"You Want Your Children To Be Independent, Then It Terrifies You When They Are"

My mother once told me, "You want your children to be independent, then it terrifies you when they are." I was a teenager at the time, and while I don't recall the exact circumstances, I'm sure I'd just done something that had terrified her. At the time, I took it in as information, something that was perhaps true, although not particularly useful, but now, having been a parent and having been around thousands of parents, I know she was expressing something that comes pretty close to being universal.

If there is anything we wish for our children it is that they grow up to be their own people, free, capable, autonomous, and independent. In the counterbalance, however, there are the other things we value on their behalf, traits like empathy (with the ability to draw boundaries), courtesy (albeit not servility), thriftiness (stopping short of stinginess), caution (without timidity), outgoingness (but with a well-adjusted social filter), industriousness (with an understanding of balance), and kindness (without being a pushover). The list is long and complicated and all of us at one time or another have found ourselves attempting to instill these kinds of traits in our children, even if we ourselves are still finding our own way.

The truth is that independence is a pure good even if it doesn't necessarily lead to pure good. But without it, without the freedom to make mistakes, to learn the often hard lessons that lead to the internalization of traits like courtesy and caution and thrift, children are left to learn them later in life, as teenagers or young adults, when the consequences of their inevitable mistakes are likely to be far more dire than they would have been had the mistakes been made, had the learning happened, when they were children.

We've all heard people express the sentiment that kids can't be trusted with freedom and autonomy, that without our adult vigilance and control, they will use any freedom and autonomy they have to do "stupid things." And, indeed, these critics can point to any number of examples from the real world, usually of teenagers making bad choices. But that is a faulty conclusion.

I would counter with the assertion that those bad choices are, in fact, a direct result of having had limited experience with freedom and autonomy up to that point. Too many teens and young adults have spent their childhoods being controlled by our institutions and our parenting, being told where to go and what to do. In those rare moments when allowed a bit of freedom, they of course make mistakes. Mistakes that are necessary to learning how to live with freedom. All too often, we see these mistakes, these bad choices, as confirmation that they simply cannot be trusted with freedom, but the truth is that they are merely a sign of inexperience.

Better, I think, if we really want our children to grow up to be their own people, free, capable, autonomous, and independent, we must allow them to experience freedom from an early age, to be allowed to make the mistakes necessary for learning what freedom is really all about. We must let them fall down and to be there to pick them back up, because that is the single most important lesson we can learn through freedom: independence means nothing unless it's balanced with interdependence.

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"We Protect People"

There were always kids in Woodland Park's 4-5's classes who spent large portions of their days together playing "super heroes." They might call it something different, like good guys, bad guys, Star Wars, or Ninjas, but the essentials of the game remained the same: they formed a team, negotiated their roles, discussed in detail just how powerful they were, then race about talking tough, making fierce faces, and striking assertive poses.

And just as predictably, there were always some children who came to fear the super heroes.

It's tempting for adults to simply impose restrictions on the super hero play in defense of the children who are afraid, but I think that misses an opportunity for the children to learn about what it means to be members of a community. And it begins with the all-hands-on-deck class meetings that we call circle time.

One year, several children had expressed their fears, both directly to me and through their parents, so when the children assembled for circle time, I wanted to steer the conversation that way. We started off talking about our classroom rules, the agreements the children have made with one another. I was prepared to broach the subject of super heroes myself, but was hoping that it would emerge from the kids. I knew that one girl, H, via her mother, had been attempting to summon up the courage to suggest an outright ban on the super hero play, and this was the day.

I said, "H has something to say," and she replied, "No super hero play."

There was a moment of dead silence as her words sank in. Then the super heroes, their expressions full of shock and outrage, raised a chorus of, "Nooooo," which was followed by a more scattered chorus of, "Yesssss." It was obvious that we were not going to reach consensus on this rule, but that wasn't the point: the point was to have the discussion. Once we'd settled down we took turns making our cases, starting with those who were feeling afraid. Several classmates joined H. As they spoke up I watched the superheroes who were paying attention the way one does when the topic is of utmost importance. As they listened to their classmates say that the super heroes frightened them, their expressions turned from outrage to what I can only describe as dismay.

When it was the super heroes' turn to talk, one of them said, emotion rising in his throat, "But we're good guys." Another said, "We protect people." They were simply astonished that they had been so misunderstood. They were genuinely shocked that anyone to be afraid of them.

The discussion that followed was long and rambling. We knew we couldn't all agree to H's suggested rule, but we talked about things we could do like being more aware of one another's feelings, being more direct with one another about how we were feeling, and figuring out better ways to share the space and resources. We learned in that discussion that most of the children were neutral about the super heroes, sometimes joining them, but not every day. They had concrete suggestions, but perhaps their most important contribution was to let their friends know that they weren't afraid, which I think helped some of the more fearful children see that there was an alternative to either-or. I didn't check the clock, but it was a long, productive discussion in which the kids learned something about one another: about who we were as a community.

This wouldn't be the last time we needed to talk about this, but it was a good starting point and the parents of the anti-super heroes reported that their children came away feeling much better, empowered even. As for the super heroes, they had been sincere in their desire to not frighten their classmates going forward, even if they sometimes forgot as they immerse themselves in their dramatic play. And we adults now had a concrete reference point for supporting the children as they worked this through.

A few days after our classroom discussion, one of super heroes was running full speed near the swings. A boy standing nearby flinched as he passed, which caught our caped crusader's eye. He slowed briefly and said, "I'm sorry I scared you," and his friend replied, "That's okay. I was only scared for a second." Like I said, we're going to be working on this for the rest of the school year, but man that was awesome.

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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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Baby Games

A child psychologist friend once told me that he kept a doll house in his office, explaining that he could often learn more about a child while playing "family" with her than in any number of hours of traditional talk therapy. I'm no therapist, but I can certainly see the potential there.

"I'm this baby."

"I'm the mommy bunny."

"I'm a baby too."

"But I'm the littler baby."

"I want to be the littlest baby."

Just in how they choose their roles, there's a whole world of aspiration and query. Over the years I've noted that more children want to play the "baby" role, the younger and more helpless the better. For a long time, I assumed that "mommy" was the power role, the one that went to the child with the strongest urge to be in control, but I know now, as every child knows who has ever lost her place in the family to a younger sibling, it's the baby who really wields the power. Their helplessness demands attention and that's what the babies do in these games.

A group of our four and five year olds had been playing "baby" games for most of the year, typically assuming the roles of baby tigers or baby polar bears or other types of baby animals. There were no mommies in these games, but rather owners who were forever wrestling those naughty babies back into their beds or cages or caves or homes in order to "keep them safe." I'm sure my child psychologist friend would have a field day with these games filled with misbehavior and compulsion, these games where the baby, no matter how it behaved, continued to be cared for and loved. But as a teacher, I don't need to know what it means: I simply need to understand that the children are engaged in experiments they have designed to answer their unique social-emotional questions.

There have been times when I would drop to my knees in the midst of these games and assume the role of "middle" or "oldest" child, the roles that appeared to me to have the least power, then attempt to role model how one can assume power (or satisfaction or control or whatever) from this role. Or maybe I would take on another role, hoping to somehow "teach" a lesson through my behavior within the game. They were misguided efforts at best: I had taken over their game to answer questions they weren't asking, skewing their data, scuttling their journey, making it about my adult attempts a social-emotional engineering rather than their own purposeful and meaningful exploration of the real world as they experienced it.

Today, as children play house, I simply listen, even when they say things that make me cringe, even when the mommies boss the babies or the babies behave like mini-tyrants, even when I notice that no one wants to be the middle or oldest child. It's not my job to know what it means, that's for them (and perhaps a future therapist) to know. Mine is to create the space, to step back, and to wonder.

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"The Supposition That Every Child Is A Kind Of Idiot"

Much of what passes for education, not just in the US, but around the world, starts with the premise that children aren't all that bright, that they are essentially lazy, and that they can't be trusted to know what's best for themselves. Of course, few of us would admit to thinking such thoughts about preschoolers, but there are plenty of adults who will authoritatively assert these criticisms about older children, like teenagers.

Having worked with young children for most of my adult life, I can assure you that every one of them is a genius (a conclusion that is supported by NASA), they are far less inclined toward laziness (if it even exits) than most adults I know, and concerning matters beyond safety, schedules, and courtesy, who am I to tell a child that I know better? The teenagers I've known don't tick any of those stereotyped boxes either, but even if I stipulate that the haters are correct, that many, if not most, teens are ignorant, lazy, and self-destructive, then my question is: How did they get that way? I mean, honestly, how did they un-learn their genius, their motivation, and their ability to make good decisions for themselves?

Is it just in their nature? Are children doomed by biology to become surly, indifferent, and slothful? I doubt that. It makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective. No, to the degree that it's true, it's something we do to them, and from where I sit all signs point to it being a self-fulfilling prophesy.

"I'm beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think." ~Anne Sullivan

Our entire school system is based upon the premise that children are reluctant learners, that they must be compelled, coerced, tricked, and driven. Not only must we adults rein them up to the wagon for their own good, but we are then required to entice them toward a pre-determined destination with carrots, while always threatening from behind with a stick. Is it any wonder that after a few years of this, they lose their will? We give them "education" as a kind of meaningless drudge, as an authoritarian exercise that seems almost designed to break their free will, even as we insist we are attempting to instill the opposite. How can it end any other way when you've been robbed of your right to control what, how, and when you are to learn? We squander their genius by making them jump through our hoops.

"Learning is the human activity that least needs manipulation by others. Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful activity." ~Ivan Illich

Children either come to hate school because it has been rendered meaningless or, perhaps worse, they become creatures of the system:

The anxiety children feel at constantly being tested, their fear of failure, punishment, and disgrace, severely reduces their ability both to perceive and to remember, and drives them away from the material being studied into strategies for fooling teachers into thinking they know what they really don't know." ~ John Holt

Play-based education is self-directed learning. We start from the premise that children are geniuses, that they are naturally self-motivated learners, and that when left to pursue activities that they themselves find meaningful, they will come to discover what truly is best for themselves. This approach to education accords with what we know about the human instinct to learn: to become critical thinkers, to collaborate, and to create. Our traditional school system is not based upon evidence, but rather habit and the false premise that children are idiots.

"You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources? Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource!" ~Utah Phillips

There are those who nevertheless defend our current system, based on arguments that without "rigor" and compulsion children will never learn the value of "hard work." If they are to spend their days at their self-selected activities, how will they ever learn to put their nose to the grindstone? To do what they are told? To jump through society's hoops? These are the arguments of those who will forever attach education to the economy, as if we exist to serve it, rather than the other way around. It's a view of children as valuable natural resources, which means that we have a right to exploit them in the name of a greasy buck. "Hard work" is code for doing things we don't want to do and no free human, no matter how much they practice, gets good at that, except perhaps for people who have been broken, a fate I'd not wish on anyone. If you want to see real hard work, swing by a preschool playground where children are busy pursuing their own freely chosen meaningful activities: no one on earth works harder.

I have never met a child who is not curious and curiosity is the human urge to learn made manifest. Schooling seems to be designed to erase that curiosity and replace it with mere performance.

"This is really what the whole debate over compulsory schooling is about. Do we trust people's capacity to be curious or not?" ~Astra Taylor

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We Have Love On Our Side

Psychologist Carl Jung wrote, "Where love rules there is not will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking." This, I think, is an important thing upon which modern educators in general, and early childhood educators in particular, could stand to meditate.

I strive to place love at the center of my practice, as I know is true of most of my colleagues. We genuinely love the children we teach and they love us. I've witnessed this to be widely true wherever I've visited. It's perhaps our greatest reward (because it sure isn't financial). When it goes as it should, we spend our days loving and being loved, swimming in it, breathing it. Our job is to keep them safe and to otherwise simply be there, loving them and helping them as they figure out how to connect with, to love, more people. This is the foundation of not just all learning, but all living in the fullest sense of the word.

When I look at our habitual idea of schooling, I see a lot of loving individual teachers working in a system in which love has been pushed to the side, and where power therefore predominates. From our earliest years, we are judged by our educational system, one that pretends to know what is normal and to then acts to enforce it. The French philosopher Michel Foucault sees this as an exercise in power, a form he calls "normalization," in which our souls are imprisoned by expectations and standards and this has characterized our schools right up to our current era of high stakes standardized testing which has come to dominate the educational experience for most of our children.

It's a system of power that appears largely designed to create "normal" children rather educated ones, where those that cannot bend to the will of the system are labelled, then subjected to increasingly overt forms of power, right up to the use of force, which is ultimately a failure of power. They must either "learn" how to behave or find themselves rejected. It's a power, however, that isn't derived so much from the threat of force as from the capacity to label: this one is "normal" and that one is "abnormal," and it can only exist as a poor replacement for the love that should stand at the center, but has been pushed aside.

I watched a baby on my flight home from visiting our daughter in New York over a long weekend, and what I saw was a free human. Sure, he was 100 percent dependent upon the adult humans in his life, yet because love clearly stood at the center of his relationships with those important adults, this dependency didn't translate into them exerting power over him. Instead of "behaving," he shouted when he felt the urge, grabbed whatever was within reach, bounced furiously, cried from his belly, and everyone around him considered this to be "normal." You do too. This is just what babies do. By the same token, when his two-year-old brother whined or cried or kicked the seats in front of him, people around me shook their heads and pursed their lips, as if to say, "This mother needs to gain control over her child," to exert power over him. That is to say, this slightly older human cannot be allowed to be free.

Thankfully, this mother on this six hour flight did not replace her love with power, but I couldn't help but reflect that it was, sadly, only a matter of time.

Of course, we are all subject to Foucault's normalized power. We allow society to exert its power over us. We don't shout and cry on airplanes, even when we may often feel like it. And when one of us does "lose it," the rest tend to agree that he ought to be removed from the plane. Although if we think beyond our own comfort and the arbitrary confines of "normal," I expect we can all see how love would be a more appropriate response to that troubled individual than an exercise in power.

I know there are some teachers who have become creatures of the system. I came across them in my own schooling: those who allow their will to power to dominate, who see success in terms of well-behaved, properly drilled students, turning out passing grades and high enough test scores, normal kids prepared for normal lives. Thankfully, most teachers have not lost touch with love and who, despite the demands of the our habitual schools to normalize children, set their love between the children and those demands, putting love first, especially for those who would whine and cry and kick the seats in front of them. These teachers are my heroes.

Our schools are not unique in having replaced power with love. Indeed, it has become the main focus of most of our institutions and professions to label what is normal and what is not, then to work to make as many of us normal as possible, to exert power over not just how we behave, but ultimately who we are.

It upsets me when I think that these free humans that we teach will all too soon find themselves increasingly subject to this normalized power, the systematic hammering down and smoothing out, the judgements and labels.


Ah, but we have love on our side. It is perhaps the only revolutionary force in that it is the only thing that can supplant power. When we celebrate heroes, it is always because they have loved where others would control. It is always because they have chosen to empower rather than exercise power. I am inspired by thinking about all of us preschool teachers out there in the world in our church basements and living rooms, our classrooms and playgrounds, fighting the power by simply loving. They think we are weak, but we are strong. We are the revolutionary force the world needs and we will win when we love.

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"You Can't Play With Us"

We were playing with cardboard boxes and cardboard blocks. A group of three-year-olds began to play a game that involved standing in a rough circle around a box while drumming on it together with long blocks. Before long they began to chant which allowed them to find a mutual rhythm. Periodically, they would then all fall down on the ground in a kind of pig pile. After a lull they began their drumming again, repeating the cycle over and over, joyfully.

It was a noisy, full body game that attracted others, both as participants and observers. Before long, we ran out of long blocks. Some children allowed this to be their barrier to entry into the game, so they either moved on or griped while watching the game as an outsider. A few, however, simply picked up shorter blocks and attempted to join in. Unfortunately, the nature of shorter blocks meant that they had to stand closer to the box that was the target of their drumming, placing them in position to be hit and jostled by the longer blocks. Each time this happened, and it began to happen a lot, the child with the shorter block complained, "Hey, you hit me!" which meant the game had to momentarily stop.

Before long, this previously fun game was paused as often as it was in motion, which caused the game to lose much of it's savor for the kids who had originally begun playing it. Not only that, but those complaining about not having long blocks began to become louder and more insistent. First one, then another of the long blocks were dropped to the ground as the game was given up. These blocks were fallen on by other children who bickered and tussled over them. The game resumed with an altered cast of participants. There was no chanting. They were not smiling. The joy had been sucked out of it.

Meanwhile, three of the kids who had originated the game, moved off together to an empty space, picked up short blocks and began to play their game together, just the three of them, joyfully, beaming into one another's faces and chanting as they had when the game first spontaneously erupted. They were clearly having more fun than the others,whose game had dwindled into almost nothing. Before long, another child attempted to join this new game, to the annoyance of the three short block drummers.

"You can't play with us," one of them said. "You have the wrong kind of block."

The ground was covered with dozens of short blocks identical to the ones being used in the game, but no matter which one he tried, he was told, "You have the wrong kind of block." They were excluding him based on what appeared to be arbitrary grounds, but having witnessed the entire episode, I knew that their exclusion was based on experience. The previous game had been fun until it had gotten too big and even though the children weren't able to put it into words, they had learned that three was the right number for this game of drumming with cardboard blocks on a cardboard box.

Few things are more icky, emotional, and complicated than when children exclude one another. Had I only stepped in during the second phase of this game, I would have likely interpreted their attempt to exclude as unfair and would probably have intervened in some way on behalf of the child being left out. But as it was, I knew that their reluctance to add another child to their game had a basis in reason and experience, even if their way of expressing it, of drawing the line, appeared arbitrary. This isn't to say that children (and adults) don't sometimes exclude one another arbitrarily, but only to point out that there is more gray area here than not, which is why children must explore it if they are to ever understand it.

I helped them with their words, "This game is a game for three people," and I supported the boy who had been excluded for the rational reason that he was a fourth person to find another game to play.

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Getting Home Safely

While visiting Athens, Greece some time ago, I decided to challenge myself to find the house our family lived in when I was a boy of 10-13 years old. It involved taking a train from downtown to the neighborhood of Kifissia, cutting across a large park, passing through the village, then winding my way around a maze of suburban streets. Arriving there from memory without a hitch, I set myself the additional challenge of locating the old American Club where I'd spent a lot of my childhood leisure time. This required a bit more trial and error, but I found that as well. Feeling good about myself, I elected to return to the train station via an alternative route and proceeded to get hopelessly lost.

There was no phone reception, so resorting to GPS was out of the question. I came across precious few fellow pedestrians out during the heat of the day, and I couldn't make myself understood to the ones I did solicit. I was too shy to knock on doors to ask directions. Of course, at one level I knew that I would find my way home. I would eventually find a place of business or wander out of the telephone dead zone, but there was a primal edge of panic there nevertheless, one that didn't go away until I found myself back in familiar territory.

It's unsettling to not know how to get home. As author and poet Diane Ackerman wrote in her book A Natural History of the Senses, "(R)oaming is one of the things humans love to do best -- but only if they can count on getting home safely." I think this is particularly true for young children and explains the undying popularity of such classic tales as Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, the story of a boy who roams, has strange adventures, then returns to the security of home. It is knowing that we can get home that allows us to be bold, which is where much of the magic in life is found.

I'm thinking about this here at the beginning of the school year as preschoolers everywhere suffer from separation anxiety. Even as we assure them that mommy will come back, that we will take care of them, that they will return to their homes, they still don't quite believe it. They are in an unfamiliar place without phone reception. Our assurances might appeal to their rational minds, but until they are convinced that they will get home safely, their journey will be one fraught with anxiety. This is an ancient human fear, one that can only be assuaged through practice, through learning the "map" of how to get home.

It takes time for children gain this knowledge, longer for some than others. They create their "map" home through practice, familiarity, and routine. It's obviously vital that they know we adults can be trusted, that we love them, but that is only the beginning. We can provide comfort and predictability, but the difficult, frightening work of finding the way home is theirs to do.

This is important work. The knowledge that we know the way home, safely, is ultimately what allows us to feel powerful, confident, and bold in the world.

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Calling Them By Their Chosen Names

Artwork by: Tether/Jason DeCruz

The girls had never met before the day they met on the swings. They struck up a conversation and within the hour they were hugging one another, giggling, and tossing around the phrase "best friends." One of them called out to me, "Teacher Tom, my name tag says I'm Monica, but my real name is Anna!" Her best friend added, "My name is Anna too!" So, going forward, that's what I called them both: Anna. Later, they told me that they were, in fact, twins, so that's what I called them: Twin Annas.

At any given moment, I'm calling someone Superman or Elsa or Kai (the Red Ninja) despite having previously known them by another name. Usually, it turns out to be a temporary moniker, one that children are trying on, like a costume, and having others refer to you by your chosen name is part of figuring out how it feels to be someone new or different. We tend to think of it as cute when children "pretend" in this way, but it is part of the most important work any of us will ever do: the project of discovering the truth about who we are.

When children assume new names they are exploring themselves from a new perspective, one not constrained by the limits that are placed upon them by the labels that have been imposed upon them by the outside world. When you are Superman, for instance, you are decidedly not a "little boy." When you are Anna you are no longer Monica. When you are the Red Ninja or Elsa you are strong, you are powerful, traits that young children don't often have in their day-to-day lives. What if I'm not who everyone tells me I am? What if they're wrong?

Most adults, most of the time, accept this type of childhood experimenting, understanding it as normal . . . up to a point. We put the kibosh on dramatic play that we view as too violent, for instance. Or we forbid the use of cosmetics. Many of us are uncomfortable when our children play around with our narrow concepts of gender. We fret and worry when they move on from fictional characters and begin to imitate the dress, language or behavior of older children who we would prefer they not look up to as role models. And then there is the "bad influence" of pop stars and professional athletes and reality TV stars. It's hard for us to allow our children their experiments, especially as we contemplate their futures. What if this isn't just a phase? What if they discover that this is who they are?

It might not be a phase. They might discover that this really is who they are.

The temptation is to place "not in my house" restrictions on them, but they will not always be in our house. They will one day move out where they will, as we all did, continue the vital work of figuring out who they are, and it's not in their job description to make us comfortable. We each must find our own path, even if it's the one less travelled. It's not easy, but as parents, we best support our children at whatever age by listening, offering our advice and opinions calmly and non-judgmentally, calling them by their chosen names, and by assuring them that our love is forever. The rest is up to them.

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

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The Gold Standard For Playing In The World Together

One of the five-year-old boys in this, our final summer session, has sparked the imaginations of several of the younger boys. He is bold and inclusive, and enjoys taking the role as the authoritative (as opposed to authoritarian) leader. Several parents have told me that their kids talk of him at home, insisting that they are going to play with him, even if, in reality they spend their days watching from afar. Most of the games this glamorous boy organizes involve, at some level, rough housing or, if not that, pretend fighting of some sort, which can intimidate some of the younger kids, even as it also attracts them.

Yesterday, the game involved shooting one another with weapons devised from sticks and other longish items.

There was a time when I would have felt that it was incumbent upon me, the teacher, to be proactive about gun play, but the longer I've done this job, the more I'm inclined to not see it as a problem until the children themselves see it as a problem. At first, their game was fairly self-contained, with the older boy and his group of admirers mainly shooting at one another, but at one point they trained their sites on a three-year-old boy who had previously been part of their game, but who had, overwhelmed for a moment, opted out without telling them. He had a worried look on his face, so I asked him, "Do you like that they're shooting you?" He shook his head, so I drew attention to that by saying, "He doesn't like to be shot. He has a worried look on his face."

The younger boys kept shooting for a few seconds, my words not immediately registering, but the older boy stopped instantly, commanding, "Stop firing! We have to find some real criminals," which caused the others to imitate him. As they roved around the playground, the older boy orally weaving the story of the game they were playing, both commanding and cajoling, he served, in a way, as the group's pre-frontal cortex. He recalled that during the school year we had, as a class, agreed, that you must ask someone before you could shoot at them, and was enforcing it on his troops. Coming from him, it was far more effective than had I been trailing around after them with reminders.

At one point, their fierceness frightened another younger boy. Their leader, seeing the tears, lowered his weapon, bent down so they were face-to-face, put a hand on his shoulder, and said, "It's okay, we won't shoot at you. You're a good guy," then after a brief pause, added, "We're just pretending." This assurance calmed the boy almost instantly. Later, they frightened another boy, who I began to console. I was thinking the play was now beginning to show up as a problem and would need some intervention on my part, but the glamorous boy, apparently sharing my concern, announced in his best voice-of-god, "No more shooting! Now we have to march!" And that's what they did: march in a well-ordered line around the place in a noisy version of follow-the-leader. Later, one of them offered himself up as "the criminal" and they spent the rest of the morning, weapons abandoned, trying to take him to "jail."

I understand why we are so quick, as adults, to jump on weapon play of this sort. It smacks of violence and other societal problems. It sometimes frightens other children. We have had school years during which it was officially banned (by a consensus of the children), but that never prevented it from happening. It just gave us adults the right to step in and scuttle it, effectively pushing it "underground." I won't pretend to explain why, but I know that this sort of play emerges all over the world wherever children play in groups of any size. I know that there has never been a connection made between this sort of play and future violence: indeed, some research seems to indicate that children who are permitted to play these games are less likely to be violent adults. I know that dramatic play is how children process what they see in the world around them, how they come to understand it from all sides, and how it can become the foundation for empathy. I also know that forbidden fruit is always the sweetest: since I've stopped being so proactive about weapons play, instead treating it like all other sorts of play, I've definitely seen a drop in the amount of time and energy children spend on these games.

Yesterday was an exception in the sense that it rose to the level that it was beginning to frighten some of the other children. They took it to the edge, but they were, with the help of their leader, for the good of everyone, able to reign it back in. For me, that's the gold standard for playing in the world together.

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

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

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