Play is a Perfection That is Not Improved by Gilding

In his classic book A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, the man sometimes credited as the father of modern wildlife ecology, wrote, "It is part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it."

He was writing specifically about natural places, but he could have been talking about just about any perfect thing with which we humans come into contract. In our efforts to improve upon Mother Nature, Leopold bemoaned our urge to build roads into perfect places in order to make them more accessible; to manage the plants and animals in order to create a more desirable "balance"; to construct facilities to make the experience of wilderness more convenient. We gild natural places with fences and signs and bear-proof trash cans only to find that our love is suffocating. We can't seem to resist the urge, as Shakespeare put it, "(t)o gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet, to smooth the rice, or add another hue unto the rainbow . . ."

Even the lilies we purchase to decorate our homes have been gilded in their way, cultivated to produce over-sized blooms that come in a gaudy rainbow of colors never seen in nature. Not long ago, I found myself among wild growing lilies, pure white with yellow-tipped stamen and instantly felt the difference. These were the flowers that have inspired culture, art, and literature before they were made tawdry in our efforts to one-up Mother Nature.

We've done the same with children's play, which is to say the natural urge to educate ourselves. For some 300,000 years, our species, Homo sapiens, has evolved an extraordinary intelligence through the processes of curiosity-driven exploration, discovery, experiment, cooperation, and invention. Play stands among the perfect things, yet alongside that has emerged this human urge to gild the lily.

We see this gilding in the advent of modern playgrounds and the proliferation of manufactured toys. We see it whenever someone touts an innovation by labelling it "play with a purpose" (which renders it not-play) or by asserting, "They won't even know they are learning" (as if children must be tricked into it). We see it in our classroom management methods which seek to replace the sacred urge to play with rules and curricula that require the application of external motivations like grades, punishments, and rewards.

Play is enough, especially in the early years. Everyone knows that this is when we are at our most capable as learners, when our brains and bodies are as facile as they will ever be. "They are like sponges" we enthuse and we are right, but it only works properly when self-motivation is the engine, which is to say, when we are playing. Play has evolved as a perfect mechanism for learning, yet sadly, too many of us cannot leave it alone: it's a lily we are too ready to gild.

When we build roads into a wilderness, we begin the process of rendering it less wild and therefore less perfect. Our intentions may be good, but a gilded lily will never live up to the ones that grow in natural places. Play is another perfection that is not improved by gilding.

When we resist the urge to gild and instead stand aside as our children play, we see a perfection in our imperfect world, and if we would keep it, we must resist the urge to gild it.

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Starting tomorrow! If you want to learn how to transform your own words into the kind of loose parts that allow children to think for themselves, the this summer camp is the place for you! The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think is a one-week exploration of how the language we use with children creates reality . . . for better or worse! We will explore how the way we speak with children creates an environment in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. Group discounts are available, but hurry because registration closes soon. Click here for more information and to register.

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!

"He Has an Irrational Fear of Pinecones"

Before I'd even met the two-year-old boy, his mother told me, "He has an irrational fear of pinecones."

This was important for me to know because there was a pine tree on the playground. And she knew it. I quickly considered how I should respond if she asked me to remove pinecones from the playground. Thankfully, that's not where she was going. Instead, she said, "I wonder how he's going to react when he notices."

In recent years, we've seen an uptick in mental health diagnoses in young children, especially anxiety disorders. The jury is still out on why this is happening. It may well be that society, the environment in which our children are growing up, is causing it (e.g., early academic pressure, technology, decreasing opportunities for outdoor play, and so on). But it's almost certain that at least some of the increase is simply a statistical phenomenon based on improved diagnostic methods and earlier intervention, rather than an actual increase in anxiety disorders. 

I've known many families who are grateful for their preschooler's anxiety disorder diagnosis. It gives them access to language, services, and interventions that genuinely reduce suffering. This is a good thing. 

In our role as preschool educators, however, we've all worked with parents who mistake normal childhood anxieties for anxiety disorders, or at least the worry about it an awful lot. Most of us aren't qualified to diagnose a disorder, but if we've been at this for any length of time we are experts on normal childhood anxiety.

Helping children through separation anxiety, for instance, is a beginning-of-the-school-year tradition as young people experience their fear of being without mommy, and then learn, through experience, that they can not only handle it, but emerge on the other side feeling more independent and capable. These sorts of normal childhood experiences in resilience, in turn, give them the confidence the next time they are faced with an unknowable and uncertain future. This is an enduring finding in both psychological research and practical down-on-our-knees experience.

Anxiety disorders are one thing and should not be dismissed, but typical emotional development is a process of repeatedly experiencing manageable amounts of fear, frustration, disappointment, and uncertainty -- and there's my point -- while supported by caring adults. We don't leave a child to simply "cry it out." We don't toss them in the water to let them sink or swim. We're there to comfort them and let them know that they're safe, to let them know their fears are valid, but ultimately allow them to discover that they can manage their own fears. 

There is a difference, however, between support and "rescue." When adults see fear as the enemy and all anxiety as a "disorder," they can often rob their children of the necessary opportunities to exercise autonomy, taking risks, solving social problems, and recovering from setbacks. At best, this sort of bulldozer parenting, in which natural opportunities to learn about anxiety are cleared away by well-intended adults, just pushes the learning off into the future. At worst it can lead to an actual disorder, which we all want to avoid.

It took the pinecone averse boy several weeks to peer up into that pine tree and, to his horror, spy those dreaded pinecones. I happened to be watching him as his eyes grew wide and his jaw clenched. He pointed into the tree and said, "Teacher Tom."

His mother had prepared me. I said, "You've noticed the pinecones." I didn't tell him that he had nothing to fear, because quite obviously he felt he did.

He pulled his arms into his chest and moved slowly away. Over the next several days, we talked about those pinecones. He showed me how malevolent they were with his hands. He described their fearsomeness with his words. He imagined that they were a kind of monster that was going to do something scary to him. The future is always uncertain and unknowable and this is what he was dealing with, what we all deal with, as we confront the world beyond the safety of what we already know. Trepidation, fear, and anxiety are all valid responses. It's what we do in spite of those feelings that matters.

By the end of the week, he was still worried, but seemed to forget about the pinecones for longer and longer stretches of time. Every now and then, especially when he was playing under the pine tree, I'd see him cast a wary eye their way, but then go back to his game.

Then one morning, after a wind storm, there were pinecones on the ground. He noticed them as he entered the building. "Teacher Tom," he pointed out the window, "pinecones." We stood looking at them through the window for some time before he got on with his play. When we later went outdoors he mostly ignored them. I even saw him kick one out of his way. 

A few minutes later he was tugging on my shirt tail, "Look!" He was showing me the pinecone he was holding in his hand, his face a portrait in pride.

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The way I spoke with the boy in this post is an example of The Technology of Speaking With Children at work. In summer camp we'll explore how the way we speak with children creates an environment in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. It's not too late to grab your seat around the camp fire. Click here to learn more and register.

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!

Transforming How We Speak With Children

"No climbing to the top!"

When our daughter was in kindergarten, her school installed an amazing rope-and-steel climbing structure. The kindergartners were forbidden from climbing to the very top, which meant that adults were always hovering around the thing, "reminding" the children when they got too high. 

One day, I asked her if she was loving the new climber. She replied, "It's kind of in the way. No one plays on it." When I asked her why, she just shrugged, "It's just not fun."

Awhile back, I posted some thoughts on The Theory of Loose Parts. Appropriately, it is an idea that has emerged from the field of architecture about how the best learning environments are those in which we have permission to shape and manipulate our surroundings, and the things found within our surroundings, to suit our needs, ideas and curiosity.

It's a theory that's generally thought of in terms of the physical environment, but no matter how loose the parts, no matter how flexible the space, if the environment does not grant permission to engage freely, then the children, as loose parts theorist Simon Nicholson puts it, will still be cheated.

That's what happened at our daughter's school. The adults, in their concern about safety (or perhaps liability), had sucked the joy out of it. They would have been better off not installing the thing at all. Or installing a shorter one. Or, the way we did it at Woodland Park, not have a climbing structure at all, but rather provide the materials -- scraps of wood, shipping pallets, car tires, ropes -- from which the children could build their own "climbers."

And at our preschool, that's what the children did. None so high as the one on our daughter's kindergarten playground, of course, but always just the right height for the children creating it. Not only that, these impromptu structures were never in the way because the moment the kids were done with it, the parts were on the move, being put to other uses. 

But this didn't happen just because we provided the parts. It wasn't even just because they were "loose." This kind of self-motivated play can only happen when children know they have permission to follow their curiosity.

At our daughter's school, the adults specifically forbid a certain type of exploration, but much of the time we let children know they don't have permission in more subtle ways. 

For instance, if you listen to the things adults are saying to children at play -- "Come here!" "Slow down!" "Be careful!" -- we hear mostly commands. Research finds that 80 percent of the sentences adults speak to young children are commands. And an environment full of commands is not an environment of permission.

We also hear a lot of school-ish questions, "What color is that?" "How many marbles do I have in my hand?" "Do you know what letter that is?" Implied in these types of questions is the idea that the adults know better than the children what to think about. But even more open-ended questions like, "What do you think will happen if you put one more block on your tower?" tend to steer children into adult approved "places" in which the parts are no longer loose. When we ask questions, we compel children to divert from their own course and onto the one we've chosen for them.

There are times for commands and questions, but if our goal is to create the kind of loose parts environments that allow children to learn at full-capacity, then we are well served to consider even our words as loose parts. When we strive to replace our commands and questions with informational statements -- "That color is red," "I have marbles in my hand," "This is the letter R" -- we are offering children information, facts, that they, like with any loose part, can use or not use.

Instead of the command "Get in the car," we might state the fact, "It's time to go" and let them do their own thinking. Instead of the command "Be careful!" we might say, "The ground below you is concrete and it will hurt if you fall on it." Instead of school-ish questions to which we already know the answers we might instead simply speculate aloud, "I wonder why the sky is blue," leaving it there for the children to consider . . . or not. 

Of course, we might also choose to just not say anything at all which is when our "third teacher," the environment, often does her best work.

We will be discussing this and much more around the virtual campfire at our upcoming one week summer camp (see below). It will be a deep dive for educators, parents, and other caregivers who want to transform their relationship with young children by transforming how we speak with them . . . Or sometimes by not speaking at all! 

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If you want to learn how to transform your own words into the kind of loose parts that allow children to think for themselves, the this summer camp is the place for you! The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think is a one-week exploration of how the language we use with children creates reality . . . for better or worse! We will explore how the way we speak with children creates an environment in which cooperation and peacefulness are the norm, where children take the initiative, solve their own problems, and, most importantly, think for themselves. Group discounts are available, but hurry because registration closes soon. Click here for more information and to register.

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

The Language We Use Creates Reality

We start speaking with our babies from the moment they're born. We know they don't understand what we're saying, of course, but that's beside the point. If we ask them questions, we don't expect answers. If we give them instructions, we don't expect them to follow them. If we tell them the name of something, we know there is no way it means anything to them.

We speak with them because human language is more than just communication: it's one of the primary ways we connect with one another. As a new parent in 1996, I'd not spent time with babies since my own sister was one, but my instinct was to babble and sing whenever I was with her. I knew it didn't matter what I said (or sang), only that I did. 

I couldn't wait until she could talk back. I wanted to know what she had to say even though her eyes, her hands, her feet, her wiggles and kicks and stretches, and especially her cries, told me everything she needed me to know.

She was an early talker. At three months she began regularly saying, "Papa" to me, probably because I'd developed the habit of saying "Papapapapapapapa . . ." whenever I entered to room. By five months, she was starting to form sentences. 

Back then, like most new parents, I was focused on every word that passed between us. It was like a miracle, almost as if the world was being created anew with each sentence that passed between and around us. And in a very real sense it was. The language we use creates reality.

I don't mean this as a metaphor, but as a fact. We speak the world into existence, for ourselves and those around us. A thing said one way, creates one reality; said another, it creates something altogether different. Our sentences, our questions, our tone, and our mindfulness (or lack thereof) shape the world for both ourselves and the young children with whom we spend our days.

It's too easy in the rush and crush of life to go into a kind of remote control, speaking with our fellow humans as if on automatic pilot, and, all too often, this results in creating realities we would rather not, if we were aware, be creating.

In our upcoming "summer camp" this is what we'll be talking about. It's amazing how many of our challenges as educators can be minimized and even eliminated when we turn our focus to the words we use, the sentences we say, and the questions we ask. So many of our adult habits tend to shut children down rather than open up a space in which they can think for themselves.

Language is a miracle: it is the miracle of creation. And sometimes it's the smallest of shifts in how we speak with children that make the biggest difference. 

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Who do you want to be when the children arrive? The countdown for Teacher Tom's Summer Camp is on. In this course you will learn how even seemingly small changes in how you speak with children can transform even the most challenging behaviors without the need for rewards and punishments. This is especially effective when the whole team is on board. And there's nothing like coming together with like-minded educators to get you ready for when the children arrive. To learn more and to register, click here. I hope to see you around the campfire!

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

The Choice to Love

We were all afraid of Mr. Turner. He was the principal at Meadowfield Elementary in Columbia, SC, and, it was rumored, he had a wooden paddle in his office with "holes drilled in it" so he could swing it faster. Even as an eight-year-old, I thought the physics of that sounded off, but I sure didn't want to test it. The most sure-fire way for a teacher to shut down disruptive behavior was to threaten to send the offender to the principal's office.

"Cultures of domination," writes bell hooks, "rely on the cultivation of fear as a way to ensure obedience."

As a boy, I valued my reputation as a "good boy." I valued the good opinion of my teachers and strived to shine in their eyes. I didn't always like or even understand what I was being taught, but I knew that learning was largely immaterial. The important thing was to convince the adults that the lessons were learned, which meant doing well on the quizzes and tests, yes, but more vital was to cheerfully abide by the rules. So that's where I focused my efforts, even as I risked being labeled a "teacher's pet."

I never came close to being sent to the principal's office. Avoiding sticks was easy for me. I was after those carrots. In other words, I fully accepted the notion that those with power could tell me what to do because, after all, they could mete out punishments. I wanted nothing to do with those, so I set my sights on the reward side of the equation. 

As a child, I struggled to understand kids who flirted with the punishment side, even as a part of me admired their courage, but I now know that my choice to be a "good boy" wasn't one that every child was capable of making. 

In all honesty, I doubt that paddle ever existed. I remember Mr. Turner as a large, chuckling, slightly fuddley man in the mold of Mr. Whetherbee from the Archie comic books. There were never any credible sightings of his paddle, let alone, actual evidence of its use. I suspect that the paddle rumor wasn't intentionally planted, but rather was the product of children who were regularly spanked sharing their fears with the rest of us: they knew that even loved ones had the potential to hit them. So even if the paddle was a fiction, the fear was real. I was a "good boy," but that doesn't mean that the threat of Mr. Turner's paddle wasn't a baseline consideration in every choice I made while at school.

Advocates for punishments value them as "motivation." And they are, I suppose, in that children learn to be motivated by fear. And fear is a powerful, yet deadly, motivator.

"In our society," writes hooks, "we make much of love and say little about fear. Yet we are all terribly afraid most of the time. As a culture we are obsessed with the notion of safety. Yet we do not question why we live in states of extreme anxiety and dread. Fear is the primary force upholding structures of domination. It promotes the desire for separation, the desire not to be known . . . Isolation and loneliness are central causes of depression and despair."

This is the real challenge of our age: isolation, loneliness, and disconnection, the natural consequence of a culture of fear. And that fear is used to "motivate" us. There doesn't even have to be a paddle. The rumors are enough.

Today, most children go to elementary schools where corporal punishment is off the table. You would think that this would contribute to lowered anxiety, but according to the American Psychological Association, rates of anxiety in children have been on the rise since well before Covid. 

Our obsession with safety is a product of our culture of fear. This has led us to greatly limit, in the name of safety, our children's access to independent play, which in turn contributes greatly to increased mental health challenges, and specifically anxiety and depression. According to researcher Peter Gray, rates of mental health issues among children, even very young ones, have been rising dramatically over the past many decades and are now at the highest rates ever recorded. 

"We would like to think of history as progress," Gray writes, "but if progress is measured in the mental health and happiness of young people, then we have been going backward at least since the early 1950's."

"When we choose to love," writes hooks, "we choose to move against fear -- against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect -- to find ourselves in the other."

If being educated is defined as being equipped to deal with the world in which we find ourselves, it seems that this, the choice to love, is the most necessary thing in the world, more important that literacy, more important than math. And love is impossible as long as the paddle remains in the backs of our minds.

I like that hooks refers to love as a choice -- "The choice to love." As an early childhood educator, this is a choice that I strive to make every day. Fear is a powerful motivator, but connection is infinitely more powerful. Only when a child feels connected, can they be truly motivated from within. An obedient child is motivated by fear and sycophancy. A connected child is one who seeks even deeper connection through cooperation, agreement, and kindness. And that, ultimately, is what is most needed if our children, and our world, are to thrive.

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Who do you want to be when the children arrive? The countdown for Teacher Tom's Summer Camp has begun. In this course you will learn how even seemingly small changes in how you speak with children can transform even the most challenging behaviors without the need for rewards and punishments. This is especially effective when the whole team is on board. And there's nothing like coming together with like-minded educators to get you ready for when the children arrive. To learn more and to register, click here. I hope to see you around the campfire!

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!

This is Why We Never Assigned Chores to Our Child

We never gave our daughter chores to do around the house when she still lived with us. 

This runs against the current of most of the parenting counsel out there. Her school officially recommended it for all families. Even our pediatrician suggested, when she was still a baby, that we would want her to do chores. "It's good for them." "It teaches them about responsibility." "It's how they pull their weight in the family."

But I couldn't assign her tasks any more than I can assign tasks to my wife. Our family is not a business, nor a system of government. It is a relationship between fully-formed, autonomous people.

Our culture grants parents the right to command particular children based upon the accident of their birth. We have the right to yoke them to work that they didn't choose and to saddle them with rules in which they had no voice in making. We can, if we are cruel or angry enough, beat them with our hands, imprison them, and rob them of every freedom. Stripped down like this, exposing the raw authoritarian power of it, isn't something we often do, and I've learned that when I do it makes many people quite angry.

Please know that I'm not writing to tell you what to do. I'm sharing what we've done.

In refusing to exercise these parental "rights," I understand that I am, in this, outside the mainstream. People assure me that they can exercise their parental rights with love, and I'm sure they do, but we must have very different ideas about love. Love, for me, cannot exist within structures of hierarchy and control. As groundbreaking psychologist Carl Jung wrote, "Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking." Love, if it is to mean anything, is a relationship between fully-formed, autonomous humans. It is a relationship of choice, one that we must continually reaffirm or it stops being love and becomes something else.

Our child did not ask to be born. That decision was made on her behalf, one that places all the weight of responsibility on me, not her. It's a responsibility I assumed. I do not own my child, but I am responsible for her. She was born not owing me anything, not even gratitude. Indeed, I don't own anyone, nor does anyone owe me anything except when it is an obligation or relationship we've both entered into willingly. 

I don't buy this idea that children can be taught to be responsible through the coercive assignment of tasks, although many, many people seem to believe this. Indeed, for the better part of the first two decades of their lives, we assign children responsibilities "for their own good," at home and throughout their schooling. But that is simply not how responsibility works. Responsibility is always something we assume of our own accord. In the workplace we agree to assume certain responsibilities in exchange for money. In our relationships we make agreements about who is to do what. We might, at times feel as if we have no choice in the matter, but as autonomous humans we always have a choice. And if we truly don't, then we are not autonomous, which means we come to resent it, to rebel against it, to stew and anguish and despair. Is that what we feel we must teach children? To simply do what others tell them to do and call it being responsible?

Our child is an adult now. She is a valued employee. She cooks and shops and tidies up. She pays her bills. If being assigned chores is the path to these little virtues, then she managed to get there by other means. And whenever there was real work to be done, as opposed to the "make work" that comprises most chores we assign to children, she always pitched in because that's what fully-formed, autonomous humans usually do when they see the opportunity to help others.

Utah Philips sang, "I will not obey, but I'm always ready to agree." That is the larger virtue that I choose for myself, even when it comes to the fully-formed, autonomous humans we call children.

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Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

Dear Grown-Ups

The 5-6 year olds Abby works with in Bellingham, Washington wrote this wonderful letter:

Dear Grown-Ups,

Kids need you to know:

We can jump off tiny waterfalls.

We can use shovels and real tools.

We can help you

We can do hard things

We can make breakfast in the morning

You can trust us more than you think

We need time to play

We need playdates

We need time to slow down

Please stop hydrating us all the time

Please stop talking so much sometimes

We can hear you

Our ideas matter

We have cool ideas

We deserve to make some of our own decisions

Please listen when we say no

Please treat us properly not just boss us

Sometimes we don't want help

Sometimes we want to picture it ourselves

We can touch thorns without getting spiked

We can find a way to reach things high up

Magic is real

We love you

And also:

Say yes more!

Love,

The Kids

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Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

Who are You?

I recently heard an author being interviewed. He said that one of his high school teachers claimed that the entirety of Ancient Greek philosophy could be summed up in Socrates' instruction, "Know thyself."

So who are you?

How would you answer that question? 

There isn't an easy answer. Am I what I think? What I believe? What I feel? 

I often find myself mulling poet Walt Whitman's famous lines: 

Did I contradict myself?

Very well then, I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I think that's probably how most people feel about ourselves, which is why it's impossible to answer the question "Who are you?" We are different people in different situations, often contradicting ourselves. I am one person when I'm at a dinner party and another when I'm being interviewed. I'm not the same person when I'm at work as I am when I'm home alone. Some would say that this apparent multitude is just our singular self being viewed from different angles: that who we are in any given moment is just a matter of perspective. This answer is, of course, satisfying, although it implies that there is a central core of who we are that is unchangeable, even if it's not fully knowable. 

Perhaps "Know thyself" is an impossibility. Perhaps we can only know ourselves through others.

Maybe I am the person my dog thinks I am. In that case, I'm pretty awesome.

Maybe I'm the person the guy who flipped me off in traffic thinks I am. In that case, I'm a dangerous idiot.

I know that when I leave this earth, I will become the a sum of the stories people tell about me.

Young children don't care about what I think or believe or feel. They know me for what I do. They know me not by my thoughts, but by my actions. They know me not for by my beliefs, but by my words. They know me not for my feelings, but rather by my tone, posture, and expressions. They know who I am through my responses to what they do and say. And this is also how they come to know who they are.

Humans who have been tortured by isolation, like prisoners in extended solitary confinement, report feeling unreal, invisible, and disconnected from their selves. That's because our self emerges in relationship. I know I'm funny because other people laugh. I know I'm trustworthy because other people trust me. In know I'm lovable because I am loved.

Young children already understand something that most of us spend a lifetime trying to figure out: we are what we do together.

They come to know me through my responses to them, and they come to know themselves through my responses to them. Who we are is not hidden somewhere deep inside, waiting to be discovered. We become ourselves every time we interact with another person.

Perhaps that's what it means to know thyself.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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

What Are the Babies Crying About?

Young parents with a crying infant know that behavior is communication, although it may take weeks or months to figure out exactly what it is their babies are communicating. Does this cry mean I'm hungry? Does that one mean I'm in pain? Frightened? Tired? 

Coming to understand our new babies generally involves a lot of trial and error as we try one approach after another. If they reject the breast then we check their diaper. If they don't respond to singing we try rocking, bouncing or cooing. In other words, we try everything we can think of from burping to taking them for a drive until we hit on the proper response. 

The one thing every new parent learns is that the proper response to their baby's cried request or query or demand or complaint, is to do something to change their environment or their situation within the environment. It's not our babies that need to change -- they are the one perfect thing in an imperfect world. Their crying is feedback on their experience in that imperfect world and their place in it. And in this business of being an adult caretaker, the customer is always right, so we do what we need to do to make the world, at least for a time, a bit more hospitable. Then we do it again and again until one day we decide, usually gradually, but sometimes abruptly like on the first day of school, that it's not the world, but the child that must change.

This is the beginning of what we call "education." Behavior continues to be feedback: I need more time. I need to go outside. I need to know everything about this mote I've discovered under my fingernail. That's why I'm covering my ears. That's why I'm bouncing off the walls. That's why I can't keep my eyes on you and attend to your irrelevant blather. The adults have decided that they will no longer respond to their request or query or demand or complaint by doing something to change their environment or their situation within the environment, but rather strive to change the child, to invalidate their communication with, say, scolding, bribing, shaming, and even punishing. I've known far too many children who have been kicked out of preschool because they are unable to change to suit this or that environment or curriculum or methodology. 

But they need to learn to adapt, we argue, it's a life lesson. The world is the way it is. We say this even though we've all discovered that the real world simply doesn't box us up in packages of two dozen people of like age, sit us in chairs, face us forward, silence us, and compel us to attend to whatever nonsense is on the pre-planned agenda for the day. We say that we are preparing our children for reality, which is to say an unchanging world that will only accommodate requests or queries or demands or complaints within a limited range. There will be no taking you for a drive or cooing or laying you down for a nap on the top of a running clothes dryer (the thing that finally soothed our infant daughter for a time). We continue to do this even though it is demonstrably untrue that this is the way the real world works.

On the contrary, we double down on changing the child to suit this mythical "real world." If you don't keep up, if you don't shut up, we will label you. If you don't know this week's spelling words this week, you're "behind." And you remain behind even if six months later you demonstrate you know how to spell those words because the curriculum has been cranking out new spelling tests in the meantime. 

It's like a train that continues to chug along even when passengers are falling off. Instead of stopping to let them hop back on it continues moving forward expecting the children, children who are screaming "Wait!" to just, somehow, catch up. And if the child won't or can't run after the train, they are labeled as deficient in some way and specialists are called in to fix the child who has all the while been clearly saying, through their behavior, This sucks for me!

In the actual world, however, there is always another train. In the actual world, unlike school, you can take a taxi or ride a bike or walk or opt to go somewhere else on an entirely different timetable. Or just choose to not go anywhere at all. The real world may have its tracks and obstacles, but ultimately it is infinitely malleable. 

What if this were the core lesson of school? What if instead of being charged with shaping all children according to some artificial and arbitrary norm, we made them into places that strive to understand the children's requests or queries or demands or complaints?

Awhile back we were in New York to visit our daughter. While there, we went to see the world premier of a documentary about performance artist Taylor Mac's 2016 "24-Decade History of Popular Music", a 24-hour, one-time-only show about the American experience. The show featured dozens of costumes by the designer Machine Dazzle. During the question and answer session following the screening, an audience member asked Mac to name his favorite costume. He seemed genuinely stumped before good-naturedly refusing to answer the question, quoting author Iyania Vanzant, "Comparison is an act of violence."

Our schools are simply not designed to support each child in achieving their own unique potential, which is what our babies are always calling out for if we would only listen. Instead they are in the business of comparing, measuring, grading, and ranking with some sort of arbitrary standard or norm in mind. This is harmful and limiting not just to every child, but every human. It's violence.

What if we instead saw education as a process of trial and error, one that sought above all else to understand what each child is crying about; what they are communicating about the environment and their situation within that environment? What if, as educators, we dropped our measuring sticks, forgot our timetables, ditched our curricula, and focused instead on listening in order to properly respond to what the children are trying to communicate? Maybe then we would have an educational system that truly prepared our children to engage fully with life itself.

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Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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