors who were standing over my shoulder protectively, "I know these people. It's okay if they come in."

Later, after the group had settled in, I stood on the sidewalk with the contractors who still seemed agitated. I said, "You did the right thing not letting them in."

"Yeah, well that big guy in the dress, or woman, or . . . Well they're big and they were mad. I thought I was going to get punched." He went into more details, obviously needing to get his emotions out, to explain himself, maybe to justify his fear. As he did, I was conscious of his struggle with finding the proper pronouns. Our daughter and her friends have been teaching me a lot  about gender and the use of pronouns.  I support this effort to create a new reality through the use of language even as I continue to struggle. .

As the contractor  began to wind down a bit, he shared that he lived in a suburban community a goodly commute from the Seattle city limits. "When I come into the city, I'm always on my guard, you know? It seems like there's always someone ready for a fight. I've even had to pull a gun on a guy."

This isn't the first time someone has earnestly told me about the gun they "had to pull" on someone, and it has almost always been a white man from the suburbs. "I have to tell you," a real estate agent friend from Kirkland once told me, "Some of the places I go in the city -- I'm sure glad I had my gun." Another friend who lives in Woodenville can't stop talking about the "dangers" of the city on those rare occasions that he is willing to come visit. This is a black leather wearing Harley rider, a man who affects the stance of a tough guy (although he's genuinely very sweet), yet he talks as if there is a hoodlum around every corner. Every time I see him, he advises me to get a gun like the one he sometimes carries because you never know when you might "need it."

I've lived in cities most of my adult life, I love living in cities, the more urban the better, and I have never once been in a situation in which I felt I needed a gun, yet over the years dozens of people, mostly white men from the suburbs, but not always, have spoken about "pulling guns" or otherwise having to violently defend themselves in the city. It's clear to me that the city presents a different reality for them than it does for me, and I can't help but wonder if much of the difference comes from the stories we tell ourselves and others, the language we use, to describe our experiences.

The media seems to get higher ratings from portraying urban dystopias. And researchers tell us that the more television a person watches, the more dangerous they believe  the world to be. If you don't live and work in a city, the words reporters and scriptwriters choose for creating their TV realities, I suppose, start to form an actual reality about cities that is distinct from that experienced by those of us who live here. That language of violence and menace becomes part of how some people think and speak about the city, which, in turn, results in a higher likelihood of perceiving threats, engaging in conflict, and even having to resort to "pulling a gun," a reality that is as alien to me as my reality is to them.

Some time ago, I wrote here about an experiment in some Swedish schools to eliminate the use of gender-specific pronouns. I tended to doubt the concept, even as I was curious to see the results. Now my own daughter has come home with the same ideas. These seemingly small tweaks to how we speak are attempts to create a new reality about gender through the conscious use of language. The goal is for it to become something we just all do without having to think about it: the way most of us don't think about our use of gender-specific pronouns. Every social change that has ever happened in our world has only really come about once we've fully adopted the new language that goes with it.

Today, we hear loud complaints about political correctness. It's hard to find oneself living a different reality than those around you. Perhaps for most of your life it didn't matter because most people shared your reality, but then as more and more of us attempt to speak a new reality into existence, you see your old, comfortable reality changing as well. I know from experience that it at first seems ridiculous, then irritating, then even frightening because this new reality will replace your old one.

Every day, the words we choose to speak create the reality in which we live. If we talk of cities as menacing, then they become so. If we talk of cities as thriving, exciting, uniquely human communities, that is what they become. If we speak the language of gender fluidity, then we create the reality of gender fluidity. If we speak to children as if they are fully formed human beings, then we create a reality in which children are free to live as fully formed human beings.

We build reality word by word. We all have the power to create it. Indeed, the reality in which we live is already a creation of our words. If we want a different reality it may well be as simple and as difficult as consciously speaking it into existence. It might take a very long time, but if we keep doing it, we will one day no longer have to even think about it and we will have created a better world.

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

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Every Parent Must Make Their Own Decisions About Screen Time

I watched television as a kid. I started watching on a black and white Zenith. I remember when we bought our family's second set, a state-of-the-art color TV. There were four channels, five if you were lucky in adjusting the UHF knob, and children's programming was limited to Saturday mornings and a couple hours right after school. The only other sort of screens we knew about were at the movie theater.

I feel like we were more or less typical for our neighborhood, watching maybe an hour a day. It's not that we wouldn't have liked to watch more, but there just wasn't anything we found all that compelling. For a time, Batman was on in the afternoons, followed by the boring news, which was okay with us because after such an exciting half hour we were eager to don our capes (dad's dress shirt buttoned around the neck) and meet our friends outdoors to re-enact what we had just seen. Things have obviously changed. Today it's possible for kids to spend all day, every day in front of screens that deliver exactly what they want, when they want it.

Over the weekend, the program 60 Minutes reported on the early results from a new $300 million study financed by the National Institutes of Health. The goal of the study is to better understand the impact of all sorts of external influences on brain development; everything from drug and alcohol use to concussions, including the affect of screen time. It's an important thing for us to be seriously investigating. Screens have proliferated dramatically over the last couple decades, an explosion in technology with which research is only now just beginning to catch up, and given the necessity for longitudinal studies, we are still decades away from anything approaching definitive results. Up to now, the research that has been done on screen time, and particularly what people are calling "addiction," has presented a mixed bag of results, with some showing negative impacts and others showing none. Some have even indicated that there are benefits of screen time under certain circumstances. And, honestly, if these early results are any indication, this new study is no different . . . at least so far.

You can read the piece for yourself, but the bottom line is that there are reasons to worry and reasons to not worry. The truth, as it has been since I was a boy, is that we are all subjects in this grand human experiment with technology.

I suspect that if and when we ever get to the bottom of this, we'll discover that screen time impacts different people in different ways, that some, maybe even most, of us can engage with relative impunity, while others pay a price, even a steep one. One thing I do know, however, is that six hours a day (which is approximately the average for America's young children) is entirely too much. This is not a statement about technology or content, but rather that it is a physically sedentary activity, one that may engage the brain, one that may even support social and emotional learning, but also one in which children are largely indoors, slumped in a sofa while their muscles atrophy. Indeed, that's what mom would say as she chased us outdoors back in the 60's, "Get outside, get some fresh air, and move your bodies."

My own belief is that all this screen time is causing some level of brain damage, at least to some of us, and there is no doubt that it is changing our brains for better or worse (which is also true of everything we experience) but by the time we get to the bottom of it, screens will be as old time-y as black and white Zeniths. I'm not throwing up my hands, I'm just being realistic about the science keeping up with the pace of technology. In the meantime, I try to stay educated, then follow my instincts, values, and experience. One thing we do know for a fact is that humans need to move their bodies in order to be their best selves, they need regular, sustained exercise, and the younger we are the more we need: it's necessary for both the body and the brain, which are, in fact, one and the same.

Every parent must make their own decisions about screen time. I will not call you a "lazy parent" because you hand your kid the iPhone once in awhile. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. If you feel like it's too much, it's too much. If you feel like your kid is getting enough exercise, then that's the important thing, the thing we know. Personally, I find life more fulfilling when I limit my time in front of screens, when I move my body and interact directly with the other humans. I think that's true for most of us, but all I have right now are my own anecdotes and a mixed bag of science . . . for now.

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Mister Roger's Neighborhood

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the airing of the first episode of Mister Roger's Neighborhood. I didn't want to let it pass without acknowledging that milestone.

I have always wanted to have a neighbor
Just like you!
I’ve always wanted to live in a
Neighborhood with you.
So let’s make the most of this beautiful day;
Since we’re together we might as well say.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won’t you be my neighbor?

When Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood debuted in 1968, the day before I turned 6-years-old, I was already a kindergartner, on the upper edge of the show’s wheelhouse demographic. I had been a Captain Kangaroo kid, but this new guy on the TV after school drew my attention and I watched him during those first couple of seasons.

I loved the Neighborhood of Make Believe best, of course. The little electric trolley would take you through the tunnel and into the puppet land of King Friday, Henrietta (“Meow, meow”) Pussycat, Donkey Hodie, and the always forgiven antagonist, Lady Elaine Fairchild. I’d usually watch with Sam, my 20-month younger brother.

I was re-introduced to the series in the mid-70’s when my 7-year younger sister watched it. Mister Rogers still sang, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? at the top of the show, while attiring himself in cardigan and sneakers. He still fed his fish. He still had sincere conversations directly with his audience, addressed emotions frankly, and made you feel like you really mattered. (The only thing that had changed was he’d replaced the song Tomorrow with It’s Such A Good Feeling at the end of the show.)

I make no secret of my admiration for Mister Rogers, an opinion based not least of all upon his steadfast consistency. You could count on your half hour in the neighborhood. Mister Rogers was always happy to see you, he always sang with you, he took your feelings seriously, and he stayed on schedule. As the longest running program in PBS history, for 895 episodes, over the course of over 40 years, he did those things in which he most deeply believed.

“I’m happy to see you”

Deep within us – no matter who we are – there lives a feeling of wanting to be lovable, of wanting to be the kind of person that others like to be with. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.

I’ve been greeting children at Woodland Park with, “I’m happy to see you,” since the first day of my first year teaching. It isn’t something I thought about in advance. It just came to me upon the arrival of my very first student. It came to me because it was true – I really was happy that my first student had arrived! And it remains true today as I greet the children. I am happy to see each of them.

We all, always, wherever we go, want to be warmly welcomed. I was always welcome in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Whether I was 6 or 10, boy or girl, wild or quiet, willing or unwilling, Mr. Rogers made it clear that rejection was impossible. That is how I want the children to feel each morning as they come through the door and find me waiting there.

I often think that if this feeling were the only thing a child takes away from Woodland Park, it would be enough.

Singing

Music is the one art we all have inside. We may not be able to play an instrument, but we can sing along or clap or tap our feet. Have you ever seen a baby bouncing up and down in the crib in time to some music? When you think of it, some of that baby’s first messages from his or her parents may have been lullabies, or at least the music of their speaking voices. All of us have had the experience of hearing a tune from childhood and having that melody evoke a memory or a feeling. The music we hear early on tends to stay with us all our lives.

At Woodland Park, we sing the same songs, over and over, year after year. I tell myself that change is good, and I sincerely try to add 2-3 new songs every year, but it’s the old songs, in a very real sense, that form the foundation of our community: Jump Jim Joe, Uncle Jessie, The Baby Chant . . . We sing them at Circle Time, we sing them as we play, we make up new verses to make them fit our day.

Mister Rogers’ neighborhood was a place to sing. Songs like Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and It’s Such a Good Feeling were songs we sang over and over, year after year, their messages of undying friendship and sunrise optimism framed a show in which it was as natural to sing as to speak. To this day I find myself humming these songs.

Our Feelings

All our lives, we rework the things from our childhood, like feeling good about ourselves, managing our angry feelings, being able to say good-bye to people we love.

People have said, “Don’t cry” to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, “I’m too uncomfortable when you show your feelings. Don’t cry.” I’d rather have them say, “Go ahead and cry. I’m here to be with you.”

There is no “should” or “should not” when it comes to having feelings. They’re part of who we are and their origins are beyond our control. When we can believe that, we may find it easier to make constructive choices about what to do with those feelings.

Mister Rogers spoke and sang constantly about feelings, without judgment and largely without trying to offer any advice. Just talking about emotions was enough.

Our emotions come upon us for whatever reason and we must feel them. We want our children to learn that there are no bad feelings, no shameful feelings. Our emotions are real and true and part of us. Only we know how we feel. As a parent, it’s hard not to hear our child’s cries or tantrums as pleas for help and that we must somehow “fix” the problem. But feelings are not problems and they will never be fixed. They must run their course if they are to be any good to us at all.

When a child is frustrated, sad or angry, when his emotions overwhelm him, our first job is to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself or others. Beyond that our role is to sit beside him and hold or stroke him if he’ll allow it. This is how we teach about feelings.

Discipline

Discipline is a teaching-learning kind of relationship as the similarity of the word disciple suggests. By helping our children learn to be self-disciplined, we are also helping them learn how to become independent of us as, sooner or later, they must. And we are helping them learn how to be loving parents to children of their own.

A visit to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was always a reliable, predictable, disciplined experience. There were the songs, the stoplight, and the visits to Make Believe. And Mister Rogers was always the same as well: warm, earnest, loving.

By the time children come to Woodland Park, they are already experts on their own home and family. They know the daily rituals and routines. They have figured out where things go, when to do things, and how far they can push the boundaries. Mom and Dad too, with all their emotional complexity, are as reliable as the rising sun. Preschool is their first regular foray into the larger world and we want them develop the same kind of trust and comfort as they have at home.

Sticking to our daily schedule is where it all begins. There is flexibility, of course, within our schedule, but the framework stays the same, day after day, year after year. Within a few weeks of the start of school, 2-year-olds begin informing me that it’s “clean up time” and they’re usually right to within a few minutes. Graduates who return to visit for a day, and who have since learned the new routines of their new schools, always fall confidently and joyfully into the old, familiar routines of preschool.

It’s all about building trust. It’s impossible to develop confidence or self-discipline in a world that is unpredictable.

It's Such A Good Feeling

I will never be Mister Rogers. Where he was quiet and gentle, I tend toward boisterous. Where he was a straight-arrow, I’m a very silly man. But I like to think that I bring a part of him into the classroom every day. I strive to make sure each child knows that I want her to be my neighbor. I sing, often badly, but I sing the songs we know. We let our feelings flourish, and try get on with our life of doing. And we try to do this within our four-walls of consistency and comfort – a place where each child can confidently thrive.

That, I hope, is our neighborhood.

It's such a good feeling to know you're alive.
It's such a happy feeling: You're growing inside.
And when you wake up ready to say,
'I think I'll make a snappy new day.'
It's such a good feeling, a very good feeling,
The feeling you know that we're friends.

And I'll be back
When the day is new
And I'll have more ideas for you.
And you'll have things you'll want to talk about.
I will too.

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

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Why I Do Everything

I started playing Pokemon Go when the game was first introduced last summer. I was curious about the technology, but my main motivation was to "keep up with the kids." Several of them were already into Pokemon via the card game and cartoons and I thought it would be fun to be knowledgable in one of their interest areas, much in the way I can speak superhero having been an avid comic book reader in my youth, or baseball because of my own experiences as a fan and a coach.

I have continued playing the game in fits and starts, often using it to while away time while waiting in airports or as a way to add a layer to long urban hikes. But mostly, I've used the game as I originally intended, as a way to goof around with kids. I'd say I average two or three Pokemon conversations a week, fewer than I do about superheroes, but more than baseball.

A disproportionate number of these conversations take place with older siblings, one of whom is a former student and older brother of a current student. We've discussed the fact that we're on different teams -- he's red team and I'm yellow. He's boasted that the red team "holds" all the "gyms" in his neighborhood. I've boasted that I was planning to come to his neighborhood one weekend and take them all over in the name of team yellow. 

Their family recently returned from a trip to visit grandparents and upon their return, the younger brother, the one who is currently my student, ran up to me to ask, "What team are you on?"

Not sure what he was talking about, I replied, "I guess I'm on the Mariners."

"No, not baseball, Pokemon!"

"Team yellow."

He insisted, "But what is the name of your team?" Each of the three teams have names, "Valor," "Instinct," and "Mystic" (I think). I never remember which one is mine, so I answered, "I don't remember."

"Is it Instinct?"

"Yes, I think that's it."

He then ran off to find his mother who was standing some ways off. He returned with a cap. "We got this for you Teacher Tom. It's a Pokemon trainers hat. It's mostly black, not yellow, but it says Instinct! That's your team, right?"

"Thank you," I said, "I love it!" And it truly do. It touched me to know that he and his family had had this discussion about me while on their travels, thinking about me and what I might like. He had even spent emotional energy worrying about whether or not it was the right cap, even checking with me first to make sure I wouldn't be disappointed. He was so excited to give it to me and I've been proudly wearing it since.

Later in the day, I was sitting at the snack table, enjoying conversation over crisp carrot sticks and tart orange slices, when he sidled up to me. "Teacher Tom, did you say 'thank you' for the hat?"

"I did. And I want to say it again, thank you."

"Well, I forgot to say 'you're welcome'." He then embraced my arm, putting his cheek against my shoulder, still thinking about me and my feelings. I hugged him back, knowing that this is why I do everything, including playing Pokemon Go.

(If you are interested in pre-ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here if you are in North America. Click here for Australia. For the time being, those of you in New Zealand can email your order to Resources@Inspiredec.com. We should be able to accept orders from the rest of the world next week. Please bear with us. Thank you!)

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The Power To Create Reality

Last week, Tom Drummond, one of my earliest teaching mentors, the man who introduced me to the technology of speaking with children, dropped by the school. He was particularly interested in our green house and our new "farming" program. After about an hour, we parted. As we did, he said, "You're doing great work. I'm glad you're in the world." We were standing on the wooden walkway that overlooks our playground. I said, "Thank you. And I want you to know that none of this would be here without you. Everything here is a result of how you taught me to speak with children."

We tend to think of reality as a set of facts that exist outside of ourselves, things that are true in equal measure for everyone, and in one way it is, but we also create reality for ourselves, day-after-day, by the way we behave, believe, and especially in the way we speak. When we speak informatively with young children, from a place of warmth and connection, striving to avoid commands and minimizing our questions, we create a certain reality not just for those kids, but for ourselves and those around us. When I look at our playground, our green house, our classroom, I see them as visible echoes and amplifications of the technology to which Tom introduced me two decades ago.

After Tom left, I went back to puttering around on the farm, then before leaving went indoors to wash the dirt from under my fingernails. Being a Friday afternoon, the building was empty except for a pair of contractors who we had hired for a project. As I passed by the room in which they were working, one of them called out to me, "Hey, do you work here?"

"I'm the teacher of the preschool."

"Good. You're the guy I need to talk to." As he approached me, I could tell he was agitated. He was moving quickly. I imagine his heart rate was elevated. "Do you know the guy in the dress? The transgender person or whatever?"

All morning long one of our neighborhood's street people, one of Pastor Gay's men, had been hanging around the place, mostly just lounging on the lawn and smoking butts in the designated area. He was wearing a kind of a skirt, more like a small blanket tied around his waist, but I figured that's who the contractor meant. I said, "I think I know who you're talking about."

"Well, he just tried to come in the building and when I told him I couldn't let him in, he threatened me."

"Oh no. Thanks for not letting him in."

"I just wanted to warn you. He seems like he's about to go off."

"Is he still here?

"Yeah, he's just waiting right outside the front door. He says there's supposed to be a meeting here, but I was told not to let anyone in who doesn't have a key."

"Well, there are a lot of 12-step meetings in this building. Maybe he just got the time wrong. Listen, I know him. I should talk to him."

"He seems pretty irrational. We'll come with you."

When I opened the front door, I found at least a dozen people there, all familiar faces, people who regularly attend 12-step meetings at the Fremont Baptist Church in which our school is housed. Amongst them was a very large person in little black dress, fishnet stalkings, and four-inch heels -- one of the regulars.

Someone said, "Oh, thank god you're here. There was no key in the key box and we have our meeting now."

I replied, turning to the contractors in their black t-shirts who were standing over my shoulders protectively, "Oh, I know these people. It's okay if they come in."

Later, after the group had settled in, I stood on the sidewalk with the contractors who still seemed agitated. I said, "You did the right thing not letting them in."

"Yeah, well that big guy in the dress, or woman, or . . . Well they're big and they were mad. I thought I was going to get punched." He went into more details, obviously needing to get his emotions out, to explain himself, maybe to justify his fear. As he did, I was conscious of his struggle with finding the proper pronouns. My daughter Josephine came home from her first year of college with a lot to say about gender and the use of pronouns. She has friends who are on a campaign against the use of "male" words used to refer to mixed-gender groups: like when we say "you guys" or use "he" as a generic pronoun. They have trained themselves to use "they" and "them" as non-gender based terms because, as Josephine points out, gender is fluid. I support this effort to create a new reality through the use of language even as the grammarian in me recoils.

As the contractor, whose name I don't know, began to wind down a bit, he shared that he lived in a suburban community a goodly commute from the Seattle city limits. "When I come into the city, I'm always on my guard, you know? It seems like there's always someone ready for a fight. I've even had to pull a gun on a guy."

This isn't the first time someone has earnestly told me about the gun they "had to pull" on someone, and it has almost always been a white man from the suburbs. "I have to tell you," a real estate agent friend from Kirkland once told me, "Some of the places I go in the city -- I'm sure glad I had my gun." Another friend who lives in Woodenville can't stop talking about the "dangers" of the city on those rare occasions that he is willing to come visit. This is a black leather wearing Harley rider, a man who affects the stance of a tough guy (although he's genuinely very sweet), yet he talks as if there is a hoodlum around every corner. Every time I see him, he advises me to get a gun like the one he sometimes carries because you never know when you might "need it."

I've lived in cities most of my adult life, I love living in cities, the more urban the better, and I have never once been in a situation in which I felt I needed a gun, yet over the years dozens of people, mostly white men from the suburbs, but not always, have spoken about "pulling guns" or otherwise having to violently defend themselves in the city. It's clear to me that the city presents a different reality for them than it does for me, and I can't help but wonder if much of the difference comes from the stories we tell ourselves and others, the language we use, to describe our experiences.

The media seems to get higher ratings from portraying urban dystopias. And researchers tell us that the more television a person watches, the more dangerous they (not "he or she") believes the world to be. If you don't live and work in a city, the words reporters and scriptwriters choose for creating their TV realities, I supposed, start to form an actual reality about cities that is distinct from that experienced by those of us who live here. That language of violence and menace becomes part of how some people think and speak about the city, which, in turn, results in a higher likelihood of perceiving threats, engaging in conflict, and even having to resort to "pulling a gun," a reality that is as alien to me as my reality is to them.

Some time ago, I wrote here about an experiment in some Swedish schools to eliminate the use of gender-specific pronouns. I tended to doubt the concept, even as I was curious to see the results. Now my own daughter has come home with the same ideas. These seemingly small tweaks to how we speak are attempts to create a new reality about gender through the conscious use of language. The goal is for it to become something we just all do without having to think about it: the way most of us don't think about our use of gender-specific pronouns. Every social change that has ever happened in our world has only really come about once we've fully adopted the new language that goes with it.

Today, we hear loud complaints about political correctness. It's hard to find oneself living a different reality than those around you. Perhaps for most of your life it didn't matter because most people shared your reality, but then as more and more of us attempt to speak a new reality into existence, you see your old, comfortable reality changing as well. I know from experience that it at first seems ridiculous, then irritating, then even frightening because this new reality will replace your old one.

Every day, the words we choose to speak create the reality in which we live. If we talk of cities as menacing, then they become so. If we talk of cities as thriving, exciting, uniquely human communities, that is what they become. If we speak the language of gender fluidity, then we create the reality of gender fluidity. If we speak to children as if they are fully formed human beings, then we create a reality in which children are free to live as fully formed human beings.

We build reality word by word. We all have the power to create it. Indeed, the reality in which we live is already a creation of our words. If we want a different reality it may well be as simple and as difficult as consciously speaking it into existence. It might take a very long time, but if we keep doing it, we will one day no longer have to even think about it and we will have created a better world.

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Thank You TV!

I'm convinced that television is, on balance, a negative thing for young children and, to the degree it has become our national hobby, I bemoan it's mind-numbing, fear-mongering, couch-potato influence on adults as well. I haven't owned a TV for the past five years and the only time I miss it is when there are sporting events I'm eager to view or when something historic is happening. But as for regular programming . . . Well, there was Mister Rogers Neighborhood, perhaps the greatest single argument in favor of serial television, and we would all be poorer, I think, without Mythbusters, Bill Nye the Science Guy, or Cosmos. And then there are those magnificent comedies like M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Everybody Loves Raymond . . . 

Everybody Love Raymond? Okay, so it really doesn't belong on any list, but it was while watching this program that I had one of the most significant parenting epiphanies of my life. I was in Santa Monica, staying in a hotel while working with the good people at Kid's In The House (if you're interested in viewing all of the videos I made, click here) to shoot a series of "parenting tips" videos. Since I don't have a television at home, one of the "treats" of staying in a hotel, alone, is to imbibe in the narcotizing effects of the medium by unwinding with some mindless programming before dozing off. I was not surprised, of course, to discover that there were a 150 channels and nothing on, so I settled on sitcoms.

This particular episode (season 7, episode 15, The Disciplinarian) was about disciplining the children with punishment and as the twin boys sat out a particularly irrational one, the adults debated. As they did, they each, one-by-one, wound up confessing their own youthful indiscretions, carried out despite punishments or the threat of them. In fact, they realized, that the main things punishment had taught them was how to be sneaky in order to avoid or get around them. In the penultimate scene, Raymond says to his boys, "We know that you're going to get older and you're going to do things and we know that there's nothing we can do about it."

There were some jokes and schmaltz after that, but that confession, on a stupid sitcom, was so full of truth that it blew my mind. When Raymond's wife Debra sighs in the final wrap-up scene, "All we can do is love them and set a good example," I realized that my life as a parent had changed forever.

Ultimately, no one can control the behavior of another person. No one has ever stopped another person from doing something they really want to do short of putting them in a cage. Our children are going to rip off their tops at Mardi Gras and sneak peppermint schnapps from the liquor cabinet, and even if we stop them today or tomorrow, there will come a day when we turn our backs or they get too sneaky for us, and that day will always be sooner than we want. We might stop them today or tomorrow, but if a person, even a child, really wants to do something, they will.

I'd rather my child be honest with me, to know that we can discuss anything without histrionics, lectures, or reproach. And the way to do that is to be honest with her and to fortify her my best advice. I won't get that opportunity if I've forced her to be sneaky.

Other than that, all we can do is love them, and strive to set a good example. And we keep doing that no matter what.

Thank you TV!

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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Confronting Our Feelings

Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness. It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it.  ~Mister Rogers

The images we "sell" to young children, especially boys, about strength, are problematic. Superheroes, cowboys, knights, and assorted other tough guys have the muscles and fearlessness that we've come to associate with masculine strength. Rarely, do we see them express any emotion other than righteous anger, and rarely do we see them solve their problems in any way other than physically, usually through fighting.

The classic social-media criticism of this is that it teaches our children violence, and maybe it does, but I'm unaware of any convincing research to support the idea that media images of this sort of cartoon violence, or dramatic play that comes from it, leads to violent adults. No, the real concern for me isn't violence as much as how limiting these images are when it comes to the "acceptable" expression of emotion, especially for men and boys, leaving little choice but to channel even our grief through anger.

Of course, media images are only part, hopefully a small part, of our children's emotional development. We, as parents and other important adults in children's lives, have a much greater influence, and to the degree that mothers, fathers, and teachers can role model the strength to acknowledge our feelings, talk about them, cry, and seek help and comfort, is the degree to which our children will develop this same strength.

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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Criminalizing Parenthood

This is how I understand this story: a single South Carolina mom named Debra Harrell with a nine-year-old daughter, trying to make ends meet with a $8 an hour job at McDonald's, had been bringing her child to work with her, where the girl spent her summer vacation days playing on her laptop until someone broke into their apartment and stole, among other things, that laptop. Deciding that staying home alone might not be the safest situation for her child, what with burglars and all, and now with no laptop, this mother of meager means, at her daughter's behest, dropped her girl off at a well-populated playground located adjacent to her place of work, with a mobile phone, to play outdoors with other children as she worked. She was arrested and, presumedly because of the arrest, fired from her job. (Due, I'm sure, to the publicity this case has generated, McDonald's has since rehired her, citing a "misunderstanding about her job.")

There is so much wrong here, it's hard to know where to start, although the first thing I'll point out is that $8 an hour is simply not a livable wage. I understand that "minimum wage" jobs are "supposed to be for teenagers," but in our current economy families like this one are having to live on those wages. I'm genuinely excited that I live in a city that has recently approved a $15 per hour minimum wage, nearly doubling the former wage floor, and it's scheduled to adjust upward as the cost of living increases. There are many, including many small business owners, some of whom are members of our Woodland Park community, who worry that this will force them out of business, and they might be right. I get that, but I'm still excited because we, as a community, are trying the one, most obvious thing one can imagine to fight poverty, the solution the children always suggest when discussing the plight of poor people: give them more money. But that's not what I want to write about in this post.

I also don't want to write about the vicious Catch-22 in which this and millions of other parents find themselves. On the one hand, society tells her, through both public policy and popular culture, that she must work because otherwise she is a parasite, so she gets a job, albeit a low paying one. On the other hand, she has a nine-year-old child who is out of school for the summer. Child care is beyond her means, her home is not safe, and while she may well have many friends who would be willing to babysit, they too have jobs during the day. Honestly, what's a parent to do? If we're really going to be a nation that cares about families, as every politician in America asserts, it's clear that we need either subsidized child care for low-income families or, even better in my book, an expanded social safety net that doesn't force parents to chose between their jobs and their children.

And I really don't want to write about the cold corporate cruelty of an employer like McDonald's which apparently fired this poor mother for a decision, good or bad, that she made as a parent. I also don't want to write about the issues of race and gender that are the roots of this story, but it's there and raw and real.

No, I want to write about another aspect of this story that, like all the others, is just the tip of the American iceberg: a mother was arrested for letting her nine-year-old play alone at a playground.

I know this will sound a bit curmudgeonly, but when I was growing up in that very same South Carolina, all the nine-year-olds played alone in the playgrounds, and this was in an era with a much higher crime rate, and we had already been doing it for years. In fact, as a six-year-old, I walked to and from school, which was a half mile in each direction, and I didn't have a mobile phone. Even as four-year-olds, our parents would shoo us out the front door and not expect to see us again for hours, and by the time we were seven, we were riding bikes which took us miles away from home. As a nine-year-old living in Greece, my seven-year-old brother and I would spend entire days on our own roaming wherever our interests took us in a foreign country where we didn't even speak the language, and sometimes we would take our three-year-old sister with us. It never occurred to us to tell our parents where we were going because, more often than not, we didn't know ourselves.

Today, all of the mothers in our neighborhood would have been arrested: every last one of them. We have criminalized parenthood and our children are the victims of this crime wave. I was discussing this with a Woodland Park parent this week. She works at one of our local elementary schools where she sends her own kids outside to play unsupervised on the playground each afternoon as she finishes up her work day. She's not the only one; many of the school's employees do the same thing. Apparently, every one of them is risking arrest.

Objectively, at least when it comes to crime, our world is a much safer place today than it was during the 70's, yet we expect parents, under the threat of legal consequence, to keep their children under a watchful eye 24/7, and it's not just crime we worry about. We also don't trust children with their own safety, with some "experts" asserting that children shouldn't be left alone in a car until they are old enough to drive. You can't leave a 15-year-old alone in a car?

We live in a world in which a nine-year-old playing with a laptop inside a McDonald's for hours on end is favored over playing outdoors with friends -- and our entire society is suffering from this.

We are raising our children to be incompetent.

We are raising our children without real freedom.

We are raising our children to be unreasonably afraid.

We are raising our children without the benefits of outdoors, exercise, and friends.

We are raising our children without the skills, confidence, or wisdom to be functioning adults, infantilizing them until they're suddenly grown up and expected to make their way in the world.

And most of us don't even realize it; we take this as the normal state of affairs. If you were born after about 1980, you likely have no idea what I'm talking about because it's all you've known. As a younger parent, as my child approached the age of this poor woman's daughter, I began to worry about her. Not about her safety, but rather about her lack of freedom. I'll never forget how nervous I was the first time I left her, as an eight-year-old, home alone as I drove to the grocery store to pick up some milk. I made sure she knew what to do in case of fire, flood, doorbell, or injury. I raced to the store, I raced back, and she survived. We did this not out of necessity, but rather as an act of parenting, forced upon me in part because she was literally begging for the opportunity be "be alone," a cry for freedom that touched my heart.

This was the beginning of our program, probably illegal, of increasingly ramping up her experiences of being on her own in the world because, after all, that's what we're ultimately raising our children to do, and experience is the only teacher. With her enthusiastic agreement, she was home alone for longer and longer periods of time. I would sometimes come home to find that she was proud to have prepared her own snack or bathed or practiced some other self-help skill. I began to send her into stores to run errands for the family. One day, when she was about 11, as we awaited the train, we chatted up a cop about safety tips for young women traveling on mass transit alone, then implemented it the following day, starting with solo a trip downtown and back. By the time she was 14 she was regularly getting herself around Seattle on her own, yet "experts" would have her incapable of even being left alone in a car. Not only did she survive, but she thrived, often saying, proudly, "No body else's parents let them do this."

Lest you think I wasn't sufficiently "worried" about my child, let me assure you that the reason I was doing these things was because I was worried about her. I didn't want her first experiences at being alone in the world to coincide with, say, an adolescent surge of hormones or the advent of a driver's license. Being a newly sexual being or a new driver is challenging enough without also being overwhelmed with the thrill and chill of being out from under a parent's watchful eye for the first time. That, to me, seemed like a set up for disaster. I didn't want her to head off to college without sufficient experience in the basic life skills required to be safe and healthy in the world.

One of our experiments came when she was 12. We were at the Westlake Center mall in the heart of downtown Seattle and she wanted to shop "on her own." This is not a criticism of this particular mall, but its location means that at any given moment there were more than a few nefarious types milling about. Nevertheless, we agreed that I would sit over a cup of coffee while she browsed for an hour. As it turned out, I remembered something I needed to pick up, so decided to quickly run my errand in the meantime. It's not a large mall, so it didn't surprise me when I spied her riding up an escalator. I thought she saw me, but then she turned and fled up the next escalator toward the third floor. I chuckled to myself, assuming that she had pretended not to see me, not yet ready for her hour of freedom to end, so I went about my business. Later, she told me about a "creepy guy" who had said "Hi" and who she thought might be following her. When I'd seen her on the escalator she had been in the process of putting distance between herself and him. She had then ducked into a shop, taking safety, as the transit cop has suggested, in the company of others. My heart was in my throat as she told the story, even as I knew that this was both a life lesson for her as well as proof that I was, as a parent, doing the right thing.

If I were a poor, black woman I wonder if I could even confess all of this without being arrested. Maybe I'll get a knock on my door this afternoon. I am a criminal parent, apparently. That said, my daughter will be 18-years-old in October, legally an adult, and I am more confident than most of the parents of her peers that my child will be as ready as possible for the attendant rights and responsibilities.

I don't know any more than you do about the details of this South Carolina mother's story. What I do know is that unless things change, at best, her nine-year-old will now go back to spending her summer sitting in a McDonald's after learning the lesson that her mother is a criminal for trusting her with a little freedom. Maybe she's "safer" today, but I assure you, she will not be safer in the future. I don't know what to do about the rest of us, but in this case you can help Debra Harrell and her daughter by making a donation through this funding site.

Over the last few months, one of the internet memes among us progressive parents and educators has been about giving our children a "70's summer," one like we had in the golden age of childhood, full of play and free of academic stress. This is a good thing, but for the most part I see it continue to happen under the ever-present watchfulness of hovering parents. It's a step in the right direction, but without the freedom, it's not the same thing.

Of course, in advocating this I'm walking into a Catch-22 of my own: all it will take is for one parent to take my advice and have it all go horribly wrong. There is always that chance. This is the dark side of freedom for all of us, no matter what our age. Of course, each time we put our child in our car we are engaged in what is statistically the single most dangerous thing we can do with children, yet most of us think nothing about it. Gever Tully calls it "dangerism," this phenomenon by which societies come to both formally and informally accept the various risks of freedom. We each have to make these decisions for ourselves: that is perhaps the ultimate freedom.

I honestly can't tell you if Debra Harrell made a good or bad decision about her nine-year-old daughter. There are so many factors involved ranging from the neighborhood itself to the maturity of the child, but I think we can all agree that in this case, the authorities went over the top. We have to trust one another as parents, even if we disagree, and our laws need to allow more room for common sense. Ultimately, we have to trust love, and nothing in what Ms. Harrell did leads me to think she is anything but a loving mother doing the best she can. Perhaps she made a mistake. Perhaps she should be role model for us all. But whatever the case, she is not a criminal for letting her child play alone at a playground.

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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