Neighborhood Kids & Authentic Freedom

May 29, 2021April 27, 2022 / Laura Grace Weldon / 14 Comments

Our next door neighbors are preparing to move after living on this street for decades. Their daughter is here to help her parents sort through and pack up their things. Her sons, ages 4 and 8, are here too. They play on our swings, visit our chickens, sometimes borrow a riding toy from our garage. I am utterly charmed by these gentlemen. (Okay, I am charmed by nearly every child I meet.)

The other day they were out with squirt guns and after a particularly fierce battle clambered up to my porch. My kids and I used to enjoy making up stories together, so I gave it a go. “If each of your squirt guns could have a magical power,” I asked, “what would you like it to be?” One of them said, “To make things bigger or smaller!” The other said, “To make things real!” So we launched into a collaborative story about the crayon drawing of a giraffe that, when squirted, lifted off the page to become a real giraffe. We went back and forth making up adventures for this giraffe and his boy companions, until it was suggested the police were out to arrest the animal for chomping on neighborhood trees and pooping in the park. The fictional boys and their giraffe friend raced home to avoid getting in trouble, but the giraffe couldn’t fit through the door. Out came the other magical squirt gun to shrink it. The boys debated whether it should be reduced to the size of a dog or a rabbit or a hamster, then decided it should be even smaller so it could live with them without grown-ups noticing.

After that first story, the boys have been back nearly every day for a new story. We’ve made up stories about space travel, weird babysitters, and troublesome siblings. I’d been helping them start stories by saying, “There once were two young gentlemen who ____.” But one afternoon the four-year-old started a story with, “There once was a gentleman named Laura” and I told him if we used the word “gentleperson” that it worked for all of us. They insisted on starting all stories that way afterwards.

I’m grateful they are given the freedom to amuse themselves outdoors. Primary experiences outdoors, in whatever scrap of nature kids can find, is pivotal for creative mind and body-stretching play. It’s also vital to help children develop a lifelong kinship with nature.

Their freedom is increasingly rare. The range children are allowed to travel on their own is what psychologist Roger Hart has termed the “geography of children.” This range, for an eight-year-old, has shrunk from six or so city blocks a few decades ago to barely beyond the front door today. In the 1970’s, Dr. Hart spent two years conducting informal walking interviews with every child between the ages of four and 12 in one Vermont town to discover where and how they played. Kids particularly enjoyed the type of play that manipulated the physical world, making forts or using sticks and dirt to create (as one child did) a miniature airport. Dr. Hart observed that four and five-year-old children were allowed to play in the neighborhood without direct supervision, and children had the run of the town by the age of 10.

He went back to that town three decades later to see how childhood might have changed. No surprise, parents were much more involved in the moment-to-moment details of their children’s lives, resulting in much less freedom for children (and adults, presumably). As he did in interviews back in the 1970’s, he asked children to talk about secret places they liked to play. One child called out to his mother to ask if he had such a place. Dr. Hart wrote, “That would have been inconceivable 30 years ago. Then, most children I interviewed had places they went to that their parents had never been to.” Thirty years later, Dr. Hart found no children who played with sticks. This impeded freedom to play away from adult gaze has only gotten worse since. (See also The Geography of Children.)

My husband tends to be a curmudgeon about these boys hanging around. “They shouldn’t be in the garage asking me questions if they’re barefoot,” he says. “Someone could get hurt.” And he recently came across the younger boy just standing, looking over some tractor implements sitting out back. “This isn’t safe,” he said. He may have a point about safety, but his own childhood was rich with neighborhood mentors. From the time he was very small he watched and offered to help as neighbors fixed cars, repaired homes, ran small businesses. These older men let him hang around, and their influence helped him grow up to be the man he is today. (I can only remember one neighbor who let me hang around, once, yet I still see her influence in my life today.)

We now know how important these adult role models can be for children. The benefits don’t just flow one way, adult to child. Children are brimming with gifts — curiosity, enthusiasm, wit, fresh perspective, kindness, and the blessings of playfulness. If we’re open, we can re-learn from them how to bring these qualities back into our lives. They can also teach us to get past our presumptions, as these boys teach me.

Yesterday the oldest came over to chat when he saw me outside. Immediately our puppy started jumping and barking. “Why are you holding him,” he asked.

“He doesn’t understand the boundary between our yard and your grandparents’ yard, and it’s best I don’t let him follow you over.”

“It would be okay,” he said.

“It probably would,” I told him, “but when new people move in he’d have to learn anyway.”

He kicked a few stones in the driveway and I added, “Silly, really, that humans have all these imaginary boundaries — this is mine and this is yours — animals don’t recognize property lines.” This sort of observation would wash with most adults. Quite often it would lead to a conversation about something pat, like how much we can learn from animals. But it didn’t wash with him.

He came back with, “Lots of animals have territories.”

“Oh, good point,” I said, feeling an extra surge of affection for this dear young man. He is so like my own kids, well-informed and completely himself.

“I learned from a science podcast that warthogs like it when a mongoose picks it clean of insects,” he said. “Mongooses like to go back to the same warthog, sometimes they pee on their warthog to warn others away.” Of course this observation led to a fine conversation about territory marking in many species.

Thanks to this gentleperson, I ended up far more knowledgeable and hopefully less likely to make blanket statements I couldn’t defend. I also ended up wishing I had a pocket-sized giraffe living in a Lego house, just like in our story.

Are You A Jackhammer or a Hummingbird?

October 30, 2015 / Laura Grace Weldon / 13 Comments

Hummingbird or Jackhammer: styles of full spectrum learning

What lures you to full spectrum learning?

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” ~John Muir

Ten-year-old Matias is enthusiastic about all things automotive. He calls out model and year of cars passing the street in front of his apartment in an impressive display of mental acuity. He learned every detail of how engines work by quizzing everyone he could who knew anything about cars, then turned to YouTube for more in-depth information. That led to inquiries about types of fuels and manufacturing processes, which led to questions about the history of the assembly line and the formation of unions. Books and documentaries have made him familiar with figures such as Nikolaus Otto and Karl Benz as well as Elon Musk. Matias loves going to auto museums, car shows, and races. Although he says a visit to a demolition derby didn’t upset him, he’s been talking ever since about ways to save cars from junkyards. He’s excited about the potential for energy-efficient vehicles and he really hopes self-driving cars don’t become a thing before he gets to drive.

Notice how this fascination leads him eagerly through all sorts of fields?

Natural learning takes place across a spectrum. History, math, music, science, art, literature, business, philosophy, and athletics don’t neatly divide into “subjects.” They’re interrelated. A child notices one bare sliver of a topic, and intrigued, follows it. That pursuit lights up a totally new subject until a dazzling array of possibilities opens, each refracting new angles. The thrill of exploring is inseparable from a love of learning.

Some children, like Matias, become so absorbed in a single subject that it seems their personalities are inseparable from that passion. Their bemused families can’t help but stoke the fire of that interest. Activities and discussions with the child take on a distinct tone. Indeed, family members are changed by close association with someone who loves the world in such a focused manner.

Most of the time children learn in far more unobtrusive manner. It may seem they go through their days unaffected by the influences that pour in all around them. Yet gradually their comprehension deepens. This is a mysterious process, an ongoing improvisation that weaves together previous experiences with new comprehension and insight. But then, our children are changed by what they’ve come to understand in ways none of us can measure or assess.

Few of us are absorbed by the sort of overwhelming fascination Matias shows for all things automotive. Instead we’re open to many directions, staying with our interests as long as inspiration calls us before moving on. We have what polymath Emilie Wapnick calls “multipotentiality.” As she writes,

The only constant in my life is shape-shifting, exploration and evolution… There’s something that draws me to each of my interests and it’s not “excellence.” I have no interest in committing to one thing forever. Once I no longer feel inspired in a field, I simply move on. Some people call this “quitting,” I call it growth.

You’ll notice, however, that “find your passion” is the recommended approach. The pressure starts in childhood, with well-meaning people doing their very best to get kids on a fast track to success in sports or music or STEM. The push to find, pursue, and excel in a particular field doesn’t stop after graduation. Throughout adulthood we’re told “find your passion” in our careers, our creative lives, even our spiritual development.

I think writer Elizabeth Gilbert shares an apt metaphor in her recent talk. She says some people are like her, driven to focus on one pursuit. She calls such people jackhammers. Other people flit from curiosity to curiosity. This, she says, is the “flight of the natural born hummingbird.” She admits that for years she exhorted people to act like jackhammers in order to reach their goals. Then she had an epiphany — the world needs more than jackhammers. When people allow themselves the freedom to be hummingbirds, she says,

Two things happen. One, they create incredibly rich complex lives for themselves. and they also end up cross-pollinating the world. That’s the service you do. You bring an idea from here and you weave in and take up the next thing, because your entire being brings a different perspective. It ends up aerating the culture.

Chances are, most of us can’t be fully described by terms like jackhammer or a hummingbird. The larger lesson here is the wisdom of freeing ourselves (and our children) to explore what intrigues us. Then we understand on our own terms that full spectrum learning is inseparable from life.

Portions of this post are excerpted from Free Range Learning

18 Playful Cures for a Toy Overload

October 22, 2015January 1, 2019 / Laura Grace Weldon / 3 Comments

But there’s nothing to do! (CC by 2.0 Dennis Brekke)

Friends of ours were burdened with a serious toy overload. Their four children had generous weekly allowances and lots of gift-giving relatives. As a result, there were more toys than I’ve ever seen in one home. When the family room was overrun, their father would use a snow shovel to scoop the floor clean. He dumped the shovelfuls in big plastic bins and hauled them to the basement. After doing this a few times he realized the kids rarely bothered to get out those particular playthings. They didn’t really miss them at all.

I deeply admire the mother I interviewed for The Boy With No Toys although we’ve personally never taken an anti-toy stance in our family. Over the years we’ve happily accumulated dolls, trucks, building sets, art supplies, stuffed animals, as well as lots of books. We emphasize quality, not quantity. It’s one way of sparing our planet the burden of sweatshop-made, eco-unfriendly products. And more importantly, we think it’s part of raising kids who aren’t oriented toward materialism for their own well-being, both now and in the future.

Too often the typical options for childhood amusement include overly structured activities, lots of screen time, and commercial playthings that do the entertaining for them. Unfortunately, kids can become accustomed to someone or something else providing the fun for them. As a result they may not be attuned to the slower pace of conversation, the expansive pleasure of make-believe, or the subtle wonders found in nature. They may actually have trouble generating their own fun.

Even if you limit screen time and emphasize free play, young children can still be overwhelmed by too many playthings. A study done in Britain found the average 10-year-old owns 238 toys, but mostly plays with 12 favorite items!

Simply reducing a toy overload can help children play more creatively, cooperate more easily, and become more resourceful. Here are some toy overload solutions.

Rotate toys

Make it a family policy to have fewer playthings available any one time. This way your child can deal with a smaller selection and play areas are less cluttered. Take a sensitive approach. Pick up a few things that have been long ignored and put them away for that proverbial rainy day. When you do get out a toy or stuffed animal that has been “resting” you’ll want to put away another object. If children notice, it’s common for them to feel sudden affection for the toy you’re putting into hibernation. When you face objections, don’t make the policy painful. Work together to find another toy that your child can agree to put away. You’ll find the same old toys take on a new luster when a young child hasn’t seen them for a while.

Reserve toys for specific situations.

It’s helpful to deem some toys for use only under certain conditions. These might be perfect opportunities to use toys that require a parent close by, or a way to minimize use of passive entertainment toys they’ve been given. Keep such items for situations when your child is forced to be passive anyway such as the car seat, at a restaurant, or while you’re on an important call. Even very young children come to recognize that such toys are kept in a diaper bag, a parent’s car, or on a high shelf for special occasions. Explanations before and after use, “We only use this in the car” or “This is a Mama’s-on-a-work-call toy” help keep the boundaries drawn and make it easy to put the toy away for the next time.

Join or set up a toy lending library

Collections of donated toys can be found through some museums, community centers, and public libraries. Toy lending programs give families access to a wider range of ordinary playthings and more expensive toys than they might ordinarily afford, as well as toys for special needs children. Search online to find a toy library near you or for helpful advice on starting a collaborative toy lending service. Find a toy library near you using USA Toy Library Association listings and find out more via the International Toy Library Association.

Assemble play kits using non-toy items

You can throw together kits that stimulate imaginative play while repurposing old objects. (Of course, these suggestions are not appropriate for children who put objects in their mouths or are too young to use the items safely.) To keep up the appeal factor, put the kits away between use. They are great to get out when kids have friends over.

Office: Use a briefcase or file box. Tuck in office-type items such as memo pad, non-working cell phone, calendar, writing implements, round-tip scissors, post-it notes, and calculator. A big thrill is a tape dispenser—this alone can keep small kids happily occupied. A major coup is finding a manual typewriter at a thrift store. You’ll need to help kids understand how to type one letter at a time to keep the keys from becoming tangled.

Doctor: Fill a small suitcase with a stethoscope, tongue depressors, tiny flashlight, notebook for doctor’s notes, and plenty of gauze to bind up injuries. Children particularly enjoy using the items to diagnose and treat dolls or stuffed animals.

Costume: A costume box or trunk is a childhood classic. Add cast-off and thrift store items likely to enhance make-believe. Don’t worry about actual costumes, just toss in a range of imagination-sparking things. Include work wear, dress-up, jewelry, wallets, purses, shoes, vests, tool belt, badges, lengths of fabric that can be used as capes or veils, and plenty of hats.

Building: Fill a large container with heavy cardboard tubes as well as sturdy cardboard boxes. Add a roll or two of masking tape, string, clean yogurt cups, egg cartons, popsicle sticks, corks, plus hardware cast-offs such as nuts and bolts. Encourage children to build whatever they choose from the cardboard supply. They might need help punching holes in the cardboard to insert bolts or string. When you can, bring home the largest cardboard box you can wheedle out of an appliance store. Children will find all sorts of ways to use it.

Market: Save empty clean food packages, reglue boxes shut so they look new, and keep them in a bin along with any toy fruits and vegetables you may already have. Children can set up a play shop with these items, adding their own toys or books for additional merchandise. Lend them your fabric shopping bags to load pretend purchases. They may want to swipe a pretend debit card, use homemade money, or barter to cover their transactions. (They can use a similar concept to play Library with their books, Car Repair Shop with their riding toys, and so on.)

Encourage Deconstruction

Grandparents on both sides of our family kept a lookout for broken items our kids could take apart. This is marvelously fun as well as educational. It also requires very close supervision! Kids will need flat head and Phillips screwdrivers, needle-nosed pliers, safety glasses, wire cutters or heavy-duty scissors, and possibly some child-sized work gloves. Before letting them start, cut off and discard any electric plugs as well as cords on the item. Also check for glass parts or batteries that can cause injury, and make sure the item doesn’t have tubes (as old radios and televisions once did) Be forewarned, kids may encounter sharp bits of metal, coiled springs, and other surprises.

We put small deconstruction items in a shallow box (to catch the pieces) . Normally they’d work at the kitchen table to take apart things like a watch, Dymo labelmaker, motherboard, hand-held mixer, clock, printer, VHS or DVD player, can opener, camera, radio, household fan, remote control car, and once a Furby (which creepily resumed its ability to talk once it was little more than a Furby skeleton), Large items they’d take apart outside on the driveway, with a big open box where they could put pieces. They took apart a microwave, several different bikes, and a lawn tractor. (This led one of my sons to drag a neighbor’s lawn tractor out of the trash, whereupon he fixed it and used it to make money mowing lawns!)

Permit hideouts

Most children like making their own realms under blankets, in closets, and behind furniture. Outdoors they make dens and forts out of a few branches or leftover planks. Provide sheets or blankets to drape over the furniture for an indoor hiding place, with couch cushions for support. On occasion, try to get a large packing box from stores selling refrigerators and washing machines. Your child can direct you to cut a few openings to transform the box into a boat, space ship, or castle. Once inside a hideout, children are in another entirely necessary world.

Let them play with water

Little kids adore water play. Pull up a stool to the sink and let them wash a few unbreakable dishes or toys with mild soap. They’ll stay busy pouring water from soup ladle to funnel to pitcher to cup. Add to the fun by putting a few ice cubes in the sink, giving them foil to shape into boats, or letting them add food coloring. Encourage them to gather a few water safe objects (perhaps a block, a spoon, a popsicle stick, a ball, a rubber band) and guess which ones will float before putting them in the water. Or you might let them play in the tub for an hour or more while you sit nearby reading a book or getting some work done on the laptop.

Outdoors there are many more water options. On a hot day, water wiped on the house or driveway with a brush temporarily darkens the surface, giving toddlers the satisfying impression they are “painting.” It dries quickly so they can paint again. You can also give them a bucket and sponge to let them wash a tricycle, a watering can to give the plants a drink, or a sprinkler to run through. Don’t forget the pleasures of water added to dirt. Mud pies are a childhood classic.

Help kids set up obstacle courses

A rainy day indoor course might consist of a few chairs to wriggle under, a rope to hop over, four pillows to leap on in a row, three somersaults through the hall, and a quick climb up the bunk bed ladder. Outdoors they can set up a bike, trike, or scooter obstacle course. Mark the course with sidewalk chalk or masking tape. The course may lead them around cones, through a sprinkler, under crepe paper streamers hanging from a tree branch, and on to a finish line. More fun? Setting up obstacle courses on their own.

Bring back legacy games

All that’s needed for most sidewalk games are chalk, while backyard games only require a ball and a sense of fun. For instructions you may have forgotten or never learned, check out Preschooler’s Busy Book, Great Big Book of Children’s Games, or Team Challenges. Or dig into the game database offered by Bernie DeKoven at DeepFun. And remember to add those classic hand-clapping games, typically played while chanting a rhyme. A few rounds of Miss Mary Mack or Say Say My Playmate aren’t just fun, studies show they’re also brain boosters.

Stage treasure hunts

First hide a prize. Then place clues throughout the house or yard. For very young children, those clues can be pictures or rebus sentences. For older children, the clues can be written as poems or riddles. Each clue leads to the next set of clues before the treasure is discovered. The prize doesn’t need to be a toy or goodies, since the hunt itself is the real fun. Try “hide a packed lunch day” and let everyone search for the cache of lunches. Those who find sustenance first need to help others so the kids can eat together. Or hide the book you’re been reading aloud so kids can search for the treasure of the next chapter. Once they’re familiar with treasure hunts, children can create them for each other.

Let them help

Even the smallest children want to participate in the real work that makes a household function. They want to tear lettuce for a salad, clean crumbs with a small whisk broom, measure beans and pour them in the coffee grinder, sort socks, carry kindling for the fireplace, water the garden, basically anything they see their elders doing. They benefit in remarkable ways, from greater dexterity to the development of character traits that lead to long-term success. What’s more, they have fun doing it.

Emphasize non-toy gifts for holidays and birthdays

It’s disheartening to give a highly anticipated toy or the newest gadget only to see it ignored a week or even a day later. You can give things like real tools for working with wood, crafting with fiber, or exploring the outdoors. These tools will be used over and over again as kids build valuable skills. You can give passes to events, subscriptions, and much more. For a listing of over 100 non-toy gifts, check here.

Encourage loose parts play

Loose parts are anything kids can join together, line up, dig with, pour, dump out, take apart, swing around, push, lift, drag, climb on, or otherwise use as curiosity leads them. That is, as long as the adults in their lives give them the permission and the time to do so. No need to buy special objects for loose parts play. Nature is full of loose parts. So is a kitchen cupboard. Here’s more on encouraging loose parts play.

Take advantage of temporary circumstances

A large tree with damage from a lightning strike had to be taken down in our back yard. What was left behind were perfect playthings. There were large slices of wood the kids used as blocks and wheels. There were piles of brush they cut up with small hack saws and used to make forts. There was the stump itself, the best home base ever for games of tag.

One time my husband hauled home a junk car he’d bought for next to nothing so he could cannibalize it for parts. The few days it sat in our driveway were a delight for our five-year-old. We put one of his dad’s old shirts on him, mixed up a whole bucket of thick red tempera paint, and handed him a large paintbrush. He dragged a step stool around and painted the whole car, windows included. When they could, neighborhood kids came over to add second and third coats.

The septic system had to be dug up and fixed at our next house. When the company was done they left a towering pile of dirt. It was there for months until we had the money to rent the equipment necessary to move it. The kids called it their “mountain.” It inspired lots of imaginative play, one day they might be explorers running over the top and the next day they might be sitting in the dirt playing with toy trucks. They were sorry to see it go.

You may never have these particular circumstances, but there’s a good chance you’ll have others. Mother-in-law coming for a visit? Get her to teach your kids something she enjoys doing, maybe knitting or playing chess or Tai Chi. Power disrupted due to a storm? Let the kids play hide and seek or flashlight tag in your suddenly spooky dark house. Invited to a wedding? Find some instruction on YouTube and practice the dances that are likely to happen at the reception. Nothing like kids who’ve got the moves! Your kids won’t have much trouble finding the most playful options for any circumstances. All you have to do is say “yes.”

Portions of this article were first published in Natural Life Magazine.

Most Of Us Are Ugly Ducklings

May 12, 2015May 12, 2015 / Laura Grace Weldon / 24 Comments

Our early hatching is lauded, our late hatching a reason for worry.

We’re expected from our earliest years be like the other ducklings. (Well, better than others but not stuck up about it.)

If we keep flying when it’s time to swim there’s medication to calm our out-of-bounds impulses. If we like to sing but can’t quack there’s a star chart to reinforce more appropriate sounds.

We’re graded on the dexterity we demonstrate when curling our beaks under our wings at nap time, tested on our ability to dip our heads under water, judged by our willingness to stay in line. Poor results means doing these things over and over again until we thoroughly detest ourselves for not measuring up.

When we don’t do as well as expected we’re told we just need to try harder to be the very best duckling we can be. We’re told that we aren’t living up to our potential. We’re told we need to get our priorities straight (or a growth mindset, or grit, or an attitude adjustment).

Ducklings from more affluent families might be enrolled in perfect-your-waddle coaching camps. Their preening may be assisted and their diets enhanced with imported bugs. Less fortunate ducklings may just get some quack tutoring.

When we’re still not like other ducklings most of us try even harder to be normal. Remember those reindeer who wouldn’t let someone different play their reindeer games? Yeah, peer culture is harsh that way, especially when we’re segregated with our age-mates rather than interacting with many fowl sorts in the larger community.

As adults, we measure our own success against the most attractive and capable ducks. That’s painful, but it’s what we learned from our earliest days on.

This isn’t to besmirch ducks. Ducks are great, particularly at being ducks. But some of us

are swans,

or storks,

or kingfishers,

or great blue herons.

Some of us aren’t birds at all.

We’re frogs,

otters,

squirrels,

or dragonflies.

Every creature in and around the pond is necessary. Each is integral to the larger ecosystem’s wisdom.

We have to be extraordinarily stubborn day after day, year after year, in order to be ourselves.

The ugly ducklings of this world, the ones who still aren’t who they’re “supposed” to be, are the ones with the vision big enough to create a future for us all.

All images in the public domain.

Sprouting Plant Advocates

February 26, 2015April 29, 2016 / Laura Grace Weldon / 7 Comments

Every growing season our four children choose which crop will be theirs to plant and tend in our vegetable garden. It doesn’t make my work easier. But this tradition helps them understand how intrinsically connected we all are to sunlight, soil, and the lives of growing things.

Claire always insists on sugar snap peas. They grow quickly enough to gratify her restless nature and besides, they’re fun to eat fresh from the vine. Her three brothers aren’t as opinionated. They choose something different each year. Last year Benjamin had a great crop of sweet corn, buzzing with honeybees and taller than his pre-teen shoulders. Little Samuel’s green peppers struggled—perhaps too close to the shadowing tomato plants, but still they produced a gratifying harvest, heavy and large in his preschooler’s hands. Only Kirby’s chosen crop, watermelons, disappointed. He’d picked them out of the seed catalog based on claims of huge size and juicy red flesh. He took personal pride in the resulting vines stretching vigorously across the garden. Yet the flowers never fruited. Instead they turned brown and curled up.

This winter, before we’ve even ordered our spring seeds, Kirby’s second-grade class begins a unit on botany. He comes home and tells us that everyone got to write his or her name on a Styrofoam cup. Then they filled the cups with potting soil and each planted one white bean. Although he’s seen this miracle happen over and over at home he’s excited about the project at school. Daily he supplies progress reports while unloading his book bag containing carefully drawn worksheets with terms like root, stem, leaves, pistol, and stamen.

For nearly a week the cups show only dirt. Then one day Kirby eagerly hurries from the bus with wonderful news. A bean has sprouted! Emily’s cup is the first to show life. “It’s like a little bent green rubber band,” he exclaims.

Every day he reports whose cups are bursting with growth. It has become a competition. Emily’s plant, at first the class wonder, is now no longer the tallest. For a few days Jason’s plant is the tallest, then Kerri’s, then Christoper’s plant takes the lead. Only a few cups show no visible progress. Kirby’s cup is one of those. His enthusiasm is not diminished. He’s seen what happens when a seed awakens, splits its shell, pushes through the dirt, and stands upright. He trusts in the life force of each seed.

That Friday there’s a teacher study day. A three-day weekend with no one at school to water those little cups. I find myself wondering about the tender green beans lined up in the cold window, dry and struggling to live. I’m almost afraid to send my trusting son off to school on Monday.

But Kirby returns home with a shy grin, as if he can hardly believe a long-awaited hope has come true. “It’s this big!” he says, stretching his thumb and forefinger apart. Apparently his little plant mustered up some courage during the long weekend alone. Not only has it burst through the soil, it’s already competing with older seedlings in height.

A few days later I volunteer in the classroom and notice the progress of the seedlings. Standing up from cups – children’s names scrawled proudly across the front – they appear to have identities of their own. But they’re getting gangly, leaning on the window or neighboring plants. They need to be put into bigger pots or, if only they’d been planted at the right time, into a garden. It seems an ill-timed project.

The next day, coming in from errands, I’m disconcerted by a terse phone message from Kirby’s teacher. Something about non-compliance. The teacher wants me to call back to help her determine an appropriate punishment. I can’t imagine what might have gone wrong. I start to call her back, but then I hear the school bus rounding the corner. I’ll wait to hear what Kirby has to say first.

There’s a look children get that’s hard to describe. They appear so full they may burst, but they don’t know if they can let out what has them so overwhelmed. The adult world has them confounded. That’s the look Kirby wears. Misery, anger, guilt, petulance, and defiance as well. There’s so much emotion on his face that I can only give him a big hug and ask him to tell me.

He can’t sit. He paces as he starts to explain. Today in class his teacher had each pupil take his or her plant, sit at their desks and…. for a minute he can’t go on. He tries again. Finally I understand. The ultimate purpose of the seedling is to serve as an example of plant anatomy. “She wanted me to kill it Mom!” he said, wide-eyed at the injustice of it.

It seems Kirby took the plastic knife he was given but just sat there. He wouldn’t take his plant out of the dirt, he wouldn’t cut it apart. While the other children followed instructions on their worksheets the teacher scolded Kirby. Then took his plant and put it back on the windowsill where it sat alone, nearly tipping over without other seedlings to lean on. My son waited, knowing he’d done something wrong.

It’s too soon to plant the bean plant in the garden. Repotting might not give it a strong chance either. I have to tell him the truth about his plant’s chances. But I explain that I’m proud of him for doing what he thought was right. The world needs more people who listen to their hearts.

I call his teacher. I try to explain that my kindhearted son felt he was sticking up for a friend of his, that sometimes following the rules doesn’t always serve the higher good. The teacher doesn’t agree. The next day Kirby is punished. He is learning that rules, even the ones we feel are wrong, bear consequences.

Although his bright green plant isn’t likely to survive, I suspect that, this year, Kirby will decide to plant green beans in our garden. He’ll grow them in memory of his friend and of the fallen green comrades who gave their lives for second-grade science.

First published in Green Prints, a loooong time ago!

Evoking the State of Flow

February 4, 2015January 19, 2017 / Laura Grace Weldon / 14 Comments

state of flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, rapt absorption, learning through flow, advance learning with flow,

CC by 2.0 Jonf728’s flickr photostream

Flow is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

My daughter spent much of this week with a deer skeleton she found in the woods.

As she searched the site she was thrilled to find most bones intact. My only involvement was providing toothbrushes and bleach to clean them.

Today she’s reassembling the skeleton in the driveway. She shows me how the back legs fit into the hip sockets, giving the deer power to leap and run while the front legs are mostly held on by bone and connective tissue.

She points out that the spine is somewhat similar to a human spine in the lower thoracic and upper lumbar regions, but very different where the large cervical vertebrae come in.

I know so little about this topic that I forget what she’s telling me while she speaks.

Handling the bones carefully, she faithfully reconstructs the skeleton. She’s so deeply engrossed in the project that she hasn’t come in for lunch or bothered to put on a jacket to ward off the chill.

Her interests are far different than mine, but I know what it’s like to be this captivated.

You know the feeling too. You become so absorbed in something that time scurries by without your notice. Your whole being is engrossed by the project. You feel invigorated.

Skiers call it becoming “one with the mountain.” Athletes call it being in the “zone.” Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has termed it the “state of flow.”

In this marvelous state the boundaries between you and your experience seem fluid, as if you are merging with what you’re doing. The more opportunities any of us have to immerse ourselves in activities we love, especially those that stretch us to our full capacities, the more capable and centered we feel in other areas of our lives.

Photo by Claire Weldon

Children, especially the youngest ones, slide into flow effortlessly. While playing they concentrate so fully that they lose sense of themselves, of time, even of discomfort. They’re inherently drawn to full-on engagement. As Csikszentmihalyi explains in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,

Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.

For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.”

Kids demonstrate flow when they’re eagerly drawing, building, climbing, pretending, reading, exploring—-however rapt involvement captures them. Their intent focus makes a mockery of what is supposedly a child’s developmental handicap — a short attention span.

Flow truly puts a person in the moment. No wonder it can be hard for our kids when we call them away from what they’re doing to what we deem more important. No wonder they might be more enthusiastic about playing with Legos than taking part in a structured geometry lesson.

Imposing too many of our grown-up preoccupations on kids can teach them to block the experience of flow.

What do we need to remember about this state?

Flow is typically triggered:

when a person’s abilities are stretched nearly to their limits
during a self-chosen pursuit
when they are looking to accomplish something worthwhile to them.

These characteristics are also the way we’re primed to learn from infancy on. It’s been called the Goldilocks Effect. This means we are attracted to what holds just the right amount of challenge for us. Not too big a challenge, not too little, but something that sparks our interest and holds it close to the edge of our abilities, moving us toward greater mastery.

That’s pretty much the way science, art, and other major human endeavors happen too. Flow may indeed be our natural state.

Public domain by Cheryl Holt.

How do we encourage flow?

It doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are some ways to allow more flow in your kids’ lives (and yours too!).

Foster a calm, relaxed environment.
Engage in what brings out delighted fascination. If you’re not sure what that is, fool around with something hands-on. Tinker, paint, write, sculpt with clay, take something apart, dance, experiment—-whatever feels enticing.
Let go of worry and pressure.
Welcome mistakes as well as challenges.
As much as possible, don’t interrupt.
Remember that flow isn’t really separate from play.

The outcome of flow?

Deepened learning and stronger confidence.
A drive toward complexity, luring us to increase challenges, broaden our range of abilities, even face anxiety and boredom as we access an ever more profound state of engagement. (As A Playful Path author Bernie DeKoven explains here.)
Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s work tells us achieving the flow state regularly is a key component of happiness.

That’s vital, even if it means you end up with a deer skeleton in your driveway.

Portions of this post are excerpted from Free Range Learning

Living Beyond Boundaries Thanks To Dad

June 9, 2014June 10, 2014 / Laura Grace Weldon / 14 Comments

couldn't have done it without you. Father's Day, father's support, thanks Dad,

Image: Florian K

Living beyond the boundaries of streetlights, I often drive on dark country roads where fog hides in the hillsides. Sometimes only tendrils of mist reach up from the ground. More often I’m engulfed in clouds so heavy that the road is obscured. Straining to see the turns on these narrow lanes, I’m not stressed. I smile. I’m thinking of my father.

“People call this kind of heavy fog ‘pea soup,’” my father had explained to me when I was a first grader.

Although he leaned intently over the steering wheel, he easily kept up our conversation. “But it doesn’t look like soup to me,” he asked. “What would you call it?”

Beyond our windshield it looked like a white wall as our headlights reflected off the water vapor. His voice remained cheerful. He told me about being a radar man in the Navy and described the sound of foghorns.

“What we’re going to do, Honey, is blow the car horn to let other cars know we’re coming. It’ll be our foghorn. That way we can navigate our way past the fog.”

We drove on through the dark, he and I, talking and laughing and pretending we were piloting a ship through the waves. Before each bend he gave a blast on the car horn. It was delicious to me—my daddy taking part in a giant game of pretend. And better yet, engaging in the forbidden act of making noise, waking up the night to say we’re here.

My father never let on that the ride that night was dangerous or that the prattling of a little girl was hard on his concentration.

Although his own childhood was marred by the early death of his father, his mother’s chronic illness, and the hard work that comes with poverty, he overcame those limitations. He went on to a career as a public school teacher where he helped hundreds of other children find the best in themselves.

I know he had a way of making me feel important, no matter the task. On our camping trips he assigned me the job of signaling as he backed up the trailer. At home I got to help with all sorts of repairs. Once when I wanted to help him install a hot water tank he didn’t let on that an eight-year-old would be in the way. Instead he said what he really wanted was for me to read him some poetry because that would make a difficult job more pleasant. He put me safely on a stool a few feet away where I read aloud from a junior book of verse while he wrestled with the chore. Occasionally he sat back on his heels in appreciation at the end of a poem. He talked about discovering the great poets when he got to college, even described the large brown book he’d saved from a literature class for his own children to enjoy some day. When he was done, he said he couldn’t have done it without me, the same thing he always said.

He never found that big book of poetry he’d hoped to share. But my father gave me something more precious. Complete acceptance. And when a girl has that kind of love from her father she carries with her the self-assurance to transcend any boundaries.

My dad always shrugged off praise and begged his kids not to bother giving him gifts. So each year when Father’s Day rolled around I bought a blank card. Inside I wrote him a fond memory of my childhood and how that resonated in my sometimes challenging life.

This is my fourth Father’s Day without my dad. If I could I’d tell him, “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Originally published on Wired.

Five Ways to Transcend the School Mindset

January 2, 2014August 29, 2019 / Laura Grace Weldon / 44 Comments

School-like instruction has been around less than a fraction of one percent of the time we humans have been on earth. Yet humanity has thrived. That’s because we’re all born to be free range learners. We are born motivated to explore, play, emulate role models, challenge ourselves, make mistakes and try again—continually gaining mastery. That’s how everyone learns to walk and talk. That’s how young people have become capable adults throughout history. And that’s how we have advanced the arts, sciences, and technology. In the long view, school is the experiment.

But it’s hard to see beyond the school mindset because most of us went to school in our formative years. So when we think of education, we tend to view school as the standard even if we simultaneously realize that many parts of that model (found also in daycare, preschool, kids’ clubs, and enrichment programs) aren’t necessarily beneficial. Narrowing the innate way we learn can interfere with the full development of our gifts.

Here are five ways to get past the school mindset.

Welcome divergent thinking

In today’s test-heavy schools the emphasis is on coming up with the correct answer, but we know that the effort to avoid making mistakes steers children away from naturally innovative perspectives. Divergent thinking generates ideas. It’s associated with people who are persistent, curious, and nonconforming. Research going back to the 1970’s shows that this generation of children are less imaginative and less able to produce original ideas. An extra whammy may very well be coming from increased participation in organized sports: more than a few hours a week appears to lower a child’s creativity.

This is dire news, because creativity is actually much more closely linked to adult accomplishment than IQ. In fact, 1,500 CEO’s listed creativity as the leading indicator of “leadership competency.”

We don’t have to instruct kids in divergent thinking, just nurture it. Children are naturally inclined to question and explore. Remain open to their enthusiasms, encourage them to identify and solve problems no matter how unusual, and welcome the learning power of mistakes.

Value full body learning

School-like learning emphasizes the brain over the body. It narrows from there, emphasizing one hemisphere of the brain over the other with its focuses on left-brain analytical thinking. But children don’t learn easily when they spend so much time sitting still, eyes focused on a teacher or lesson or screen, their curiosity silenced and their movements limited. Children ache for more active involvement.

Research shows us that the rules necessary to keep a classroom full of kids in order all day, like being quiet and sitting still, can overtax a child’s ability to resist other impulses. The mismatch between school-like expectations and normal childhood development has resulted in millions of children being diagnosed with ADHD. (One of those kids was my third child, whose “symptoms” disappeared once we took him out of school and figured out how to homeschool such an active child.)

What we need to remember is that the mind and body are exquisitely tuned to work together. Movement allows sensory input to stimulate the brain as it absorbs a flood of information. This is the way the brain builds new neural pathways, locking learning into memory. (Check out A Moving Child Is a Learning Child by Gill Connell and Cheryl McCarthy as well as Spark by John J. Ratey for more on this.) Active, talkative, curious children aren’t “bad.” They’re normal.

If we look at movement we realize that even a very brain-y activity, reading, has to do with the body. Young children develop reading readiness in a variety of ways, including conversation and being read to, but also through physical activities that help their neurological pathways mature. These are activities children will do whenever given the opportunity, like swinging, skipping, climbing, walking, and swimming.

All the relentless activity of early childhood may very well be a sort of intrinsic wisdom built into them, because movement is key to keeping an active brain. Children who are more physically active actually increase the areas of their brains necessary for learning and memory. That doesn’t mean the antidote to the school mindset is a constant frenzy of activity. It does mean that children tend to self-regulate within loving safeguards. Every child needs to balance physical activity with other essentials like snuggling, daydreaming, and sufficient sleep. We simply need to remember that movement isn’t an enemy of education.

Build on the “Goldilocks effect”

This term came from researchers who demonstrate that we are cued to ignore information that’s too simple or too complex. Instead we’re drawn to and best able learn from situations that are “just right.” Sort of like the educational equivalent of Goldilocks on a porridge-testing quest.

The Goldilocks effect means you are attracted to what holds just the right amount of challenge for you right now. Usually that means something that sparks your interest and holds it close to the edge of your abilities, encouraging you to push yourself to greater mastery. That’s the principle used to hold a player’s attention in video games. That’s what inspires artists, musicians, and athletes to ever greater accomplishments. That’s how kids who follow a passion of their own tend to learn and retain more than any prepared lesson could teach them.

Our kids tell what they’re ready to learn. They tell us through what bores them and fascinates them, what they’re drawn to and what they resist. They’re telling us that, until they’re ready, learning doesn’t stick.

Diminish the focus on instruction

The school mindset leads us to believe that children benefit from lessons, the newest educational toys and electronics, coached sports at an early age, and other adult-designed, adult-led endeavors. Well-intentioned parents work hard to provide their children with these pricey advantages. We do this because we believe that learning flows from instruction. By that logic the more avenues of adult-directed learning, the more kids will benefit. But there’s very limited evidence that all this effort, time, and money results in learning of any real value. In fact, it appears too many structured activities diminish a child’s ability to set and reach goals independently.

When we interfere too much with natural learning, children show us with stubbornness or disinterest that real education has very little to do with instruction. Learning has much more to do with curiosity, exploration, problem solving, and innovation. For example, if baby encounters a toy she’s never seen before, she will investigate to figure out the best way or a number of different ways to use it. That is, unless an adult demonstrates how to use it. Then all those other potential avenues tend to close and the baby is less likely to find multiple creative ways to use that toy.

Studies show that “helpful” adults providing direct instruction actually impede a child’s innate drive to creatively solve problems. This experience is repeated thousands of times a year in a child’s life, teaching her to look to authorities for solutions, and is known to shape more linear, less creative thinking.

This isn’t to say that all instruction is bad, by any means. It does mean that six long hours of school-based instruction plus afterschool adult-organized activities in sports or recreation or screen time supplants the kind of direct, open-ended, hands-on activity that’s more closely associated with learning. Most of the time this kind of learning is called play.

Recognize free play is learning

Before a young child enters any form of schooling, his approach to as much of life as possible is playful. A walk is play, looking at a bug is play, listening to books being read is play, helping with chores is play. The school mindset separates what is deemed “educational” from the rest of a child’s experience. It leads us to believe that learning is specific, measurable, and best managed by experts.

A divide appears where before there was a seamless whole. Playful absorption in any activity is on one side in opposition to work and learning on another. This sets the inherent joy and meaning in all these things adrift. The energy that formerly prompted a child to explore, ask questions, and eagerly leap ahead becomes a social liability in school. But play is essential for kids, for teens, for all of us. (For more check out these two marvelous and very different books: Free to Learn by Peter Gray and A Playful Path by Bernie DeKoven.)

Free play promotes self-regulation and this is a biggie. It means the ability to control behavior, resist impulse, and exert self-control —all critical factors in maturity. Play fosters learning in realms such as language, social skills, and spatial relations. It teaches a child to adapt, innovate, handle stress, and think independently. Even attention span increases in direct correlation to play.

That doesn’t mean a child’s entire day must be devoted to free play. There’s also a great deal to be learned from meaningful involvement in household responsibilities as well as community service.

I want to nurture my children in such a way that they define success on their own terms. I hope that means they craft a life based on integrity, one that brings their unique gifts to the world. Homeschooling, for my family, gives us the freedom to go beyond narrow roads to success. (Democratic schools can also provide that freedom.) This is the way young people have learned throughout time. I’ve come to trust the way it works for my family.

Portions of this post excerpted from Free Range Learning.

The Dart Collection

August 13, 2013June 28, 2015 / Laura Grace Weldon / 2 Comments

I’m thrilled to offer a guest post by Margaret Swift. She writes about a neighborhood of free ranging kids and the girl whose mysterious summer project surprised them all.

When I was five years old, we moved to a neighborhood that contained a wealth of little girls around my age. After living on a farm with no one to play with but three rotten older brothers, this was heaven. During summer vacation, we girls scrambled around together playing jacks on cement porches, dressing Barbie dolls under picnic tables, holding roller derbies on cracked and heaved-up sidewalks, and catching tadpoles in local ponds. We’d generally eat lunch at the home of the mother unlucky enough to be closest when our stomachs started growling. We wandered from one activity to the next in gentle summer chaos.

But just as every rule has to have its exception, our neighborhood of scrape-kneed, ragamuffin girls also contained Mr. and Mrs. Dart and the five little Darts: Mary, Mindy, Mandy, Molly, and Mavis.

Most of us dressed each morning in the first clothes that came to hand, in a wild rush to get outside and fall off our bikes or crawl through the grass in search of lost Barbie shoes. The Dart girls were always immaculately turned out in pressed white cotton shirts, navy or red shorts, terribly white socks, and tennis shoes that were never anything but blazingly white. The rest of us had wild kinky hair (long before it was fashionable) or lumpy uneven braids or ponytails escaping from rubber bands. The Dart girls had short bobs with picture-perfect bangs always half an inch above their eyebrows. And while the rest of us roamed wild and free, Mrs. Dart felt her girls’ growing minds would best be developed by Summer Projects.

So every summer, on the first day of vacation, Mrs. Dart would meet with her girls to outline The Project. One summer it involved physical fitness, and a flurry of swimming, tennis, and horseback riding lessons ensued, all skillfully and cheerfully taught by the indomitable Mrs. Dart. Another summer occasioned the Household Arts Project, during which the girls learned baking, knitting, dressmaking, and how best to wield a dust rag.

Mrs. Dart always graciouisly invited us to join in, and often we eagerly began, but we never lasted long. One by one, we’d fall off the Projects wagon. Later we’d be found lying in the dust poking sticks at anthills or arguing over whose turn is was at the Monopoly game we’d started three weeks earlier. We lacked the diligence to stick to a Dart Project, but occasional bouts of boredom led us up on the Darts’ steps for progress reports, and during the Dart girls’ two free hours every afternoon, when they joined us in tag or jump rope or bike riding, they filled us in.

In my tenth year, Mrs. Dart announced the Summer of the Collections. She expounded on the delight, education, and camaraderie to be gained from joining the legions who gathered this and that. She then sent the girls to the library to decide what they would collect.

Mary, two years old than I, decided on foreign recipes. She spent her summer carefully copying curries, crepes, pilafs, and stews into a loose-leaf folder. Once a week she cooked a recipe whose ingredients weren’t impossible to come by or too objectionable to a good Lutheran family. (This particular collection must have been hard on Mr. Dart, a staunch meat-and-potatoes man. He tried. He persevered. But he drew the line at chocolate-covered bees and bull testicles in aspic.)

Mindy and Mandy, the twins one year my senior, decided on tried-and-true collections: butterflies and matchbooks. Mindy was much too kindhearted to actually kill a butterfly, so instead she made a scrapbook of pictures cut from magazines and nature pamphlets. Under each picture she entered, in a neat hand, each specimen’s common and Latin names, locale, habits, and any other tidbits she could cull. We all found her book quite impressive.

Mandy was allowed to collect matchbooks on the condition she bring them to her mother or father to have the matches removed. In those days, every bank, restaurant, gas station, and hair salon had bowls of matching sitting out. Relatives traveling to New York or Hawaii sent back exotic samples. Mandy even made friends with a local printer who saved her a matchbook from every wedding he handled.

Seven-year-old Mavis, the baby, took a short cut. The girls’ grandparents had brought back a basket of seashells from a trip to Florida. She simply looked the shells up and then glued the shells to sheets of posterboard, printing their names in bold block letters underneath. Nini Fizzarelli commented that they didn’t look real because they didn’t look wet, and Patsy McMullen suggested clear nail polish. Mavis nearly asphyxiated herself, but at the end of two days every shell was covered and did indeed look perpetually wet.

That left nine-year-old Molly. She came up with an idea which she happily hugged to herself and would not share. She had always been the perfect little Dart, following through Projects without a qualm. But this summer she begged Mrs. Dart to let her work on her project privately and surprise them all at the end of the season. When the Dart girls joined us in the afternoons, Molly refused to talk. The more we questioned, the more tight-lipped she became. It was maddening. We pretended not to care.

August came and the day approached when the girls would exhibit their completed collections. The grandparents were invited, a backyard picnic was planned, and excitement mounted in the neighborhood. We knew we’d be invited over to see the collections and to share homemade peach-vanilla ice cream. Two more weeks…nine more days…

On day minus-five it happened. I overheard my dad whispering to my mom. The Dart girls had been out with their grandparents, and Mr. Dart came home to find Mrs. Dart in a swoon on Molly and Mavis’ bedroom floor. Evidently she had finished the laundry and was putting away Molly’s white socks when she saw in the back of the drawer the nine-by-twelve inch clear plastic box Molly had requested to house her collection.

Inside the box, Mrs. Dart saw rows of cotton balls, each with a label declaring a date and body part, such as “July 3, elbow.” There was something else on each cotton ball. Molly had acquired a collection of scabs.

We found out later that she had carefully lifted off the souvenir of every bump and scrape she’d gotten over the summer and had paid Billy Barnstrom on the block behind us for several of his scabs as well. (The well-mannered Molly just didn’t bang herself up enough.)

At the picnic, Molly made an official announcement, under her mother’s stern eye, that her collection had gotten misplaced somewhere, though it seemed clear from the buzz and a couple of odd jokes made by Grandfather Dart that everyone knew all about it.

Summer came to a close and school began again. The following summer, Mrs. Dart enforced a Full Disclosure Act on all Summer Projects.

By the way, I hear Molly now lives in Washington State and is a well-respected hematologist.

Margaret Swift is a free spirit with metanoic* tendencies. She’s a writer, fiber artist, calligrapher, energy healer, meditation teacher, spiritual counselor, and ardent gardener. She likes to sip enticing drinks (tea or wine depending on the time of day) and is an insatiable knitter. To find out more about her about her work, contact her at margaret.a.swift@gmail.com

*met·a·noi·a [met-uh-noi-uh] noun: a profound, usually spiritual, transformation

Respecting A Child’s Urge To Discover

March 4, 2013 / Laura Grace Weldon / 5 Comments

theory of loose parts, kid innovators, creativity, learning is discovery, self-motivation,

misspenthopesxx.deviantart.com

The kids had a bunch of boards, some old nails, a hand saw, and a few hammers. They also had the two most important ingredients, the desire to make something and the freedom to do so.

They spent an afternoon planning their tree fort, enthusiastically arguing over whose plan was best. Their first few attempts failed spectacularly. They were undaunted, even bragged a little bit about the noise the boards made falling down. Several of them asked family members for advice. A few others paged through books and watched YouTube videos as they tried to figure out basic construction techniques. They started again, measuring more carefully as they built a frame. The process took much longer than they’d expected but they stuck with it. When they ran out of materials they scavenged tree lawns on garbage pickup day, dragging back pieces of wood. They got a few cuts and bruises. They were proud of those too. As they worked they talked about how they’d use their clubhouse. It didn’t occur to them how much they were learning.

Conventional thinking tells us that children benefit from the newest educational toys and electronics, lessons, coached sports, and other adult-designed, adult-led endeavors. Well-intentioned parents work hard to provide their children with these advantages. They do this because they believe that learning flows from instruction. By that logic the more avenues of adult-directed learning, the more their children will benefit.

But learning has much more to do with curiosity, exploration, problem solving, and innovation. For example, if baby encounters a toy she’s never seen before, she will investigate to figure out the best way or a number of different ways to use it. That is, unless an adult demonstrates how to use it. Then all those other potential avenues tend to close. Studies show that “helpful” adults providing direct instruction actually impede a child’s innate drive to creatively solve problems. This experience is repeated thousands of times a year in a child’s life, teaching her to look to authorities for solutions, and is known to shape more linear, less creative thinking. That’s true of a baby as well as older children and teens.

Young people are also cued to ignore information that is too simple or too complex. Research indicates that people are drawn to learn from situations that are “just right” for them. They may make plenty of mistakes along the way, just as babies fall when learning to walk, but facing those challenges and making those mistakes are pivotal steps in maturity.

It’s also well-known that a child’s natural motivation tends to diminish in adult-led activities. Unless they’ve been raised on a steady diet of ready-made entertainment, children are naturally drawn to free play. They pretend, make up games, daydream, wonder, and launch their own projects. They are discovering not only the world around them but a rich inner life as well.

Of course adults are vital to young people’s lives. They provide safety, guidance, love, and much more. Kids know they can ask trusted adults for help or advice. They do so more eagerly when they recognize these adults won’t overwhelm them with information, quiz them on what they are learning, or take over. Adult responses simply need to stay in proportion to a young person’s request.

For an example of how powerful the drive to discover can be, let’s take a brief detour to two Ethiopian villages. These places may be rich in intangibles like family and tradition, but they are poor in every other way. The illiteracy rate is practically 100 percent. There aren’t even written words around for children to see: no books, no labels on packaged foods, no street signs. That’s where the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project dropped off 1,000 tablet PCs with solar chargers. They weren’t handed out in a school, but to kids. The devices were pre-loaded with English-language operating systems and software that tracked how the tablets were used. The boxes were taped shut, with no instruction given at all.

In less than five minutes, one child (who’d never seen an on/off switch) powered up a system. The kids collaborated as they learned. Within a few days they were using 47 apps per child, within five months they were taking pictures. That took a while since the kids had to teach themselves to hack Android because the tablet cameras were mistakenly deactivated. The OLPC project is finding, all over the world, that kids are learning to read and speak in multiple languages. They easily search, program, and connect using inexpensive tablets. These kids are also teaching adults in their villages to read and use computers. They’re doing it without adult instruction.

So how did our fort-builders do? They had three sides framed and were working on the fourth when one boy’s father stepped in to help. His help may have been welcomed if they’d asked or if he simply contributed to the team effort, but this very well-meaning man decided the kids weren’t doing a good job. He took over, telling the kids to re-do some of their work and to build the rest of it according to his instructions. They did, but without much gusto. The resulting fort was more sturdily built yet they only used it a few times.

A year or so later they scavenged some boards from it to make a go-cart, and then another go-cart. This time they welcomed the help of another child’s grandfather who worked alongside them, learning together as the project unfolded. Their enthusiasm had returned.