Considering The World As Others See It

The modern novel as an art form gained a toe-hold the early 1700's, with novels like Robinson Crusoe reaching a mass audience. They advanced gradually as a source of entertainment through that century as works like Pamela and Tom Jones became popular. But the novel really found its stride when writers like Jane Austen picked up their pens in the early decades of the 19th century, reaching a climax in the Victorian era with authors like Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, and the Bronte sisters, not to mention Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Flaubert and Balzac, Hawthorne and Melville. Looking back, one can hardly imagine a greater artistic flowering, yet the novel was widely regarded as a "rot." Not the necessarily the works of the authors I've mentioned, which were begrudgingly considered to have merit, but novels in general, the kinds the masses were consuming, especially young women. They were condemned as, at best, a waste of time, and at worst the gateway to mental illness. Well-intended parents were known to forbid their daughter novels while the girls predictably sought to hide their "dirty" habit.

Most parents today would be thrilled if their children were "addicted" to novels. We can think of few things more wholesome and educational. In contrast to our Victorian counterparts, we even lecture our children on the importance of reading books, any books, indeed anything, except, of course, the reading they really want to do, which is the rot found on the internet.

Scientists now tell us that we're right and the Victorians were wrong. Reading novels is good for us. Novel reading is an important socializing influence in that fiction readers have been found to be better able to understand and empathize with their fellow humans. Although we're wrong in the sense that all reading is not equal, at least when it comes to acquiring these social and emotional benefits: those who read genre fiction or non-fiction showed no improved capabilities in this area. It must be literacy fiction, which tends to focus more on the psychology of it's characters, rather than just exciting plots or the conveyance of facts and opinions (not to suggest that these sorts of reading are not valuable in other ways).

Preschool aged children, of course, do not read novels, but their dramatic play serves the same function as reading literary fiction does for adults. As they try on new costumes, they are trying on new personas, which helps them explore and better understand other people's minds, one of the most important skills we can have as social animals. Fiction, theater, or dramatic play allows us to consider the world as others see it, to put ourselves in shoes that are not our own. It's one of the ways we come to understand one another and is an avenue toward considering how the world could be different, which is always the first step in changing it. And ultimately, it's only through a better understanding others that we come to better understand ourselves.

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

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Making Light From Darkness

During the better part of the 19th century and well into the 20th, the scientific consensus was that we would one day figure it all out. The universe was but a clockwork and given enough time, humans would come to understand it. Today, however, we know enough to know that we will never know everything. We can only know what we can perceive, what our senses can take in, what our brains can interpret, but we are very limited in our abilities, adapted to a certain niche, one that causes us to, for instance, see time as something that flows from past to present, even as we now know that this "understanding" is merely an accident of our unique perspective and the limitations of our senses.

At it's core, life will always be a mystery. Art is the human response to the unknowable: it is how we teach ourselves to live with the mystery.

This explains why humans are driven to engage in art. Since the dawn of humankind, we have made music, danced, told stories, and created physical representations of life as we experience it, both externally and internally. Many of us still place "science" on a pedestal, pushing art aside as a kind of amusement. Increasingly, our schools have done this, replacing the arts with "instructional time," in order to focus almost exclusively on literacy and mathematics, the hammer and sickle of science, tools that are seen as necessary to engage in a clockwork world, a world that we now know doesn't exist. Those of us who work with young children have found ourselves in the sad position of having to defend our work, to defend childhood play, to defend our commitment to filling our charges' world with opportunities to dance, sing, pretend, and paint, to engage with the mystery that will always lie at the heart of life.

As I watch children play, I certainly see them engaged in the foundational scientific process of trial and error. What happens when I do this? I wonder if I can make that happen again. They are scientists for sure, but they are at least in equal measure artists, acknowledging from the start the limits of their own perceptions and learning to live with that by saying to one another, "Let's pretend . . ." When they aren't experimenting, they are making art with whatever comes to hand, arranging stones in a circle or leaves into patterns. Sometimes they paint what they see; sometimes they paint what they feel. They dance even when there isn't music, kicking up their legs, leaping, skipping, and twirling as they perform even the mundane act of moving from here to there. When they sing at the tops of their lungs, when they make rhythms by beating on buckets, they are teaching themselves how to live with the mystery.

Art stands at the center of the human experience: it is how we make light from darkness.

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

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Creating The Stories They Need To Create

Among the earliest human recreations was sitting around the campfire telling stories. I imagine the first stories were of the informational variety, the sort that bees dance to one another about where they've found nectar or pollen. But then someone got the idea to lie, not maliciously of course, but simply because they could, by way of making the story more engaging, or to make themselves appear braver, or to illicit laughter. Maybe the first lie was an accident: they misspoke, were believed, then later remembered they had got it wrong.

Whatever the case, it must have been a real mind-blower, this idea that by simply saying things that are not true, a whole new reality is created. After all, how were these other people to know? They weren't there, they hadn't seen it, they have no choice but to take my word for it. I imagine it's much the same when young children first discover the concept at around the age of two.

We all lie, at least sometimes. The average person lies once or twice a day according to research, although since the methodology necessarily relies on self-reporting, at least some of the study subjects likely lied about their lying. And then, there is the whole matter of definition. There are certainly degrees of lying. Many of us don't consider it a lie-lie if it's spoken, for instance, for the purpose of allowing someone to avoid embarrassment, or to make them feel better about themselves, or some other "white lie." And, of course, there are the lies we tell ourselves, lies of omission, lies we permit in service of a greater truth. I've known some absolutists who consider lying of any kind to be wrong, but for most of us, most of the time, the moral line is more of a situational gray smudge.

And then there the lies of storytellers, those fabrications, exaggerations, and outright balderdash that comprise a really good story. We excuse these untruths because, most of the time, we know from the start that the storyteller, the novelist, or the movie maker is creating something, that it didn't really happen. We're in on it, and in a very real sense, we are co-creators in that we suspend our disbelief and become part of the story. The fascinating thing about stories is that they are made up of "lies," yet very often they convey a greater truth far more directly and clearly than we can ever hope to convey it through truth alone.

Lies told to deceive, harm, or manipulate are clearly immoral, but there is a whole world of untruth that appears to be necessary for humans to make sense of the world. Indeed, in many ways what we consider to be our "self" is really just the story we tell about our experiences, both individually and collectively. As Virginia Woolf wrote, "We are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself."

When young children lie it's generally quite easy to catch them out, and we should, gently, call them on it when their intent is to deceive, harm, or manipulate. But when their lies are of the "because I can" variety, such as about a stuffed teddy that talks or, as one girl insisted for the better part of a year, that she is, in fact, really a fairy, our better approach is to "believe" them as they practice creating the stories that they need to create in order to make sense of themselves and their world.

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

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My New Adventure

I have been the preschool teacher at Woodland Park Cooperative School for a long time. Nearly two decades ago I welcomed my first class of 3-5 year olds. A couple years later, I added a class of 2 year olds. Then we created our summer program, followed by a 4-5's program, which evolved into our current 4's program with the advent of our kindergarten. During that time, we've moved to larger facility, created two state-of-the-art playgrounds, built a magnificent greenhouse, educated thousands of parents, and created dozens of teachers who are still working in classrooms today. I'm proud of what I've done to grow and nurture the Woodland Park community, working to make it a place where everyone values children and understands the importance of their play. And I'm beyond grateful for everything this community has done to grow and nurture me.

In many ways, I grew up at Woodland Park and the families who entrusted me with their children have been my family. They've made it possible for me to become the "Teacher Tom" the rest of world knows, the blogger, author, and public speaker. Looking upon it from the perspective of today, it's a story that reads in my mind like a kind of fairytale, one that has had it's ups and downs, never dull, a daily adventure, but most importantly, always buoyed by love. I have been the luckiest man alive.

But as anyone who reads fairytales knows, the protagonist must inevitably leave home. I'm writing today to tell you about my new adventure as Teacher Tom. I am leaving my beloved Woodland Park at the end of the month to help found a new venture called Weekdays. Our vision is to help teachers, daycare providers, and parents to be their own bosses by starting their own play-based neighborhood preschools and daycares. I'm inspired by the idea of helping thousands of educators to take their financial futures into their own hands almost as much as the idea of creating thousands high-quality preschools. We're only in Washington state right now, but we intend to get to other states as quickly as possible. If you're interested, even if you're in another state, go ahead and create an account so that we can keep you apprised of what's happening.

Over half of the the US is currently in what are being called "childcare deserts," places where there are three or more children for every one preschool or daycare spot. This presents incredible challenges for families who are forced to cobble together care and education for their young children, often being forced to drive hours every day, often settling for sub-par options, often having to turn to an unreliable network of friends and family to fill in the gaps, all of which creates tensions and even toxic stress for families. At the same time, those who care for young children are barely earning enough to make ends meet. Here in Washington state the average annual income is around $30,000. Our idea is that there should be a high-quality preschool not just in every neighborhood, but ultimately on every block. Our idea is that children should grow up playing in their own neighborhoods. And our idea is that preschool educators should make a real living wage. Our goal is to do nothing less than transform early childhood education in America.

Our role is to support edu-entrepreneurs through the most daunting business challenges, such as navigating licensing, regulations and other paperwork, providing insurance, handling billing, helping with marketing and enrollment, and generally being their business partners so that they can focus on the most important part: caring for and educating young children. In my role as head of education, I will spend my days working with our teachers and providers to help them to create the kinds of programs that children deserve.

As for this blog, I will continue to write here every day, I will continue to write books, and I will continue to travel the country speaking out on behalf of children and their families just as I always have. It's only my "day job" that will change.

I'm excited about my new adventure even as I'm melancholy about leaving Woodland Park, although I expect to continue to be a frequent visitor and will always be a staunch supporter. This morning I am Max, the boy in the wolf costume who has discovered that the walls of his room have become the world all around. I'm looking forward to the wild rumpus ahead!

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

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On The Other Side Of Our Tears

The Walt Disney Company built its empire upon folk tales, legends, and myths, stories that had been passed down through generations as cautionary tales, often with stern moral lessons. Many of them, like Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Snow White were based upon Grimm's Fairy Tales, a collection of traditional stories taken from the German oral tradition and published during the 19th century. These stories are much older than the print versions, having endured through generations, made anew with each telling. They were intended to entertain, of course, but also to educate and enlighten. The Brothers Grimm entitled their classic collection Children's and Household Tales, but these stories were not originally intended for children, or at least not exclusively. Few of them had what we could call "happy endings." That would be the invention of Disney.

After hundreds of years of being passed down from generation to generation, Disney's ubiquitous happy ending brought an abrupt end to the oral tradition. Oh sure, we and our children know the sanitized and standardized Disney versions, but it's not the same. The stories no longer lend themselves to the quirks, embellishments, and immediacy of oral storytelling, but even more telling is that their newly created happy endings have stripped these stories of their ability to address many of the great, often dark, truths about human nature that they once embodied.

The stories we tell are important. In many ways they form the moral, ethical, and ideological foundation of human society. Disney is not solely to blame, but this Disneyfication of the stories we tell (either orally or otherwise), this insistence upon happy endings, is telling a lie about the nature of human existence.

There are real happy endings in the world, of course, but being of the real world, they will never live up to the happily-ever-after promise of the modern storybook. Indeed, our real happy endings do not come in a flash of flowers, stars and song, but rather, more typically, after a good cry. A real happy ending comes once our bones have finally mended; after we've moved beyond our heartbreak; we find them on the other side of disappointment, loss, and grief. "Boy, did I cry my head off," says young Tom in Ray Bradbury's beautiful novel of reminiscence Dandelion Wine, "I don't even know why. I wouldn't change a bit of it. If you changed it, what would you have to talk about? Nothing! And besides, I like to cry. After I cry hard, it's like it's morning again and I'm starting the day over . . . You just won't admit you like to cry, too. You cry just so long and everything's fine. And there's your happy ending. And you're ready to go back out and walk around with folks again."

I wonder if our cult of happy endings hasn't damaged us all, leading us to unrealistic expectations, blinding us to the very real, very attainable happiness that is available to us every day. How many people do you know who go around seeming to never be satisfied? I know plenty. The pursuit of the Disney movie happy ending is a kind of perfectionism that hides the simple, human happy endings that are all around us, hiding there in plain sight, invisible until we've cleared our eyes with a good cry.

Bradbury's Tom says, "A good night's sleep, or a ten minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine." Our story book happy endings lie to us. They tell us that happiness is "ever after," a promise that will never be fulfilled. The truth about happy endings is that they may be fleeting, but they are real. And they are ours to experience, right now, if we will only learn to see them, right over there, on the other side of our tears.

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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That's How Every Story Worth Telling Begins

From historian Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens:

The ability to create an imagined reality out of words enabled large numbers of strangers to cooperate effectively. But it also did something more. Since large-scale human cooperation is based on myths, the way people cooperate can be altered by changing the myths -- by telling different stories. Under the right circumstances myths can change rapidly. In 1789 the French population switched almost overnight from believing in the myth of the divine right of kings to believing in the myth of the sovereignty of the people. Consequently, ever since the Cognitive Revolution Homo sapiens has been able to revise its behaviour rapidly in accordance with changing needs. This opened a fast lane of cultural evolution, bypassing the traffic jams of genetic evolution. Speeding down this fast lane, Homo sapiens soon far outstripped all other human and animal species in its ability to cooperate.

I recently wrote about the beauty I sometimes see in our ability to cooperate, our great adaptive advantage, one that has allowed us to, in many ways, step outside our genetic coding, and to actually choose our evolutionary path. This capacity for cooperation hasn't always, or even mostly, showed up in what we today consider "beautiful" ways, however. Much of it has come in the form of subjugating the weak for the benefit of the strong, compelled by the myths we've told one another about things like divine right, slavery, gender, and race. But for better or worse, the ability to cooperate in large numbers and in complex ways is what makes us who we are as a species.

I'm currently reading a novel by Salman Rushdie entitled The Enchantress of Florence in which an emperor philosophizes over his use of the royal "we." From his perspective, he is a plurality in the sense that what he does, thinks, and feels, is always on behalf of all the people over which he rules. He experiments with talking about and thinking of himself in terms of "I," but cannot bring himself to see any reality in it. He wonders about his subjects: do they also see themselves as a plurality, through their various roles, for instance, as men and women, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, teachers, and lovers. Are their families, friends, co-workers, spouses, and children included in their conception of themselves as "we?" As I considered along with this fictional emperor I saw his point and wondered if, perhaps, "we" is not the better way to refer to myself. I am, after all, a plurality.

Physicists and philosophers have for some time been telling us that we don't actually exist as individuals at all; that the concept of self is, in fact, a myth we've told based upon our very, very limited ability to perceive the universe as it actually exists. It appears from where we stand, that we are individuals, that "we" are "I," in the same way that clouds appear to be solid objects when we look at them from the perspective of standing on the ground. I wonder if maybe Homo sapiens, in devising this ability to cooperate, to act as "we," haven't in a crude and clumsy way, discovered through our use of language and myth, one of the keys to how the universe truly exists: it is ours to create. We can, overnight, stop living in a world of divine right and choose one of self governance instead. Any story we can collectively tell can become, overnight, reality.

I've been watching children at play for a long time, and while I'm reluctant to romanticize them, it does seem to me that when they are left to their own devices, they demonstrate a wisdom about plurality that we adults are often too dense to comprehend. We become so fixated on the trials and tribulations, the possessions and successes, the anxieties and joys of "I," that we lose touch with the reality of the royal "we" that is the essence of our species. In children's play we daily see them tell and un-tell every myth, making and remaking their world to suit their collective pursuits, joining and un-joining, telling stories that almost always begin with the greatest invitation, "Let's . . ."

Harari suggests that Homo sapiens have stepped outside of Darwinian evolution, to become nearly godlike, so much so that we are on the verge of destroying ourselves (not the earth; the earth will go on). As we race up to the edge of extinction by suicide, I wonder if we have it in us to, overnight, begin telling a new myth about who "we" are. No one knows, of course, the future is an ever emerging unknowable, but I'd like to think so. What I do know is that if we are going to do it, it will start with us turning to one another to begin to tell a new and better fiction about "we," one that begins with "Let's . . ." That's how every story worth telling begins.

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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Our Agreed Upon Fictions

I gave up my car several years ago, opting for a lifestyle of mass transit, walking, cycling, and the occasional Uber or Lyft. I don't miss driving in the least. Indeed, not having to fret with traffic and parking has given me an appreciation for this uniquely human activity of getting from one place to another in harmony with all those other humans getting from one place to another. That's right, I've used the word harmony, not a concept normally sees connected to blaring horns, screeching tires, and road rage, but one that most of the time applies to this remarkably complex urban activity.

I was musing on this recently as I was being driven along Interstate 5, the eight-lane scar of highway that divides downtown Seattle from Capitol and First Hills. Traffic was heavy, but moving at speed as we merged from the left. It's almost common knowledge that modern humans, especially in such a politically, racially, and economically divided nation as the US, are losing their ability to cooperate, but here is was. It struck me as nothing short of miraculous that all of these people, driving all of these cars, were managing, as they do day after day, to carry on at high speeds like this without creating a massive pile up. There were a few signs and lane markings, of course, the barest of shorthand of instruction. No one was directing us, there were no squad cars in sight to threaten us, yet here we all were, mere inches away from one another, trusting one another with our very lives in this project, cooperating at a level that no other animal could ever hope to achieve. Sure, we all shake our fists and pound our steering wheels at times, but no one ever said that human cooperation would be without its frustrations.

As I rode as a passenger, I realized that this can only work because we have all, at some level, agreed that this is how it will work. Every driver out there was operating their vehicle according to the plot of a story we humans are telling together about how to drive cars on highways. There is no objective reality to what we were doing. Any one of us could be driving in any direction at any speed according to any set of rules or no rules at all, yet here we were, thousands of us, acting not as individuals, but according to a fiction we have all settled upon about driving cars together at death defying speeds.

This is, of course, how all of society works. Yes, we have laws and scofflaws, rules and rule breakers, but those things only serve highlight how powerful and important our agreed upon fictions are. And while there are times to question those stories we collectively tell, to challenge them, and even to strive to change them, it's also sometimes important to step back and admire them: they really can be quite beautiful.

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

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Pausing To Reflect

I knew that we were going to be spreading a new layer of wood chips over the surface of our junkyard playground at some point this summer, but it surprised me when I arrived at school yesterday. My first emotion was one of disappointment, because while it does freshen the place up, giving it a pleasing scent of cedar, I knew that it had also buried a lot of our smaller bits and baubles, things that might not re-surface for months, if ever. On second blush, however, I remembered that the kids have been kicking up quite a cloud of unpleasant dust here in the dog days, something with which this new layer of chips would definitely help.

As the children arrived they likewise had mixed feelings about the changes to their space. One boy hopped on a swing and immediately started bawling, "The swings are too low now! They're for little kids and I'm a big kid!" And he was right, the thick layer of chips under the swings left precious little room for his legs to hang. After his initial reaction, however, he got to work digging out a new hole deep enough to accommodate a full pumping of the legs.

Meanwhile, another group joyfully grabbed shovels and immediately began a digging project, searching for the bare earth below.

But, over all, the new surface was simply remarked upon, then forgotten as the kids settled into the rhythm of their play.

After awhile, I began to hear the diggers discussing the prospect of a hole that penetrated to the center of the earth, perhaps even going all the way through to the other side. The older boy on the swing overheard them and said in a voice of authority, "You better not dig too deep because then you might get to the lava and it will erupt on us."

The diggers paused to reflect on that, then decided amongst themselves that this was exactly what they were going to do, dig to the molten core to release the lava. They dug out a circle of bare dirt, informing one and all to be careful because if they fell in they would be "burned up."

Before long a team of ninja fighters roved into the area, posing fiercely, boasting of their powers, and thereby (from what I could tell) defeating bad guys. The diggers paused to reflect on that, then decided amongst themselves that their pools of lava (by now they had several) were actually bad guy traps. They informed me that as a good guy, I was immune to the lava, and no longer needed to worry about falling in. The lava would only burn bad guys.

It was around this time that a loud wail went up on the other side of the swing set, a boy suddenly bursting into tears as if injured. As I approached, the crying boy pointed at another boy who was standing some distance away, "He hit me!" At this, the accused, behaving very much like a guilty party, took off for a distant corner of the playground. As I consoled the crying boy, I learned that he hadn't actually been hit, but rather had been told that he was going to be hit "a lot of times" and it had, naturally, frightened him. I asked, "What can he do to make you feel better," to which he replied, "I don't think he'll tell me he's sorry." I asked, "Would that make you feel better?" When he answered that it would, I suggested that we at least talk to him.

By now the tears had ended. He took my hand as we started down the hill, looking for his nemesis, but didn't immediately spy him. I said, "It's like he disappeared," to which the boy replied, "Maybe he's a ghost," a joke that let me know he was no longer harboring a grudge. We made spooky ghost noises together for a minute, then he released my hand and returned to his play.

Back at the bad guy lava traps, I was informed that they had, in my absence, trapped several bad guys who had hit people "a lot of times."

Not long after that, the boy who had earlier been crying was running toward us, his face flushed with joy. He was being chased by the boy who had threatened to hit him a lot of times. "Help! Help! I'm being chased by a ghost!" And behind him, the ghost wailed and moaned in mock ghostly misery. They had obviously made amends, racing away in their game of chase.

The diggers paused to reflect on that, then decided amongst themselves that their bad buy traps were actually ghost traps. "The ghosts fall into the lava and get dead."

The older boy on the swing informed them that ghosts were already dead.

The diggers reflected on that, then decided that their lava traps made the ghosts "extra dead." Then they went back to their project of digging in the new wood chips.

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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"Why Didn't You Tell Me?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Bridging The Gap To Come

The picture at the top of this post is an end-of-year present I received from a five-year-old. She dictated this message to her mother:

Teacher Tom,

I drew you a picture. It's a dragon with a big eye and a seashell and a rainbow over her head. It's a magic dragon who thinks she can jump over a puddle without getting wet, but even if you are magic you might slip in a puddle! She's a nice dragon, not a mean one. And she doesn't have a belly button.

I love you, Teacher Tom. You are nice an you tell funny stories.

I'm always touched by the thought of a child sitting down to think of me, to create something for me. Creating art is part of what it means to be human; creating art specifically for another person is to share a part of oneself, part of your uniqueness, something that has never been shared before, nor will it be shared ever again. It is a gift of love.

Mister Rogers wrote:

There would be no art . . . if human beings had no desire to create. And if we had everything we ever needed or wanted, we would have no reason for creating anything. So, at the root of all art . . . there exists a gap -- a gap between what the world is like and what we wish and hope for it to be like. Our unique way of bridging that gap in each of our lives seems to me to be the essence of the reason for human creativity.

When this girl sat down, thinking of me, she did so with the knowledge that she might not see me again for a long time, perhaps never again. It's a concept that she perhaps isn't fully capable, at five, to comprehend, but when I think of her creating this for me, I imagine that our impending "apartness" was in some aspect there with her, something that neither of us want, even if we know that it has always been woven into the fabric of our relationship. I likewise imagine that she was thinking of the funny stories, the ones we tell together, and she wanted to leave me with one to remember her by, one embedded with an important message about paying attention, a unique way of bridging the gap to come in both our lives.

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

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