This Is Probably True

Yesterday a small group of us spent the morning at the  Steinahlíð preschool in Reykjavik as part of our participation in the annual Play Iceland Conference taking place this week in and around the nation's capital. The city's original preschool, housed in what appears to be an old farmhouse and one other somewhat newer building, is, enviably, located amidst several acres of forest and field.

When we arrived, we were invited to join an expedition to check on a dead mouse that the children had discovered some weeks ago. They had decided to not bury it as they normally would, opting instead to simply put it under a rock in a distant corner of the property where they had been regularly visiting it ever since. I understood that this was both a scientific and spiritual endeavor.

When children lead, even the simplest of outings can be an epic saga, one with the destination always in mind, but only accomplished via detour, diversion, and daring. Our adventure began, the children spontaneously holding hands, at the small crop of hearty kale that continues to thrive despite the freezing temperatures. As I understand things, the land was originally donated to the trust that now owns it under the condition that it always be used for children and that it always be used, at least in part, to teach them how their food grows. We fortified ourselves on greens amidst a veritable orchard of now bare berry bushes, where I imagine these lucky children forage joyfully during warmer months.

From there we continued on trails between the trees, worn by generations of little feet. Our way was criss-crossed by similar paths, but the children knew exactly where they were going. First, however, we stopped to examine ice we found in a nearby tire swing hung from the branch of a tree. The teacher warned the children not to eat the ice, but they, in the spirit of adventure, nevertheless tasted it the moment her back was turned, giggling together as co-conspirators.

We wound our way to a small, steep, and grassy hill that seemed to rise from nowhere. Naturally, we stopped for a frolic.

Back in the woods we came upon a tent-like structure made from colorful fabric, damp now and dripping in the moist wintery air. All along the way, the children had been collecting small bits of garbage (plastic bags, food containers, beverage, etc.) that had inevitably found its way onto their land from the surrounding city. No one told them to do this; it simply appeared to be what one did. There was some confusion, however, about the things found in the tent, much of which turned out to be toys that other children had made from recycled materials. Together with their teacher they determined what would stay and what they would pack out.

The children tended to stick together, and even when one of them detoured she would stop before getting too far away to call out to the others who more often than not followed, ducking into natural evergreen hideouts or gathering around to examine motes. Proceeding in this manner we eventually came to our destination at the farthest corner of this epic place, dropping to their knees around the rock under which they had left the dead mouse, heads together. Carefully, they lifted the rock to find that the mouse was gone! They huddled together for some time discussing this great mystery. They rejected the notion that it had been eaten by some scavenger, agreeing among themselves that the mouse had somehow moved itself. They did find a small bit that they thought might be the tail or a leg, but one boy pointed out that he saw no blood, so how could that be part of the mouse? Clearly, it had moved itself, and he dropped the "tail" unceremoniously into the leaves and moss underfoot.

The adventure home, in the spirit of all the great sagas, was even longer than our outbound journey. We stopped at the "magic tree," we saw faces in both stone and wood. We discovered a shopping cart that some mischief maker must have tossed over the fence. We stopped at the "fairies' rock." The story is that when the new pedestrian/bicycle roadway was built along this side of the property, the fairies who called this rock home didn't want to be left outside the fence, so a crane had lifted it into its current place. In this land in which some 80 percent of the population claims to believe in the existence of the "hidden people," and where it is common to design buildings around certain rocks so as not to offend the trolls, it was no surprise when their teacher told us with a straight face that the fairy story was "probably true."

When we came to the fields we played chasing games. When we came to a thicket of trees, we made the sounds of police sirens (something learned not from the reality of Reykjavik where crime is rare, but rather from television) and the children took turns being arrested and placed in a jail of trees. And whenever we came to ice, they secretly tasted it.

We tend to misuse the word "myth," I think, using it most often as a synonym for "false," when in fact mythology is really all about truth, or at least the quest for truth. Those ancient sagas tell of humans exploring, discovering, and striving to make sense of the world. It is therefore "probably true" that there are fairies and trolls, just as it is "probably true" that the mouse moved itself. Of course, these truths may not be confirmed by our modern scientific understanding, but that doesn't mean that our myths do not likewise reveal a perspective on truth that eludes the scientific method. This is probably true.

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The Emotion Of Us

Understanding the expressions and body language of the other people is a skill that comes more naturally to some of us than others, but it is among the most essential things we must learn if we are to live satisfying lives. Most young children arrive at our school with at least some understanding of this: after all, they have been studying their parents' faces for their entire lives. Some easily learn to apply what they have learned to the rest of us, while others need some help in making sense of the often confusing twists and turns they see in the faces and bodies of others.

I find myself frequently pointing out the facial expressions of children, especially early in the school year, making factual statements like, "Mary's face looks angry," or "I can tell Hank is sad because he is crying." I strive to avoid the language of command, so I don't say, "Look at her face," the way I've heard other educators doing, but rather stick to simple statements about what I'm seeing, directing the children's attention toward their classmates in the expectation that they will make their own decision to join me in my contemplation of the external manifestations of emotion. For some, the emotion is so strong, or their own sense of shame is so great, that they simply can't look, and that's fine, it tells me they already at some level understand and any additional browbeating from me will only serve to turn their attentions away from the other child and onto me, the adult who is browbeating.

It's useful to contemplate emotions when the emotions under discussion are not actually present. I find the classic children's song If You're Happy and You Know It a good starting point for community discussions of how to identify how others are feeling. We start conventionally with "happy." Sometimes I just show them with my own face, sometimes I show them a picture of a happy child, sometimes I make a happy face with pieces of felt on our felt board. Inevitably, some, sometimes most, of the children reflect "happy" faces back at me, which I point out, "I see that Grace has a happy face . . . and so does Terry . . . and so does Francis . . ." and so on. Usually, I point out the shape of their mouths, the light in their eyes, and as I do, they look around at one another, seeing the admittedly artificial representations of what happy looks like on the faces of others.

We then go to "sad." We show one another our sad faces with downturned lips and worried eyebrows. "If you're sad and you know it, cry a tear . . . Boo hoo," we sing, using our fists to wipe away the pretend tears. We show one another angry faces, pinching our mouths or gritting our teeth and lowering our eyebrows. "Sometimes," I say, "the angry fills up our whole bodies," so we stand up and stomp our feet to help "get the angry out." We show one another our surprised faces and our frightened faces. Sometimes children suggest other emotions, like "frustrated" or "jealous" and we try to identify how we can see those feelings on the faces of others.

The highlight emotion, however, is always "silly." Everyone enjoys making their silly faces, striving to make one another laugh, "Look at my silly face!" In real life silly faces are usually invitations to play, to join in, to do something wild and out of the ordinary: it's happiness inflated with giddiness, giggles, and gusto and it always loves company. Being silly together almost always involves looking deeply into the other person, connecting with them through face and body, giggling, agreeing and not giving a damn that we're making fools of ourselves. When we're on the outside of silliness, there is a tendency to sometimes think things are about to spin out of control and as adults we too often think we need to step in, to calm things, to re-direct, but I think that's usually a false premise. 

Children often tell me that I'm silly, to which I reply, "Thank you. That's a compliment." It tells me they feel invited to play with me, which is after all, why we're all here. Young children may still need to work on reading happy, sad, and angry in other people, to develop the habit of studying the faces and bodies of others for insight into their emotional state, but silly is something they always understand. It is in many ways, the emotion of us.

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Safe And Independent

I'm sure we're not the last school in America to have no particular rules surrounding the use of our swings: a trapeze bar, a tire swing, and a rope that's hung between two traditional strap-seat swings. I suppose when I say that, I'm not being entirely truthful. I do strongly suggest (stopping just short of a rule) that adults refrain from pushing kids on the swings, partly in the interest of safety. The only significant swing-related injuries I've ever seen have been the result of a grown-up propelling a child to a height and with a momentum that they could never achieve on their own. But the main reason I'd rather the adults not help them is that I see our school as a place where children learn to do things on their own, a place to learn to be independent.

I understand why nervous adults feel the need to restrict children's play on and around swing sets. I even understand why lazy adults simply have them removed, but from where I sit the price of giving into catastrophic thinking, the cost of our reluctance to trust children, is too high. When we first moved into this space some eight years ago, the swings were new for our community and we adults fussed among ourselves over what and how as we vigorously monitored the swing play. Today, it's rare for fretful adults to linger in the area and even rarer that they intervene in the play. We've learned.

I was reflecting on this yesterday as some of the three-year-olds pulled a step stool over to the swinging rope. They like to stand on the stool, rope in hand, then jump, hanging on the rope as it swings back and forth. They perform this operation between a pair of strap-seat swings that are almost always in operation, a situation that requires the children to keep to their own lane at all times, something they do without being warned by adults. The kids were queuing up, again without adult prompting, taking turns, again without adult prompting, and helping one another by fetching the rope for the next kid in line, again without any adult participation. I was there, talking to the kids, responding when they called out, "Watch me!" but otherwise remaining seated on the sidelines admiring how they managed this game that would likely be outlawed in most schoolyards.

Then someone had the idea of placing our three-legged trampoline in the landing zone with the intention of using it as a target. Later a small shipping pallet was positioned under the rope as a kind of obstacle to overcome. Meanwhile other kids were standing on the strap-swings, spinning on the tire swing, and hanging by their knees from the trapeze bar; as many as a dozen of them dangling, clambering, and swinging there in close proximity, cooperating, creating, and caring for one another as they played. Not to mention the important health and developmental reasons that children need to swing.

We want our children to be both safe and independent. As I watch children play on our swings without adult interference, what I see is that one emerges from the other, but only if we can step back and let the children play.

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The Hallmarks Of A Day Well Lived

We set ourselves a goal. We were going to the Woodland Park Rose Garden, a place many of us had never been even though it's adjacent to the zoo, a place we've all been. The weather has recently turned toward fall, but the last of the roses are still there for the smelling. Not only that, but the park's department has recently added a sensory garden to the the 2.5 acres which includes a small playground and we thought we'd like to check that out.

But first there was the hike to the bus stop, uphill along Fremont Avenue, to the BF Day Elementary School where some of the kids know their older siblings attend. Along the way we spied yellow, orange, red, and purple leaves. Some of us tasted licorice-flavored sprigs from a towering wild fennel plant. Others discussed the grisly prospect of being run over by a car.

At the bus stop, we designated a "calm" zone (next to the road) and a "go crazy" zone (away from the road). A couple kids attempted to climb the cracked and bulging concrete retaining wall that helps hold the soil under the more than a century old school building. One of them succeeded, standing above us, declaring himself "the tallest one here!"

We knew we were waiting for the number 5, a number of significance given that most of us are anticipating our fifth birthday. Riding the bus is usually the highlight of every excursion; sometimes we just go out with no goal other than to ride mass transit. When the bus finally arrived, we filed down the aisle, rushing to find seats near a window or next to our friend or in the "bendy part" (preschool slang for the pivoting section of articulated buses). We were loud with our collective excitement. I imagine we annoyed some of our fellow passengers, but others smiled at us, some even happily giving up their seats, but the children were oblivious either way, up on their knees, pressing their noses to the windows, enjoying the freedom of not being strapped into car seats, some even experimenting with standing as the bus moved.

As we passed familiar sites, children called out, "I've been there before!" or "This is close to my house!" or "That's where my friend Sophia lives!" It's familiar turf for most of the children, made new by the experience of seeing it from the expansive windows of the bus in the company of everyone. As we disembarked at the southwest corner of the zoo park grounds, several children enthused, "I've been here before!"

We knew we were not far from the south entrance to the zoo and our momentum carried us through the grassy, still greenly shady park, in that direction. Arriving at the zoo gates our group broke into two with half the children stopping to play in the leaves that had collected under the large oak that stands there, while the others made a beeline for the brass baboon statues, upon which they clambered. It was a gusty day and we threw leaves, creating small tornados in the swirling wind. Before long we were one big group again as almost all the kids opted for throwing leaves. Then, after some time, we moved on.

The rose garden is a "formal" place as rose gardens tend to be, featuring tidy, well-labeled beds, a gazebo, a couple of fountains, lawns, and maze-like walkways. My idea was for the adults to spread themselves out so that the kids would have the freedom to explore on their own, but the children had other ideas, opting instead to flock mostly together, first to the smell roses (where one boy learned the lesson of roses by breaking off a thorn in his forearm), then to the gazebo, then to each of the fountains, then to the sensory playground. A parent had brought along blueberries and apples from her parents' trees.

The playground became a kind of base of operations, then, with children adventuring off into the wider garden in groups of threes and fours, wandering the walkways, getting "lost" behind hedges. I found two girls meditating upon a woman who was meditating. We talked to gardeners who were weeding the beds. Some of us met the dogs that another patron was walking. We tried out the quirky musical instruments that have recently been installed. We played there, smelling the roses both literally and figuratively until we were ready to go.

We returned the way we had come because we had seen several climbing trees we wanted to try out. We stopped to wonder about the war dead memorial statue that serves as the bullseye to this part of Woodland Park. We then made our way to our bus which took us to the stop at the top of the Troll's Knoll community garden where we ran and rolled wildly up and down the native plant covered hill nestled up against Highway 99.

Finally then, we made our way back to school to find the parents who had not come with us waiting. It was a perfect day of smelling roses. We went home tired, happy, and with stories to tell, which are the hallmarks of a day well lived.

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The "Glamorous" Girls

These girls were best friends and they had been that way since the first day of class. They spent large parts of their days playing their games of imagination together, usually in an intimate huddle. It's not that they excluded others: on the contrary they were usually open to newcomers, but they were often so wrapped up in their friendship that the rest of us became invisible.

When we were indoors, I tended to find them either in our loft or under our loft, wearing their princess dresses, being movie characters or sisters or mother-and-baby. For the better part of the school year their three and four year old classmates worked around them, too busy with their own activities to take special notice, but as the year progressed they began to draw the attention of their classmates.

There was one girl, a bit younger than our best friends, who regularly announced to me her intention to play with "those princesses." She then moved her body closer, watching the "glamorous" girls intensely, listening to them, but all while maintaining her distance, often going through a process of approaching and retreating in a cautious cycle, but never, from my perspective, really engaging. She was obviously somewhat in awe of the pair and it caused her to flit about near, but not within, their orbit. Later, she would tell me she had been playing with them, providing details she picked up from their conversations and her own observations. I suggested that she might want to put on a princess dress herself, to stand closer, to perhaps even talk with them, but for now that was enough, it seemed, just to be near them.

There was a boy, on the other hand, who has no qualms about actively joining them. His approach, one that is almost always a winner under any circumstances, was to come bearing gifts -- food made from play dough, stuffed animals, artwork. He was also more than willing to take on any role in their game, playing a prince or a daddy or whatever "male" character the girls offered him.

And then there was the group of 4-5 boys who were obviously interested in playing with the girls, but were unwilling or unable to adapt their typically rowdy play to the quieter, more intimate games toward which the girls tended. These guys roamed the classroom, often well-armed with blasters to use on the bad guys, hoses to put out the fires, or whatever. Sometimes they approached our best friends in attack mode, barging into the loft, blasters blasting, insisting that the girls are villains to be subdued. Other times they insisted that the castle was ablaze and they had arrived to save the day. And at other times they came as bandits, bent on stealing something or other from the girls.

I should mention that both of these girls had older brothers. They were hardly intimidated by this band. Nevertheless, when the pattern first emerged, I didn't think it was fair that the boys could interrupt, scuttle, or otherwise intrude upon the girls' games, and it seemed to me that this was their sole object, to make pests of themselves. I found myself attempting to help the girls defend themselves, reminding them that they could just tell the boys to "stop," while also reminding the boys that if someone said "stop" that they had all agreed to stop.

We talk a lot in class about listening to one another's words and watching one another's faces. I frequently noted, aloud, that the girl's faces "look angry." At least that's how they looked to me, although I had been a bit frustrated that they hadn't always used the word "stop," which is a more effective technique that just scowling, and instead had been responding to the boys by wielding their "frozen powers" at them, or otherwise "fighting" back, creating these loud, intense stand-offs in which everyone was shooting everyone.

I should also note that the best friends rarely complained about the boys' interloping: my adult intervention had been largely upon my own initiative. One day, the girls were playing "Petco" in the loft, each pretending to be puppies. I heard the boys proclaiming, "We have to get the bad guys!" as they approached from across the room, all carrying old cell phones and remote controls as weapons, so I moved closer to the loft which was indeed their destination. They pounded up the stairs, shouting, "Bad guys!" then took aim at the puppies. The puppies rose up on their hind legs causing the boys to stop on the top step, not daring to come closer. I was about to point out the "angry" expressions on the girl's faces, and to suggest that they could say "stop," when I decided to say nothing, which is almost always the best approach.

As the boys fired their blasters, the puppies began to defend themselves by barking. It was only then that I realized I was wrong. The girls weren't angry: those expressions were intended to look fierce. They were pretending, just as they had previously been pretending to take a nap. And the boys, rather than ruining the game, were creating a dramatic moment in the story they were all playing together. And in that moment, I understood why the girls so rarely said "stop" to these boys: it was fun!

After a few minutes, the boys, laughing with one another, retreated and our best friends decided it was time for some lunch. And I walked away feeling like a jerk for having been so dense, wondering how many other fun moments I'd scuttled because I thought I knew it all.

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When We Tell Our Honest Stories

When I was a younger parent, there were some "experts" who advised lying to your children. Not about everything, of course, but rather about certain mistakes you made in your own youth. For instance, you weren't supposed to admit to your own experimentation with drugs, alcohol, or sex, the fear being that by confessing you would increase the likelihood of them performing their own experiments. At the time I learned of this theory our daughter Josephine was still in diapers so I was a long way away from having to deal with such things. I stashed it away in one of the attics of my brain for when that time came.

Meanwhile, I muddled through as best I could, relying mostly on advice from my mother and mother in law. I found heartbreak to be the most difficult terrain. As a man in our culture, I'd unintentionally picked up the idea that it was my job to fix things when other people cried, an approach that rarely "worked" in the sense that it did little to sooth the heartbreak or stem the tears. The only thing that helped, I learned, was to simply sit with her, and listen. Then one day when she was about three or four, as she was tearfully re-telling a story of a friend who she felt she had treated badly, I was reminded of a dark story from my own childhood which I shared with her. She listened and, to my surprise, it seemed to calm her.

From that moment on, whenever she was heartbroken, afraid, or ashamed, I found myself searching my own history for moments when I had experienced something similar, or better, when I had felt what I imaged she was feeling and shared it with her, honestly, even when it made me look bad. Once she even said, "I like when you tell me your stories." 

When we feel strong emotions, there is a tendency for us to feel that we are all alone. This is especially true of young children. When we as parents share our own stories about failures, mistakes, and hurts, it lets our children see that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that the pain will pass, that they are not the only one to have ever suffered like this. When we tell our honest stories to our children, we are telling them, without lecturing, that this is what growth is all about.

This is especially important when part of why they are crying is our own "bad" behavior. If we've yelled at them, for instance, we must not only later apologize, but also let them know that we understand how scary that was because our own parents, grandma and grandpa, had made the mistake of yelling at us when we were little. Children often take comfort in knowing that their hurt is not theirs and theirs alone, but rather one that everyone, even parents and grandparents have experienced. And it's especially important to be honest about our mistakes.

When it came time to talk to Josephine about drugs, alcohol, and sex, my wife and I did not lie, but rather continued sharing the true stories from our own lives, stories that let our girl know that whatever happened, we were all in this together, through the highs and the lows, and that there would come a time when we had grown beyond the pain, leaving us with stories to tell the next person who needed to hear them.

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"Growing Happens Little By Little"

One evening, before we were parents, my wife and I were invited to an old friend's house for dinner. We hadn't seen her in years, nor met her husband or child, who was at the time about 12 months old. Jennifer must have been pregnant at the time, but it was still new enough that we hadn't yet turned our attentions to our future as parents in any meaningful way.

There was a bowl full of decorative wooden balls on the coffee table. At one point the baby purposefully dumped the balls onto the floor. To our shock, her parents didn't attempt to correct her obvious misbehavior, but rather seemed to find it cute, especially as she began to put the balls back into the bowl again, one by one. When the bowl was full, she then dumped it again. She repeated the process of dumping then refilling that bowl over and over and over for what seemed like a half hour. On the way home that evening, my wife and I agreed that the poor child was cute, but clearly no Einstein.

Of course, today I would have been impressed by the capacity for a child that young to focus on a single self-selected task for such a long time, noting her fine motor skills and emerging mathematical mind. And while this girl has grown into a brilliant and accomplished young woman, it's quite clear that I have also grown quite a bit in my own right.

As Mister Rogers reminds us, "Parents don't come full bloom at the birth of their first baby. In fact, parenting is about growing. It's about our own growing as much as our children's growing, and that kind of growing happens little by little." From my perch as the teacher in a cooperative preschool where the parents of the children attend school right alongside them, I am regularly as inspired by the little by little growth of the parents as I am that of their kids. Every year I meet dozens of first time parents, intelligent, successful adults, yet anxious in their inexperience, recently embarked upon a strange and fraught journey. They may not know it yet, but they will learn at least as much as their child over the next couple decades, a process of growth that will teach them to be better, more complete humans. I'm proud that I get to be a part of that and just as I often try to envision the sort of big kid these toddlers will grow into, I do the same with their parents, imagining them as they will be two or three years from now.

Perhaps the most important thing I hope for every new parent is that they learn not to rush either their child or themselves. In hindsight, it will appear to have happened too fast, but in the here and now, growth happens little by little, balls being dumped from a bowl over and over and over. You don't really have to know what you're doing any more than your child does, but, like them, you must only pay attention, keep them safe enough, and love them. That's the soil, sun, and water of human growth.

Mister Rogers again: "It's tempting to think "a little" isn't significant and that only "a lot" matters. But most things that are important in life start very small and change very slowly and they don't come with fanfare and bright lights." One day, they will be brilliant, accomplished young adults, but today they are dumping balls, not even knowing why, yet growing little by little nevertheless. And so are you.

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

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