Nasty, Uncontrollable, Hopelessly Feral

"I really can't stand children." 

It's a sentiment I occasionally encounter upon informing a stranger of the work I do. It always rocks me back on my heels a bit, given that I'm most often surrounded by adults who find the company of young children to be preferable to that of their peers.

All adults have theories about children, even those who spend little time with them. After all, we were all once children, so, at a minimum we have those years of experience from which to cobble together our theories about what a child is, does, wants, and needs. And some consider children to be nasty, uncontrollable, hopelessly feral things that will one day, fingers crossed, outgrow it. It's as if they conceive childhood as some sort of larval stage during which these pre-humans feed themselves voraciously of the precious leaves of life before they pupate (perhaps within the chrysalis of university) emerging finally as adults.

As long as they are not cruel to children, I tend to respect these people even as I disagree with them. Their theories cause them to largely avoid children, especially young children, standing aloof in their presence, ignoring them if at all possible. They tend to choose professions and habitations far removed from where children play and when they're compelled to interact with them they do so as if they are little adults, not speaking down to them, employing their full vocabulary, not caring really if these ignorant children comprehend, not even expecting them to respond, at least not in a "rational" manner. Children confound them and, because of their theories, they lack the prying curiosity that attends so many of the interactions children have with other adults.

In most circumstances, children ignore and avoid these adults in return, not out of any sort of animosity, but simply because the indifference is mutual. Sometimes, however, young children love, from afar, these adults, not only because they don't pepper them with the usual questions about what they want to be when they grow up and their favorite subject in school. They appreciate that they aren't talked down to or coddled. Their cheeks are not pinched and their heads are not patted. In other words, they perceive they are not being treated as children, but rather as people. And so long as this adult with the mis-guided theory about children isn't outright mean to them, they often find this treatment refreshing. 

It should also be mentioned that adults who harbor this brand of theory about children, should they be offended or harmed by a child, are unlikely to punish, correct, or scold them, but rather respond by giving them, at most, a few pointed words of disapproval, before turning their backs, the way they would with a wayward adult over whom they have no authority other than their dignity. 

These adults don't "understand" children and so their interactions with them tend to be free of the urge that so many of us have to help or teach or otherwise better them. This is why I respect their opinions.

You see, most children, most of the time, spend their days among adults whose theories about children are constructed on cuteness, naiveté, and ignorance. These adults, with the best of intentions, tend to talk down to children in high-pitched sing-song voices reserved only for children and pets. These adults loooooove children, petting and pampering them, which is all well and good, but it too often comes with these notions of helping, teaching, correcting, and generally behaving as if this theoretical child cannot function without constant intervention from loving adults.

John Holt wrote: "It is condescending when we respond to qualities that enable us to feel superior to the child. It is sentimental when we respond to qualities that do not exist in the child but only in some vision or theory that we have about children." 

In his book Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, anthropologist Christopher Boehm, based on 339 fieldwork studies, concluded that our hunter-gatherer ancestors "are universally -- and all but obsessively -- concerned with being free from the authority of others." Indeed, we have evolved as a species to resist the imposition of hierarchy, even when it comes to interactions between adults and children. Too often, those of us who claim to love children do so, at least in part, because we like the feeling of being superior. We help, teach, and correct these theoretical children "for their own good," not because they have asked us to help, teach or correct them, but because we feel it is our right (which is often mis-framed as a responsibility).

The truth is that children are nasty, uncontrollable, and feral. They are also cute, naive, and ignorant. All of us are. None of these traits proposed by our theories are the exclusive domain of childhood or adulthood. In the end, there is no such thing as a theoretical child and none of our theories are correct. Or rather, none of them are entirely correct which is why I often prefer the approach taken by the "I really can't stand children" crowd. There may be something horribly broken within these adults, but to the degree it allows them to leave the kids alone, to not not impose their unsolicited help, teaching, or correction upon them, and to not assume the posture of superiority, is the degree to which their seemingly stance really is for the children's own good. 

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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!

Not Vanquished

I was once engaged in a massive battle for the ages, pitting my powers against those of a five-year-old boy.

It began when he declared that he was going to shoot me with his gun that had the "power of elephants."

I countered with the power of love.

He responded with a laser that had the "power of lightening."

I bewildered it with the power of love.

He retrenched with a cannon that was made from the "power of a tsunami."

I absorbed it with the power of love.

He summon up a rocket that was fueled by the "power of a tornado."

I embraced it with the power of love.

He attacked me with a sword forged in the sun, a light saber containing bees, a tank that shot earthquakes and finally a weapon made from all the power in the universe, except, he insisted, love.

When I stuck with love he finally fell, into my arms, laughing, not vanquished.

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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!

Play as an Act of Resistance

If there is one lesson I have always wanted the children in my life to learn it is to question those in authority, like their teachers and even their parents. This is not the same as saying defying authority, but rather the intellectual and social practice of doubting those in power when they say or do things that don't match what the children already know about the world. Indeed, I want them to know it's not just their right, but their responsibility to do so.

And any authority figure who denies someone's right to question them does not deserve to have authority over others.

One way I try to teach this lesson is to intentionally be wrong . . . a lot. I will hold up a plastic pig figurine and make it say, "Moo." For most children, this comes off as a joke, even if I'm saying it with a straight face. They laugh and saying something like, "No, Teacher Tom, the cow says moo!" Others just look at me like I'm crazy. 

I might insist it's raining when the sun is shining. Or that the hand drum I use to signal transitions is actually a banjo. Or that the carrot I'm eating is candy. 

I want the children to listen to what I'm saying and if what I'm saying defies the evidence before their own eyes, ears, or reason, I want them to know that it is not just their right but their responsibility, as a member or our community, to call me on it. 

This might sound risky to some educators and parents, but the alternative, which is to learn that authorities are to be believed and obeyed, no matter how irrationally they wield their authority, is far, far more dangerous. We know that the habits we develop when we are young tend to carry forward into adulthood. If we teach children to be obedient and unquestioningly compliant, how can we possibly expect them to grow up to be critical thinkers? Do as I say, not as I do and Because I said so are lessons in bullying authority that defy our essential humanity. 

I choose to rely on mutual respect instead. And when I respect someone, I must make room for them to question and challenge me.

As political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt wrote in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism: "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist." Or as George Orwell writes in his dystopian novel 1984: "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears." If the ideal subject of totalitarianism is someone who relies on others to tell them what is true and what is false, then the ideal citizen in a self-governing society is one who has learned to seek truth in their own lived experience and to challenge those who would tell them otherwise.

Perhaps the best way to prepare children to resist those who would wield power over them in the future is to leave them alone to experience the world before them, to shut up and free them to form their own ideas, theories, and understandings. This is exactly what a play-based curriculum does. As Rebecca Solnit writes in her book Orwell's Roses, "direct observations and firsthand encounters in the material and sensory world (are) acts of resistance or at least reinforcements of the self who can resist. To spend time frequently with these direct experiences is clarifying, a way to step out of the whirlpools of words and the confusion they can whip up."

Play is how we offer children the kinds of direct experiences they need to see through lies and illusions. Sadly, we live in a time when we must fight for the right of children to play, if only in the name of their mental health. Increasingly, our children are growing up in a world in which all truth comes through authority figures, educators and parents, who are telling them what to do and when to do it. Play is the way we break this cycle. It is how all of us can re-learn how to trust our own eyes and ears and resist those who would command us.

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

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

Death Play

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

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

The Boy Told Me, "There's Going to Be a Lot of Fighting This Year"

On the first day of school he told me, "There's going to be a lot of fighting this year." It was an interesting comment, funny even, coming from this particular boy. I'd known him since he was a two-year-old and he had never shown any inclination toward violence, real or imaginary. On the contrary, tough guy bluster, even of the comical variety, had in the past often seemed to intimidate and confuse him. He was regularly reduced to tears by dramatic play that struck him as threatening, often retreating under our classroom loft for "safety."

Jousting with swings standing in for steeds

His mother explained that he had over the summer become fascinated with knights, including their armor, shields, and other weaponry, items he had taught himself to create using paper, scissors, tape, and staples. And that is how his "fighting" first showed up in the classroom, with him not only arming himself, but also others. He had mastered the fierce pose and when he found another kid inclined toward "fighting," he might threaten something like, "You better watch out, I'm going to fight you." The fighting itself was quite tame by the standards of Woodland Park play fighting, most often involving "swords," but sometimes featuring "jousting." He was clearly thrilled when someone engaged with him, although the moment actual contact was made, even when of the light and incidental variety, he usually called it off, often crying loudly. But once the tears were over, he was back at it, once more trying to lure others into his game of fighting knights.

This knight has been unseated

I hope this description doesn't make him seem like a problem child in any way, because he was not. No one who knew him was worried that he would grow up to be actually violent. This was clearly an intellectual pursuit, one full of questions to which he was seeking answers. Even months into the school year there was still obvious uncertainty as he approached others with his knight game, as he tested the others to see how they would respond. He was delighted by his successes: his face flushed with excitement when it was going as he expected, combatants committed to both ferocity and a kind of chivalry that included not really hurting one another. He was overwhelmed when others surpassed him in intensity or more extreme physicality. He was often disappointed by those who were neither impressed, nor attracted by this knight who was threaten-asking them to fight with him. He had made his knight studies at home as a self-selected "academic" pursuit and was now attempting to apply what he had learned in real life.

One of his classmates did a similar thing with his own animal studies. Earlier in the year, he could be found prowling the playground as a dinosaur, usually as a T-rex, his favorite, roaring and stalking about with his arms draw up to mimic the short forearms associated with the species. Then his interests turned to invertebrates, like his pet snails, but also slugs, worms, and insects. One day, he put shoes on his hands so that he could practice moving like an insect, developing a fuller understanding of how they crawl by studying it with his whole body, in the same way that my knight-loving friend sought to embody a knight in order to more fully understand.

Neither of these boys would be described as particularly physical, at least not in comparison to many of their classmates who spend their days racing around the place. In fact, when they moved on to public kindergartens the following year, they both adapted to desk work better than most. They will never show up as a "problem child" because they possess the sort of self-control and temperaments that will allow them to adapt more easily than will those "active" kids whose teachers will chase them around the classroom, scolding, punishing, and otherwise correcting them for moving their bodies at the wrong time and in the wrong way, perhaps even going so far as to recommend drugs.

It's a pity because it's clear that all children, even not obviously active ones, learn most naturally when allowed to engage their full selves, including their bodies, not in adult-proscribed ways and at adult-proscribed times, but as their own questioning and exploration dictates. Standard schools are notoriously bad at allowing this because so much of what happens in them is about crowd control rather than learning. We can't have knights and insects anywhere but in the form of words, read or listened to, then regurgitated in their approved form, with bodies in their proper places, doing their proper things. It's a pity because all children learn best when allowed to explore with their full-selves, teaching themselves. And they must use their full bodies to do it.

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

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

The Hive Mind Switch

Several years ago, while walking in downtown Seattle, I turned a corner to find a group of people looking up. I looked up too. We seemed to be looking at the rows of balconies of the Warwick Hotel. I couldn't figure out why we were looking up, so I looked again at the people with me on the sidewalk. That's when I noticed that they weren't just looking up. They were looking up, then back to the street, where an ambulance with flashing lights blocked the roadway as paramedics were preparing to lift a stretcher with a covered body into its open doors. 

We were all alternating between looking up, then at the body, but we also just as frequently looked at one another. If we didn't make eye-contact, we followed the gaze of our fellow onlooker. If we did make eye contact, we widened our eyes at one another. We pointed. We shared observations, thoughts, feelings. Together, we were assembling the story of someone who and fallen or jumped and, at the same time, we were creating a kind of impromptu community of compassion around a stranger's calamity. In that moment, none of our differences mattered as much as this exclusive club of which we had all just become members. 

Normally, we can only guess what the strangers around us are thinking or feeling, but in that moment we were thinking and feeling as one. There were no barriers between us. I suppose you could argue that this was just me, but I was there. I know that this random collection of strangers -- business executives, street people, and preschool teachers -- were there together, thinking and feeling as one.

I've had similar experiences in my life. I've been on sports teams that were capable of acting as one. I've been at concerts or political rallies in which the crowd was thinking and feeling as one.

Most often, this phenomenon comes to our attention when a "mob" goes on a rampage. We tsk and tut over human nature in these cases. We accuse "them" of being sheep, of turning off their brains, of giving in to their worst instincts, and we aren't entirely wrong. 

But just because the uplifting version of this phenomenon doesn't typically make the news, that doesn't mean it isn't real and isn't important. It happens in churches, in workplaces, in stadiums, and on street corners, every day, all the time.

The greatness of our species, the reason we have survived, even thrived, is that we have evolved to think, feel, and act collectively.

As Annie Murphy Paul writes in her book The Extended Mind, "By one year of age, a baby will reliably look in the direction of an adult’s gaze, even absent the turning of the adult’s head. Such gaze-following is made easier by the fact that people have visible whites of the eye. Humans are the only primates so outfitted, an exceptional status that has led scientists to propose the “cooperative eye hypothesis” — the theory that our eyes evolved to support cooperative social interactions . . . “Our eyes see, but they are also meant to be seen,” notes science writer Ker Than . . . We feel compelled to continuously monitor what our peers are paying attention to, and to direct our own attention to those same objects. (When the face of everyone on the street is turned skyward, we look up too.) In this way, our mental models of the world remain in sync with those of the people around us."

Paul goes on to point out,  "Membership in a group can be a potent source of motivation — if we feel a genuine sense of belonging to a group, and if our personal identity feels firmly tied to the group and its success. When these conditions are met, group membership acts as a form of intrinsic motivation: that is, our behavior becomes driven by factors internal to the task, such as the satisfaction we get from contributing to a collective effort, rather than by external rewards such as money or public recognition. And as psychologists have amply documented, intrinsic motivation is more powerful, more enduring, and more easily maintained than the extrinsic sort; it leads us to experience the work as more enjoyable, and to perform it more capably."

The place where I'm most aware of this phenomenon is during preschool "circle time." The rest of our days are about children freely choosing what they will do and with whom, but once a day, we gather together around whatever the children want to talk about. Some days, of course, it's just every child for themself, but on others the children come together on a topic or idea or challenge. 

I had one group, for instance, that got into giving one another "compliments." We had, collectively, defined compliments as anything you can say to another person to "make them feel good." At least once a week, someone would say, "Let's do compliments!" and then the group would spend twenty minutes or so taking turns giving and receiving good feelings. In practice, what this meant was children saying "I love you" to one another, then hugging. At some point we began keeping track of how many "compliments" we had given. We did this by using a set of plastic chain-links, adding a link for each compliment. This was called "the compliment chain," which we hung from the ceiling, adding to it over the course of weeks and months.

One day, the kids decided to no longer take turns, but rather leapt to their feet as one in a frenzy of hugging amidst a flurry of "I love you." Every child participated, not just for this day, but every day for weeks on end. 

"A host of laboratory experiments," writes Paul, "as well as countless instances of real-world rituals, show that it's possible to activate the group mind -- to flip the hive switch, as it were -- by "hacking" behavioral synchrony and physiological arousal. The key lies in creating a certain kind of group experience: real-time encounters in which people act and feel together in close physical proximity. Yet our schools and companies are increasingly doing just the opposite. Aided by technology, we are creating individual, asynchronous, atomized experiences for students and employees -- from personalized "playlists" of academic lessons to go-at-your-own-pace online training models. Then we wonder why our groups don't cohere, why group work is frustrating and disappointing, and why thinking with groups doesn't extend our intelligence."

It begins with "shared attention," which is what happens when we focus on the same objects or information at the same time as others, in the way that my "club" of onlookers did outside the Warwick Hotel. And that's what happens at our circle time as well. I don't come in with a plan, but rather open the floor with "What should we talk about?" A child might tell us, for instance, that their grandma is visiting, and we're off as we bond over grandparents or relatives in general or sleepovers or wherever it leads. A child might say that someone hit them earlier in the day, that they didn't like it, and we bond over that. A child might want to teach us a song or ask a question or do a silly dance. Sometimes, as I said, it leads nowhere, this is not an exact science, but often, and increasingly as a group gets to know each other, as the habit of flicking the hive mind switch develops, it happens more and more.

Of course, the "shared attention" occurs at other times as well. There was the time we all, and I mean all, watched for 15 minutes as a raccoon cautiously climbed out on a skinny branch in quest of a bird's nest, which, we all guessed, had eggs, or even baby birds in it. We all stopped to reflect together on a photograph of civil rights protesters being dispersed with fire hoses. We all race to the parking lot when the local fire station brings their engine by for us to inspect. The French philosopher, Michel Foucault saw this phenomenon in terms of power, a form he called "normalization," in which, he asserted, our souls are imprisoned by the expectations and standards of the group, but looked at from the perspective of an "extended mind" as Paul does, we can see it clearly as a form of intrinsic motivation: when we think together, we become larger and smarter than ourselves.

This human superpower emerges when we share attention, when we are all securely part of the club, when we all turn our heads to look up together. And yes, it's often abused. Charlatans and other evildoers, dictators and cult leaders, have managed to flip the hive switch toward nefarious ends. But the media only reports on the riots. The historians falsely conclude that our ancestors were savages because only their forts and weapons have survived. Our educational system fears children in groups making their own decisions because we forget that The Lord of the Flies is a work of fiction. But research demonstrates that most of the time our behavioral synchrony primes the pump for cognitive synchrony in which a group, thinking together, does so at a higher level than any one human can ever hope to achieve on their own.

Together we're a genius. Our eyes see, but they are also meant to be seen. 

I often find myself wondering how so many people, so often, can be misled by charismatic leaders. Maybe it's because we've not had the chance to practice, in school or at work, the habit of flipping the hive switch. We've been taught that competition is a virtue and that we must rely on our own minds, and only our own minds ("No looking at your neighbor's paper!"), rather than tapping into the network of minds that is the real power of human thought. We worry that the charlatans will usurp our common sense, but that can only happen to people who have not enjoyed a lifetime of coming alive together.

In many ways, this is all we do in our play-based preschools. When we set the children free we find them turning their heads together, attending together, thinking together. It doesn't always go well, of course, sometimes the hive mind buzzes into a mess, but I'm beginning to think that this might be the only way to inoculate ourselves against would be dictators. 

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

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

Serenity Prayer

For more than a decade, I prepared for my days with children as an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting took place in the room across the hallway. I didn't intentionally listen in, but over the years I grew to feel that I was, in a way, a part of their group. 

At the end of each meeting, they would stand together in a circle, holding hands to recite what is known as the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Over the years, I came to appreciate that prayer as an inspiring way to start, not just a school day, but any day.

So much of the world is out of our control. The news is full of things we can't control. We might do the little individual things we can by way of ending war, fighting plague, or mitigating climate change, and maybe, just maybe, our small behaviors will make a difference. But we'll never really know. We vote, we write blog posts, we attend marches, rallies, and protests, all of which afford us the opportunity to at least feel like we have some modicum of control over things, but ultimately and perhaps despairingly, we all know it is out of our individual hands.

I often find myself thinking of Russian General Mikhail Kutuzov as envisioned by Leo Tolstoy in his masterpiece novel War and Peace. The general understood that at the end of the day, the war against Napoleon would be won or lost based not on individual heroism or genius strategy, but rather by the individual actions of both soldiers and citizens; that history was not about the behavior of great leaders, but rather the day-to-day, fight-or-flight, this-or-that, decisions made by the humans going about making lives work for themselves and those around them.

In other words, I must accept that I cannot end the war, but I can have the courage to be a pacifist in my own life. I cannot end plague, but I can help prevent its spread in my own corner of the world. I cannot save the planet, but I can live as gently on this earth as possible. These are at least things I can hope to control. I can learn more. I can talk to others about my experience. I can even share my fears with them, but at the end of the day, the only thing over which I can ever hope to have control is myself. And even that can be a serious challenge, as all those AA stories will attest.

We are all seeking, if not actual control, at least the feeling of control in our lives. This is a challenge because the universe is chaotic and ultimately unknowable. It can be frightening to contemplate how little control we have. 

When I heard that Serenity Prayer each morning, I recited it along with them. 

One place that adults so often feel they can exert their power is in their relationships with young children. Indeed, there are many who feel that controlling children is central to their role. I recall a colleague telling me the story of an educator who didn't like that some of her students wore their pajamas or played with toys or moved off-camera during their online remote "learning" sessions during the pandemic. It made her feel out of control so she would phone the children's parents to have them act as her surrogates to keep the children in line. As this colleague put it, "She spent all her time on trying to control the kids and none of it educating them." This is more than a metaphor for what too often happens in our classrooms, remote or in person.

The daily Serenity Prayer reminds me that my job is not to exert my power over children, but rather to seek to give my power away, to use it to empower them to assert control over their own lives and their own learning. That's what a play-based curriculum is all about. This is how children acquire the courage to change the things they can change, to stand up for their beliefs, to exert their own power in their own corner of the world. The adage is to "think globally, but act locally." Acting locally means tending to our relationships, communicating, and listening. This too is what play-based learning is all about. These are the important lessons to be learned when one is not under the control of others: it is the lesson of being us, which is the foundational place from which all great change must come. It will never come from generals or other leaders, but rather, to paraphrase Margaret Mead, from small groups of committed and caring people. This is what Tolstoy's general knew as well.

We seek control, we crave control, but it eludes us more often than not. This struggle to control the world can make us afraid, frustrated, depressed, and angry. Even within our own corners of the world, control is elusive, especially when we understand that we may not control others, no matter how young. But we can hope to control ourselves. We can, as the author and philosopher Voltaire concluded in his novella Candide, cultivate our own gardens in the company of the people who we know and who know us.

There will still be rocks and weeds to remove. There will still be difficulties and disagreements. But here is where change and control is finally possible.

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Early childhood educators, directors, homeschoolers, and parens of young children . . . please join me for this affirmative and informative live workshop. In the spirit of inclusiveness, I've kept the price as low as possible, so share far and wide. This is a great way to get the whole team on the same page for the New Year. Certificates are available. A replay will also be available. For more information and to register, click here: Making 2026 Our Year of Play

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!

Modern Schools Would Have Failed Einstein

As a teenager Albert Einstein imagined chasing after a beam of light. It was a thought experiment that ultimately led to his groundbreaking Special Theory of Relativity, one of the most impactful and important science developments of the 20th century. It completely transformed our understanding of space, time, gravity, and energy. Math was later used to confirm his discoveries, but it all started with the play-based gold standard of "embodied learning."

This was the year 1895. His math and physics teachers gave him high marks, but as far as his French and history teachers were concerned he was a problem child. He bridled under their strictness, defying them, opposing them, and refusing to do the work. We celebrate his single-minded courage, but were he an American high schooler today, he would likely be diagnosed with something or other, possibly even drugged. His brilliance in math might be used as evidence that he "has potential," but it's likely that most of the focus of his teachers (and by extension his parents) would have been on fixing his deficits rather than encouraging his strengths. 

As a preschooler he was curious and loved building with blocks and working puzzles, but was also quiet and solitary. He didn't speak until he was 3-years-old. If he were in a modern preschool, I have no doubt that the focus would likewise have been on his deficits. His parents would be told that "early intervention" is "crucial." Dyslexia is a likely diagnosis. At a minimum, speech-language therapy would be prescribed. Contemporary experts retroactively speculate that he showed strong ADHD traits -- disorganization, forgetfulness, "rebellion" against teacher-proscribed learning -- and would likely have met the criteria for diagnosis.

Our schools give lip-service to the truth exemplified by Einstein that learning differences don't limit potential, but in reality they invariably treat differences as deficits, challenges, and something to be cured. This is because standard schools are simply incapable of the flexibility needed to serve all children. Any child who cannot or will not learn the way our schools are designed to "teach" show up as problems. 

Thankfully for all of us, people at the turn of the last century didn't take schooling nearly as seriously as we do today. Indeed, it was widely acknowledge that schooling wasn't for everyone, or even most. Universities ignored Einstein's poor marks in other areas, the kiss of death at today's Ivy League schools who tend to only admit straight-A students. 

Other scientists may or may not have made the discoveries Einstein made. It's unknown whether or not math alone would have figured it out. After all, the very idea that space, time, and gravity are all just aspects of the same phenomenon is so alien to our day-to-day experiences that most of us -- even as we "believe" in it -- simply can't bring ourselves to genuinely understand it. But Einstein felt free to pursue his embodied approach to life itself and we're all richer for it.

In our play-based preschools, children spend most of their days in pursuit of embodied learning, not just with thought experiments, but by actually creating levers, experimenting with rolling down hills, swinging, digging, building with blocks, and laying their hands on all manner of things. They work their puzzles, take on new identities through dramatic play, test themselves socially, explore power and exploitation, feel emotions, and generally pursue their own path in a full embrace of their own, unique "learning difference." No, they won't be able to answer those testing questions because, like with a young Einstein, their language is a lagging indicator of what is genuinely understood. Someday, they will perhaps be able to "prove" their theories, but real learning needs no proof. Or rather it is already proven, embodied, even if the others are incapable of genuinely understanding.

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Early childhood educators, directors, homeschoolers, and parens of young children . . . please join me for this affirmative and informative live workshop. In the spirit of inclusiveness, I've kept the price as low as possible, so share far and wide. This is a great way to get the whole team on the same page for the New Year. Certificates are available. For more information and to register, click here: Making 2026 Our Year of Play

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!

Our Discussion About "Bad Guys"

Most years, there are play themes chosen by our five-year-olds that cause concern. Usually, it's some version of "bad guy" play -- pirates, zombies, spies, superheroes. A couple years back, they were going with the generic "bad guy," which largely played itself out as making fierce faces, posing threateningly, and attempting to capture one another, although it sometimes took the form of attempting to dam up the "river" others were creating in the sand pit.

Typically, the concerns come up because other children begin to report, either to me or to their parents at home, that they're afraid of the "bad guys." It's a delicate balance between the perfectly normal interest of some children to explore the dark side of power and human nature and the perfectly valid desire to not be fearful at school, especially given that some kids are still working out the line between "real" and "pretend." Our parent community had been discussing the subtleties of how we should address this balance for a couple months, both formally and informally, and we had engaged in a lot of circle time discussions among the kids as well, but one day Francis brought things to a head by proposing that we make a new rule: "No bad guys."

The children at Woodland Park make their own rules, a process that requires consensus. When Francis suggested her new rule, dueling cries rose up from those present, one side supporting her and the other against. It was clear that there would be no consensus, but that didn't mean it wasn't a good prompt for a public discussion, one that I hoped would at least get everyone's cards out on the table.

Once everyone settled down, we began to take turns by raising hands and sharing our thoughts on this proposed legislation. It became quickly evident to me that most of the children were actually in favor of banning "bad guy" play, with a small group of boys committed to continuing their favored game. 

I said, "I have an idea, how about everyone who wants to make the no bad guys rule move to that side of the rug and everyone who wants to keep playing bad guys move to that side." 

Gio piped up, "And if you don't care, sit in the middle," a move of diplomatic genius given that he had friends on both sides of the divide. 

My knee-jerk idea had been to create a visual demonstration for our "bad guys" that showed that they were in the minority. Even with a large block of kids choosing the non-commital position in the center of the rug, it was immediately clear that most of the kids with an opinion were all for banning bad guy play, with only five boys remaining staunchly against Francis' proposed rule.

We started with those in favor of the rule, giving them, one-by-one, the opportunity to tell the "bad guys" how their play made them feel, most of whom said they either felt afraid or angry. It was an oddly quiet and sincere five minutes during which everyone seemed to genuinely be listening to one another. As they spoke, some of the kids in the middle shifted to that side. 

When they were done, I turned to the "bad guys," asking, "And why do you guys like playing bad guys?" Each of them took a turn making their case, citing "fun" as their main support, although several made the point that it was "just pretend." A couple of the fence sitters moved to their side.

I then said, "We can't make Francis' rule because everyone doesn't agree, but some people are afraid and some people think it's fun. What can we do?"

After some discussion, most of which was just restatements of the already established pros and cons, the "bad guys" made what I thought was a brilliant and magnanimous offer, "How about we can be bad guys, but we act like good guys." This received widespread approval, but there remained a new minority of those who still supported an all-out ban. By this time, most of the kids were sitting in the middle of the rug, growing restless.

We had been at this discussion for quite some time. We had had a terrific air-clearing discussion in which everyone made their case. But now we were at a logger-head. It was obvious that the matter was not going to be addressed via the formal rules, at least not on this day.

I said, "It looks like we're not going to be able to make a new rule. Some people still want to play bad guys and some people still want them to stop."

And Gio piped up, "And some people don't care."

"And some people don't care . . . But I will remind everyone that we already have an important agreement that we sometimes forget." I turned toward the list of rules we have mounted on the wall: "We all agreed, don't do anything to anybody before you ask them." I turned to the bad guys, "That means you have to ask people before being bad guys to them." I then turned to the rest of the kids, "And I want the rest of you to remember that it's just pretend and that you can always just tell the bad guys to stop." With that I looked back at the bad guys for their agreement on this point, "Right?" They nodded.

Later, when we moved from indoors to outdoors, I was prepared to help the children by reminding everyone about our discussion, but it was unnecessary because, for the first time all year, the "bad guys" chose to make mud soup with our playhouse kitchen supplies, while others swept sand back into the sandpit. 

It was clear that we had really listened to one another and it became even more obvious a couple days later when the mother of the "leader" of the bad guys pulled me aside to tell me: "Last night Henry said he wasn't going to play bad guys any more because Francis doesn't like it." And true to his word, for the rest of the year they played "good guys." 

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

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