Come Together

A sweet friend of mine recently asked me to make a guest post on her blog. She made a point to acknowledge  up front  that she and I don't see eye to eye on all things and to assure me that her posts aren't typically focused on those areas where we disagree. I appreciate and admire her candor and consideration for my viewpoints and my image, but this isn't something that really concerns me. I actually really value the fact that this person thinks very differently from me on some issues, yet still respects my viewpoints, and that we can share similar views on many other topics without feeling we need to overlap in every area. I told her this, too. Though, of course, it's nice - and probably necessary - to agree on some things with close friends, I tremendously value those friends that challenge my beliefs and broaden my horizons, or those who simply hold their tongues when they think my ideas are totally nuts (and I can then happily do the same for them). We don't have to have everything in common. Our world is actually richer when we are surrounded by interesting, kind people with whom we respectfully disagree.

It's the "respectfully" part that is the key component here. With it, we have a world that is richer and more lively, more vibrant. Without it, we have discord. We engage in a bleak, anxious scrambling to prove who is right. This happens a lot online. A lot. Probably because the other people cease to become "other people" in our eyes as we start pounding away at the keyboard, seeing them only as their words, their beliefs, their ideas with which we disagree. The more distanced we become from people, the less we see them as individuals and the more we see them as "the other," the less we care about them and their feelings. They become less real, less human to us. This is where we start hammering out the nastiness in the comments section. This is where we fire off the angry email, the accusatory response with a snarky grammar critique. This is where we stop listening, because we've become detached. We cease to see the other person's point of view and we cease to learn from one another.

 Two people I hold in very high regard, both as bloggers and real-life people, have recently written lovely blog posts related to this notion (Maggie Clarke at Everything is Fine Here and Tom Hobson at Teacher Tom). So obviously the clear choice was for me to rehash what they had to say rather than start on that guest post (which I am also working on, for the record).

I kid. I've actually been devoting a great deal of thought to this idea of people with differing mindsets coming together, building community. I speak and think and write a lot about the microcosm that is my playschool, in which the kids are learning to accept one another and interact in ways that benefit the whole group through their play. This is necessity for them - in order for them to have playmates, to have fun, they have to accept each other and work through their differences. One of the core principles of play is that everyone participates by choice and is free to leave at any time.

This is something that kids grew up having all the time a generation or two ago - they roamed their neighborhoods and played with whoever was available, no matter if they were a different age or gender or race or culture. They learned to work out their differences so they had playmates. Fast forward to our current generation of kids who typically interact with peers chosen by their parents during playdates at one another's houses, The playmate pool is already narrowed based on the parents' connections and preferences and also generally by  the children's age/ grade in school, as well. Then the children's play is typically overseen very, very closely by the adults. I'm concerned that these kids aren't learning to see the "other" as a person, to empathize with other viewpoints or to navigate differences on their own.

Now I know that there are lots of readers pausing here, who wish to point out that a few generations ago, society was very much segregated and people were unlikely to interact very much with those outside of their own particular race or social class. This is absolutely true - but hear me out.

We no longer live in a segregated country (though that's debatable, unfortunately). The laws say we can and should all frequent the same spaces and do the same things and we should theoretically all be living and working together. We have constant access to social media and ways to reach out to people in the far reaches of the globe. WE SHOULD BE GETTING BETTER AT THIS. We should be more worldly and open minded and aware. We should be less separate, less segregated. We should be coming together, embracing our differences. Sometimes I"m not sure if this is happening at all. It seems we may be trading one kind of segregation for another.

No longer comfortable with letting our kids play outside, we come home and keep them inside with us. watching TV or playing video games - perhaps playing creatively, too, yes, but still typically inside and often alone. Play with other children is planned and cultivated and often takes the form of organized sports. Adults are able to narrow their own social circles and media consumption down such that they are only exposed to views they already agree with. We are still, in so many ways, segregated from those who are different from us, but now it is through our own choice. Further, the current generation of children aren't getting the opportunities to develop and practice the skills they will need to reach out to others. Their lives are so structured, so cultivated, so managed by adults.

About a year ago, I participated in a discussion forum intended to find ways to improve our city's public schools, which are largely failing. The schools here were not desegregated until 1981 and the effort left the schools still mostly segregated, with white families fleeing for private schools in droves (the linked articles give an excellent overview of the history here and its modern repercussions, if you are interested). The results are tremendous, and disheartening. Not only are our schools still largely segregated along racial and economic lines, the gap between "have" and "have not" continues to grow, with the public schools, save a few "magnet" programs, continuing to be housed in unacceptable facilities without the funds for such basics as soap and paper towels in the bathrooms. Families who are able continue to opt for private school, feeling forced to pay to get their children a quality education. Those who cannot afford to pay often have no choice. As test scores continue to plummet (a dubious measure of school quality, to be sure), administrators and legislators scramble to solve the problem through measures that actually make things worse - increasing instruction time, increasing student assessment and data collection, cutting recess, making schools more structured, less warm and inviting. Depriving these students of their basic rights as children. Studies have shown for decades that what children really need to thrive and succeed are opportunities to engage in hands-on, interactive, child-led learning, opportunities to play and recharge, and opportunities to build meaningful relationships with caring adults at school.

I went into this event armed with information on how play and developmentally appropriate behavior expectations would benefit our schools. I spoke and I feel my voice was heard, but as I listened, a broader issue emerged - loss of community. Participants of all races and all ages, but especially the older members of the group, lamented loss of community as a primary concern. Loss of community as a result of forced busing of students outside their neighborhood school zones. Loss of community due to the white flight to private schools, and further flight from the "haves" of all races as the city's public schools began to fail.  Loss of community as the district scrambled to create more magnets and other special programs then moved them from campus to campus (many feel this is an effort to cover failing test scores of the basic population, especially with the district's gifted programs which are frequently housed in "rough" neighborhood schools and moved from school to school). Loss of community as the schools became increasingly less child-centered, and increasingly more data- centered.They mourned the loss of the neighborhood school as a place where kids felt safe and welcomed, where parents were a welcomed part of the school community, where there was continuity from year to year. An overarching theme from the older members of the group was the fact that neighborhood schools were once strong community centers and now they simply aren't. We've made all these efforts to solve specific problems, and created more in the process.

We don't need more tests.

We don't need more arbitrary rules and regulations.

We need to see kids as people. We need to embrace them for who they are and find ways to help them grow to be their best selves. This means allowing them to be children who behave as children do, and allowing them to play and socialize during the school day. This means backing off sometimes so that they can learn to empathize with others and manage their own emotions.

We need to make schools the kinds of places that parents and grandparents and engaged members of the community feel welcomed.

This means finding a way to get to know our neighbors so we can see where we are alike, instead of only seeing the "otherness."

This doesn't mean pretending we are all the same and have exactly the same needs. It means valuing and respecting our differences while finding common ground.

We need to see each other as people, no matter how different we are or how much we may disagree. We need to reach out and build connections. We need to mend our communities.

I was fortunate enough to hold my inaugural "Pop Up" play event at Front Yard Bikes, a terrific community resource in Old South Baton Rouge. Every aspect of it was wonderful, but most exciting the coming together of people of all ages and backgrounds to play, to hang out, to get to know each other better and build connections.

Big kids helped little kids, kids from public schools and private schools and kids whose parents would never facilitate play dates with one another as well as those who were old, close friends... these kids all just PLAYED together. They built and laughed and argued and problem solved together.

They came together. The built a community, no matter how temporary, how fleeting. In those moments, differences were forgotten and common goals were shared. Their lives were made richer.

Adults can learn a lot from kids at play.

I was talking with Dustin, the founder of Front Yard Bikes, as I cleaned up after our Pop Up. He remarked that we operate on opposite ends of the spectrum, and there is a lot of truth in that. I'd argue that we are more alike than it seems, however.

He described himself as a "drill sergeant" compared to my free-form play facilitator. In his role he has to be stern at times, and hold the kids who work with him to high standards. Those kids - many of them better described as young adults - come to him to learn work ethic and work skills. This is their job and he expects them, rightly, to act accordingly. He runs a tight ship but his love for those kids and his desire to see them succeed is evident in every action, every word. Further, the atmosphere he cultivates and the expectations of the kids who work with him are authentic. They are real. The rules and consequences aren't contrived, they are carefully designed to benefit the kids of FYB. He's not simulating "the real world." He has created a very real community where every member's contributions are necessary and valued. 

We are both meeting the needs of the kids we work with, and acting out of love for them. The needs, of course, are different for my bubbling, bustling preschoolers, just starting out on their journey and exploring their worlds. Play is how they understand their world, build their social and emotional regulation skills, build the foundation for future academic endeavors of all kinds. His kids are closer to "launch," and in need of a different kind of guidance. 

We are both dedicated to strengthening "our kids" through authentic, meaningful experiences, and to building stronger communities for them. We are tapping into our individual strengths to realize those goals. Very different, but very much the same. I'm honored to have shared the FYB space and gotten the opportunity to see this amazing program in action. The benefits to the community that Front Yard Bikes provides are tremendous, and my world is richer in connecting to this resource. 

This is what we need to do.

We need to come together.

We need to come together as often as we can, even if it is only for short moments like this Pop-Up Play Day. We need to talk and share and occasionally just step back and watch kids at play. Because they've kind of got it all figured out. 

We need help one another to educate and nurture the whole child. Our schools aren't getting the job done right now, so we need to help each other to fill those gaps. There were many discussions that day about possible ways we can begin to help our schools, ways we can change this, and that's exciting and it makes me optimistic for the future. But we can't just wait for that to happen. We have to help each other now. 

We have to look past the differences and find that we share so much already. 

Interested in learning more about building community through play? 

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/playworkers-ph-ds-and-the-growing-adventure-playground-movement

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201602/one-man-s-way-create-neighborhood-play-his-kids

https://popupadventureplaygrounds.wordpress.com/welcome/pop-up-adventure-playgrounds/

"Paint Stays on the Paper:" Preschool and the Language of Consent

The kids often request that I set up an "art museum" for them - essentially, a variety of easels and cardboard boxes on which the kids can paint, then walk each other through, admiring their work. Sometimes there is an installment involving yarn or clay or Mardi Gras beads, we mix up the media on occasion, but certain aspects remain the same. This is something we do often enough that the crew has developed specific parameters for "art museum." 

This particular experience often involves painting one's own hands, arms and legs (and on one occasion, hair). 

It never involves painting others. Until this time.

The kids pictured were determined to use the faces and bodies of their fellow artists as their primary canvases. 

They tested their peers' desire to be a work of art in a meticulous and scientific fashion - walking from child to child, boldly swabbing a paintbrush across the other kid's face or shirt, then watching their reaction. No one liked it. Everyone responded with a firm NO and/ or tears. I began to feel that twitchy, anxious urge to step in. THEY WERE UPSETTING THE OTHER KIDS. NO ONE LIKES THIS. SHOULD I ALLOW IT? I ran around wiping paint off teary faces and fighting the urge to say something teacher-y like "Paint stays on the paper" or "We don't paint our friends."

Then they found each other.

They enjoyed both bestowing and receiving bright, paint-y stripes. They giggled and practically shook with glee. The experience was pure joy for both of them.

Pure. Joy.

I was glad I stepped back and waited. 

There are valuable lessons here, too, that were easier to see when I stepped back and watched and allowed things to unfold.

Sometimes we want to do things that others don't. This is fine as long as we aren't pushing our choices on them. It's fine to paint your own body. But if you want to paint someone else, they might not like it. If they say NO or show with their tears or body language or facial expression that they aren't into it, you walk away. You stop.

They did that. They respected their peers' wishes every time. Every. Time. 

Look, these are two and three year olds. This is a BIG deal. This is years of hard work, both with me at playschool and at home with their parents. We've worked hard with guiding them on this journey, on teaching them the language of consent. This has been an interesting journey, too, with stand out moments such as a child responding "YES! YES HITTING!" when asked if she liked being hit, and then excitedly organizing an impromptu and surprisingly respectful and controlled "Hit Party" that lasted much of one morning, but, frankly, that deserves it's own post another time.

I spend a great deal of time saying things like, "I know you really, really want to touch him right now but I hear him saying NO. It's his body. He says no." 

It's not always easy and I'm not always successful, because, developmentally, these concepts are still very, very hard for these guys. They're getting it, though. 

I could manage their actions in ways that avoided conflict. I could scurry about the yard shouting things like "Paint goes on the paper!" and "Sticks stay on the ground!"

I could even be "positive" and say those things sweetly instead of shouting.

But here's the thing: I'm in the business of helping small people grow up to be their absolute best, of loving them for exactly who they are and helping them develop the skills they'll need to be valuable members of adult society some day. Their parents trust me to do that - to do the very best by these little people that are their hearts, their everything.

I'm not here to make sure things look neat and orderly in the moment. Learning and growing are MESSY, they're LOUD, they involve conflict. 

In moments like these - moments where children paint each others' faces or carry around sticks that are way too big or decide that, yes, hitting is fun ("carefully," by the way, "not too hard" and only "nice hits) - they are gaining skills that will help build a foundation of empathy, of self- control, of critical thinking. Children who are given the power to make these choices, who are trusted to test themselves in these ways, learn to self-regulate and to read the emotions of their playmates. 

They learn to pay attention to what their peers enjoy and what they dislike, and since one of the principles of authentic play is that anyone is free to leave at any time, they regulate their play so that their playmates want to stay and continue. They learn the language of consent. 

Through these kinds of interactions, the kids are also learning that they are powerful, they are brave, that their own ideas have merit. They don't constantly need to look to someone else to tell them what the right choice is. They are learning to trust their own instincts and to puzzle out what the right choice might be. This is huge.

This is what builds strong citizens, strong humans.

We are growing people who do the right thing, even when no one is watching.

Every Choice We Make

    We worry a lot about our kids. A lot. This current generation of parents is inundated with warnings, with news reports reminding us that the modern world is a scary, scary place. If you turn your back, your child may be abducted. If you use that sunscreen, your child will get cancer. If you don't use sunscreen, your child will get cancer. If your kid doesn't eat vegetables, he'll be obese, but if those vegetables aren't organic, he'll have learning disabilities. He will be obese, too, if he doesn't play outside, but if he plays outside, he might break his arm. Or get abducted. Or get cancer.

And so on.

There's inherent risk in every choice we make. Well, every choice worth making at all, that is.

We call choices "risky" if they make us nervous. We have given "risk" a nasty, scary connotation. We've started saying "rather not chance it" about every little thing, especially when it comes to our kids. "You can never be too safe!"seems to be the rallying cry of this generation.

But that's wrong.

We forget that risk is the "potential of gaining or losing something of value."

Playing it safe leaves us without the potential to gain something of power. It leaves an empty space in our lives, in the lives of our children, that cannot be filled. Our lives are duller, flatter, less, without risk.

Risk isn't just the chance that something bad can happen. It's the chance that something good can happen. The very nature of risk is that there is something to be gained, something worthwhile, something valuable.

We should encourage our kids to be risk takers.

Being a risk taker is not the same as being reckless. It's quite the opposite, really.

Being able to evaluate risk - that means being able to accurately gauge the potential gains and losses in a given situation - is vital for growth. There's not much to be gained without risk.

The picture above is my seven year old son climbing a dry creek bed in Terlingua, Texas. It was about ten feet from the ground to the top of the bank. I don't know if I can describe my joy in watching him scale it.

The bank was crumbly in parts, and he tested each hand- and foothold carefully to ensure it wouldn't fall away under his weight. At one point, he got overconfident and grabbed without testing. The bank crumbled and he slipped, turning to slide on his butt until he caught himself and then immediately started up again, even more cautiously than before, but without a moment's hesitation. He made it to the top in a matter of minutes. and thrilled at the view - both of the mountains up above, and of his mom and little sister below in in the creek bed.

This was risk. It was a risk for him and a risk for me.

It wasn't reckless. It wasn't careless. It was risk - a chance to gain something of value paired with a chance to fall, to fail. He understood the risk and all it entailed, and I did, too. We both trusted in his abilities and knew he was capable.

He gained something climbing to the top of that creek bank, as he does each time he tests himself, tries something new, takes a risk. He gains confidence in himself, he strengthens his body, he learns something new by seeing the world from a slightly different perspective. These are things we all can gain from risk.

Valuable gains are inherent in risk.

The trip itself was a risk. We drove countless hours (my husband, our fearless, tireless driver, estimates about 50 hours of driving, and I don't think he's wrong). We camped in tents and hiked in deserts and waded in the Rio Grande. We risked car trouble and whiny kids and sunburn and rattlesnakes and broken bones and probably other stuff too. We toured three National Parks, two National Monuments and two State Parks. We saw mountains and deserts and rivers and caverns. We found ancient petroglyphs and tiny desert wildflowers and white lizards that were perfectly camouflaged in the dunes of White Sands. We witnessed sunsets and sunrises over the wide open desert and viewed countless stars in the inky black skies only found when you're far from the city and up way past bedtime. My son bought a souvenir pocket knife and sat up whittling in the evenings, the lure of television and Minecraft momentarily forgotten.

The benefits outweighed any potential losses.

We didn't even see any rattlesnakes, for the record. The kids were actually kind of bummed. No scorpions, either, or scary spiders, and the only nasty interaction with a cactus resulted in my seven year old pulling out the spines himself at his own insistence. The lessons he learned and the pride he took in yanking out each spine with the pocket knife pliers outweighed the discomfort of the moment.

In Joan Almon's Adventure: The Value of Risk in Children's Play, she reminds us that "facing risk helps children assess the world around them and their place in it." She goes on to say that  "most children have an innate ability to assess risk... With opportunity to practice they become skilled in taking risks. Opportunity to master increasingly challenging play is essential for safety in play."

It is vital that we allow children these opportunities. It's hard to step back and let them, but we absolutely must. This is how they learn to be safe, how they will be able to navigate dangers when we aren't there to guide them.

The consequences of not allowing children the chance to make choices, some of them risky, and to learn from both their successes and their missteps, are tremendous. The adage "better a broken bone than a broken spirit" comes to mind, though children who are consistently given the chance to challenge themselves - to engage in risky, powerful play - are actually less likely to break a bone.

In The Role of Risk in Play and Learning, Almon tells us that "although no one wants to see a child injured, creating an environment that is overly safe creates a different kind of danger for them. Growing up in a risk-averse society, such as we currently have, means children are not able to practice risk-assessment which enables them to match their skills with the demands of the environment. As a result, many children have become very timid and are reluctant to take risks. At the opposite extreme, many have difficulty reading the situations they face and take foolhardy risks, repeatedly landing in trouble."

Opportunities to take on calculated, appropriate risks actually decrease the chance your child will be seriously hurt. A child who has been given opportunities for risky play knows his body, knows his limitations, understand the world around him. 

There are tremendous emotional and spiritual implications, as well. 

Peter Gray discusses the value of risky play from an evolutionary perspective in Risky Play: Why Children Love It And Need It : "Such findings have contributed to the emotion regulation theory of play—the theory that one of play’s major functions is to teach young mammals how to regulate fear and anger. In risky play, youngsters dose themselves with manageable quantities of fear and practice keeping their heads and behaving adaptively while experiencing that fear.  They learn that they can manage their fear, overcome it, and come out alive...Thus, according to the emotion regulation theory, play is, among other things, the way that young mammals learn to control their fear and anger so they can encounter real-life dangers, and interact in close quarters with others, without succumbing to negative emotions." Kids need the chance to learn to deal with these emotions and to recover from events that anger them or scare them. Practicing these skills in manageable situations during childhood help them build a toolkit that they can draw from when they encounter bigger, scarier things as adults. 

What does this mean for our modern kids, deprived of risky play opportunities? What happens to kids who don't get these opportunities? Gray's research finds that "over the past 60 years we have witnessed, in our culture, a continuous, gradual, but ultimately dramatic decline in children’s opportunities to play freely, without adult control, and especially in their opportunities to play in risky ways.  Over the same 60 years we have also witnessed a continuous, gradual, but ultimately dramatic increase in all sorts of childhood mental disorders, especially emotional disorders." Our kids are developing anxiety disorders and depression at alarming rates. Gray says "We deprive children of free, risky play, ostensibly to protect them from danger, but in the process we set them up for mental breakdowns.  Children are designed by nature to teach themselves emotional resilience by playing in risky, emotion-inducing ways.  In the long run, we endanger them far more by preventing such play than by allowing it. And, we deprive them of fun."

There's inherent risk in every choice we make.

I choose to let my children explore in ways that others might deem "risky," and I own that choice as a positive one for my family.

Risk is the potential of gaining or losing something of value.

(I'm using the definition of risk used in the study of industrial and organizational psychology, by the way, as I feel it is the most appropriate. See here for a relevant discussion if you are so inclined).

I do allow my children to take on situations in which they may fall, or encounter disappointment, or failure or bumps and bruises.

But therein lies the chance for them to experience things that strengthen them physically, mentally and spiritually. These are their chances to ward off anxiety and depression. These are their chances to feel strong and powerful and confident.

These are their chances to experience the world from new perspectives, to wander, to wonder, to fully live.

To me, the worst loss would be a broken spirit.

It would be far worse for me as a parent to shield them from the beauty and wonder that this big world holds from them because I was scared they'd get hurt.

The big risks always have big potential gains. I hope I always take the risk.

I hope they do, too.

There is so much of value to gain.

And so much to lose if they don't get that chance.