What’s The Perfect Age?

December 10, 2012November 3, 2013 / Laura Grace Weldon / 6 Comments

what is the perfect age,growing older is perfect, child is not an ungrown adult, baby is not an unformed child,

(Image:littlefantasy.deviantart.com)

There must be an ideal age floating around in our collective unconscious. This is such a fixed part of our media-driven culture that it’s hard to focus on it. But let’s give it a try. Allow a number come to you as you consider the following questions.

What age do parents have in mind as they groom their kids for success?

What age do kids have in mind as they imagine growing up?

What age do older adults have in mind as they try to look and act younger?

I’m guessing it’s somewhere between 21 and 35, a time when we’re supposed to be brimming with youthful good looks and potential. Or maybe it’s not a number but just a fundamental belief that young adulthood is some sort of peak. Everything before that is preparation, everything after a slide toward old age.

Consciously or unconsciously, believing in this ideal age uses up a large part of all our other ages.

Consider how relentlessly the adult world prods children to get (or at least act) older. I know I’m somewhat guilty. I did my very best to savor the baby and toddler years but honestly, it’s hard. I found myself thinking that it would just get better after they finished teething, or could talk, or finally mastered toilet training. Even the most sainted in-the-moment parent will find him or herself bombarded with well-intended, future-oriented inquiries from others like, “Is she sleeping through the night?” and “Does he talk in sentences yet?” Such questions don’t stop as the child gets older, instead they have to do with bigger topics like academic abilities, athletic achievement, even popularity. Admiration is heaped on little ones who act much older than their developmental age, especially those children who exhibit social poise beyond their years, as if six-year-olds who act like six-year-olds are already somehow behind.

The pressure becomes more intense with each passing year. Parents often find themselves buying all sorts of educational toys and electronics, filling what could be free time with an ambitious schedule of practices and enrichment programs, and of course, pushing educational achievement. We’re told that these efforts “count” as if there’s a permanent record for eight-year-olds or 13-year-olds. There isn’t.

We’re assured that getting kids ahead in sports or hobbies will create passionate engagement, but research affirms that children build rewardingly intense interests when they are free to explore activities without adult pressure and interference

We’re led to believe that early academic accomplishment is the path to later success. Too often, that’s not true either. Success is closely linked to much more nuanced personal factors which develop quite nicely, research tells us, during free play, early participation in household tasks, conversation, and other experiences that foster self- control as well as an internal locus of control.

Pushing our children toward adulthood takes us (and them) away from seeing that each of us are whole people exactly as we are. A baby is not an unformed child, a child is not an ungrown adult, an elder is not an age-ruined version of a once younger self.

Each of us is wonderfully unique. Of course we’re flawed and often foundering. But at the same time we are also brimming with emerging possibilities. We don’t have to paddle away from the moment we live in toward some ideal age. Doing so doesn’t just wish away right now, it also condemns every other age we live in to be something less.

Truly seeing our children and our elders as complete and whole, right now, means seeing ourselves that way too.

Educating Too Early

October 3, 2012April 10, 2022 / Laura Grace Weldon / 53 Comments

My daughter started preschool a month before she turned three. She was too young. The facility was wonderful, the teachers kind, the activities entirely age-appropriate but she resisted the structure. It didn’t make sense to her that she was asked to learn color words she already knew. Or that she had to perform with her classmates at the annual holiday show after she’d already practiced the song and movement pieces well beyond her boredom tolerance. She did what she was told but she wasn’t happy.

I know why I was eager for her to start. Pregnant with her brother, I felt nauseated all the time and hoped preschool would feed her active mind. Or perhaps because she had been chronically ill nearly all of her first three years. Now she was finally better and I suspect, unconsciously, I signed her up to assure myself she was as healthy as any other little girl.

When I talked with her teachers about my child’s frustrations they emphasized how important it was to follow rules, even if she didn’t see the logic herself, because it prepared her to conform to many more rules in “real” school. That didn’t make sense to me either and we finally pulled her out of preschool.

Once she was a preschool dropout we went back to our ordinary, richly educational lives of chores and play. We played outside, hiked in the woods, made up songs, went to the library, visited friends and family, took trips to museums, snuggled, and read. She filled her free time with make-believe play as well as hours of drawing while listening to story tapes. If I had to do it over again, I’d have skipped preschool entirely. I’m not against the concept, just troubled by how much emphasis is placed on adult-led educational structure.

Take a look at promotional material for preschools in your area. Chances are they tout early math, pre-reading, and other academics. This approach sells. Most people I know sign their children up at the age of two or three to attend specialized enrichment programs that claim to boost abilities in science, art, sports, music, or language. In addition, nearly everyone I know is sure their children benefit from a few hours each day using electronics that “teach.”

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Well-intentioned parents operate on a mindset that’s hard to dismiss in today’s society. They are convinced that learning flows from instruction. Logically then, early instruction will help maximize their child’s potential. But learning in young children (and perhaps at all ages) has much more to do with curiosity, exploration, and body-based activities. It has very little to do with structured activities, which may actually impair a child’s ability to set and reach goals independently.

Studies with four-year-olds show that, “Direct instruction really can limit young children’s learning.” Direct instruction also limits a child’s creativity, problem solving, and openness to ideas beyond the situation at hand. This is true when the instruction comes from parents as well as teachers.

As Wendy S. Grolnick explains in The Psychology of Parental Control: How Well-meant Parenting Backfires, research shows that rewards, praise, and evaluative comments actually undermine motivation and stifle learning in preschoolers as well as school-aged children. This is true when those actions come from parents or teachers.

Highly instructional preschool programs have been studied for years. Although they’re more popular than ever, the outcomes don’t hold up under scrutiny.

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Researcher Rebecca Marcon evaluated children in preschool and kindergarten programs falling within three categories: play based, academically oriented, and those that combined both approaches. Her study checked up on these students as they progressed through primary school. Students who had been in early academically oriented programs gradually declined, falling behind their peers. Children who’d been in a combined approach program also showed achievement gaps. Who benefited the most? Children who’d been in play-based programs. Their academic success was greater than those in the other two types of programs and continued to gain. Marcon concluded,

Children’s later school success appears to be enhanced by more active, child-initiated learning experiences. Their long-term progress may be slowed by overly academic preschool experiences that introduce formalized learning experiences too early for most children’s developmental status. Pushing children too soon may actually backfire when children move into the later elementary school grades and are required to think more independently and take on greater responsibility for their own learning process.

Another study confirmed that future success has to do with the kinds of abilities gained through child-initiated, exploratory play. Compared to children in non-play-based preschool programs, the play-based group of children exhibited greater self-control, working memory, flexible thinking, and relational ability. These traits have more to do with academic success than testable abilities in math and reading, even more than IQ.

And when researchers in the High/Scope study followed high-risk children who attended different preschool environments they found even more resounding results. Some children were enrolled in an academic setting, others in a child-initiated play setting, and a third group in a preschool that balanced both approaches. By the middle grades, children from the play-oriented preschool were receiving the highest grades. They also showed the most social and emotional maturity. Those who had attended the academic preschool lagged behind in a significant way— poorer social skills. The differences became more apparent as these children got older. By age fifteen, students from the academic preschool program showed twice as much delinquent activity as the other two groups. And in adulthood, former students of the play preschool and balanced preschool showed higher levels of success across a whole spectrum of variables. The academic group did not attain the same level of education as the play group and required more years of treatment for emotional impairment. They also faced more felony arrests than the other two groups.

And now a resounding new study (2022) is out. It followed children across Tennessee who had attended high quality pre-K programs staffed by teachers with bachelor’s degrees as well as early childhood certification, using the best available curriculum. These children were matched with those who did not attend such a program. The academic group initially performed better than the control group at kindergarten age, but by third grade they fell behind the control group in school. They were also more likely to be disciplined and to have a diagnosed learning disorder. By sixth grade the academic group was even more likely to have a diagnosed learning disorder and were also much more likely to have exhibited violent behavior at school.

Today’s test heavy schools are burdening five-year-olds with a heavy load of academics. In 1998, 31 percent of kindergarten teachers studied believed students should learn to read in kindergarten. By 2010 that number had jumped to 80 percent. Play time, the arts, and recess had decreased in favor of worksheet and computer instruction. The study‘s co-author Daphna Bassok said, “We were surprised to see just how drastic the changes have been over a short period of time/ We expected to see changes on some of these dimensions but not nearly so systematically and not nearly of this magnitude.“

We know that free play, now so limited in the lives of most children, is actually essential for learning and character development. We also know that children learn more effectively when they’re the ones in charge of self-regulating. And we know loose parts play is far more valuable for a child’s development than adult structured activities.

My daughter mostly remembers the toy dinosaurs from preschool. I hope that pushing academics on toddlers itself becomes extinct.

Additional resources

Free To Learn by Peter Gray

“Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little to Gain, Much to Lose” summary of research by Alliance for Childhood

Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes For Strong, Confident, and Capable Children by Angela Hanscom

Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughan

Einstein Never Used Flashcards: How Our Children Really Learn–and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less by Roberta Golinkoff, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, and Diane Eyer

The Power of Play: Learning What Comes Naturally by David Elkind

Raising Aspiring Emigrants

July 3, 2012January 28, 2015 / Laura Grace Weldon / 12 Comments

Kids are their own people. Any of us can see this is an underlying theme in drama (in books, on the screen, and in real life dramas). It’s obvious from a quick look at how much our friends differ from their own parents. Years ago I joked that my anti-establishment neighbor’s son might just grow up to be a conservative stockbroker and that my frantically risk-averse friend could end up with a thrill-seeking daughter. I learned pretty quickly such jokes are not appreciated.

But I thought I understood that kids go their own way reasonably well. I’ve managed to celebrate the unique passions my own kids pursue, even though their interests are nothing like mine. I’m glad to see that we’re largely in sync on bigger issues. My kids and I tend to agree on politics and religion, we share a disinterest in most sports, and we’re all somewhat introverted. What we don’t share? A desire to stay close to our roots, geographically speaking. I’ve tried to raise them to be global citizens. Is it possible to take that too far? I’ve always lived close to my hometown and extended family. One or two of my four kids may not have that gene.

One of my sons is entranced by Finland. I think it started while chatting with online Finnish friends. Hankering to drive, he told me that kids in Finland are encouraged to get driving experience starting at a very young age and given training to handle slippery and hazardous road conditions (ice + moose, for example). The licensing requirements are some of the strictest in the world, he explained, a pointed contrast to the jerk on the road in front of us at the time who was cutting off cars and weaving across lanes.

My son also has a thing for Finnish music, starting with the now iconic band Apocalyptica formed by classically trained cellists.

Finnish musicians offer plenty of diversity, including partially submerged folk singers

and dancing puffballs.

And he is inspired by the Finnish spirit. He sees it in their traditions and history (I never thought I’d hear so much about the Winter War). Finnish character is said to have a lot to do with the term sisu. This doesn’t translate easily. It’s related to inner will and the determination to persist despite the odds. This spirit, as my son sees it, also has to do with the Finnish way of doing things. That includes summer competitions that Finns call “world championships” in swamp soccer, mobile phone throwing, and wife carrying. Or a recent proposal in Parliament to extend the annual four-week paid holiday by another week, for a “love holiday.”

Browsing around the web, I can see the allure. The country has stunning beauty and cultural richness. Newsweek ranked Finland the world’s best country in 2010 based on high life expectancy, high literacy rates, minimal income gap, excellent access to health care, and a good work-leisure balance. In The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World it was noted that people in Finland are remarkably content. Of course we’ve all heard about Finland’s world-class school system. Their educational approach says quite a bit about the country. Schools there don’t rely on standardized tests or a heavy homework load but instead emphasize balance, giving kids plenty of time for outdoor play, art, and music. That seems to reflect a general emphasis on living at a slower pace and enjoying life’s simpler pleasures. I may have to adjust to having one of my beloved offspring emigrate some day. (sob)

But another of my kids is talking up New Zealand. Land of fascinating spider species, amazing diversity, and gorgeous vistas.

Also home to the compelling Haka, traditional ancestral war cry of the Maori people, now performed by the All Blacks, NZ’s rugby team, before their matches.

Serves me right for joking about other people’s children. Come to think of it, my attempts at humor weren’t all that far off. My anti-establishment neighbor’s son is now in college getting a degree in business, hoping to work in investment banking. The daughter of my risk-averse friend is into barefoot climbing.

Guess I’d better make sure my passport is in order.

Pride Goeth Before Tiny Bite Marks

May 15, 2012November 13, 2012 / Laura Grace Weldon / 10 Comments

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Image courtesy of biohazard-101.deviantart.com

I don’t take credit for my children’s many accomplishments. They are their own remarkable people.

As a new mother I didn’t have this quite figured out. Yes, I recognized that babies arrive on this planet with all sorts of traits wired in. I knew it’s up to us to gently nurture them, shelter them from harm (including the damage cynicism can do), allow them to take on challenges, help them learn to trust themselves, and let learning unfold in delight.

But I had a few early years when I thought, probably with obnoxious smugness, that my wonderful parenting had something to do with how well my kids were turning out. They were very young and so was I.

My oldest, a boy, was thoughtful and clever. He liked to take my face between his little hands and call me every superlative he could think of (“dear, sweet, wonderful Mama). Isn’t this positively swoonable? He rescued insects from the sidewalk, telling them “go in peace little brother,” a line he picked up from one of his favorite picture books. When his father and I tried to talk over our little one’s head about issues we thought he shouldn’t hear, we used Shakespearean language to obscure our meaning. We had to stop, because our toddler began regularly using words like “doth” and “whence.” What made things work fascinated this little boy, from the bones in our bodies to the engine in our cars, and he insisted on learning about them.

My next child, a daughter, was assertive and talented. She drew, danced, and sang made-up songs of such pure wonder that, I kid you not, birds clustered in trees near her. The force of personality in that tiny girl led us all to laugh at her improbable jokes and enter into her complicated realms of make-believe. Born into a home without pets, her drive to be close to animals was so intense that she kept trying to make worms her friends. Entirely due to her persistence we ended up with several pets by the time she was three.

Although our beautiful little children had medical problems, we had money problems, and other crises kept popping up I felt as if I lived in paradise each day. There’s something remarkable about seeing the world anew through the eyes of the planet’s most recent inhabitants. It’s like using an awe-shaped lens.

But I still had plenty to learn about parenting.

I recall being quietly horrified at a Le Leche League meeting when one toddler bit another. I thought about it for days, wondering what sort of parenting resulted in such an impulsive child. All the parenting books I read, all the non-violence courses I taught assured me there was a right way. Of course my comeuppance would arrive.

My third child was born soon after. This endearing, curious, and constantly cheerful little boy possessed relentless energy. By the time he was 14 months old we had to twine rope around all the chairs, lashing them to the table between meals, otherwise this diapered chap would drag a chair across the room to climb on top of furniture in the few seconds it took me to fill a teakettle. Before he could say more than a few words he’d learned to slide open our windows, unclip the safety latches on the screens, and toss the screens to the ground. He liked to grab the hand vacuum for experiments on his sister’s hair, houseplants, and other normally non-suckable items. He watched with fascination as drips from his sippy cup fell into heat vents, the hamster cage, the pile of laundry I was folding. We had no idea he could climb out of his crib till the evening he opened all the wrapped Christmas presents I had hidden in my room (keeping them safe from him) while we thought he was in bed. The look of complete joy on his face nearly made up for the hours of work it took me to rewrap. I found myself making up new rules I never thought I’d utter, like:

“Don’t poop in Daddy’s hat.”

“We never run with straws up our noses.”

He became a little more civilized by the time he was three, but not, as you might imagine, before he bit a few children.

Utterly besotted by the bright-eyed charm and endless curiosity of this dear little boy, I never suspected the labels doctors and schools so easily affix on non-conformist kids might be slapped on my child. I never realized how much he would teach me about what real motivation and learning look like. And I never imagined how much he’d show me about what it means to pursue success on one’s own terms.

Today he is one accomplished young man, in part because he continues to see the world through an awe-shaped lens. And I am still learning from the remarkable people who came to this world as my children.

The Boy With No Toys

February 20, 2012July 7, 2024 / Laura Grace Weldon / 79 Comments

why toys are bad for kids, overstimulated kids,

Before he was born, his mother decided her son would have no toys. Abandoned by the father, she was already a single parent. She made a living cleaning for other people. Most days she took the bus to affluent streets where children never seemed to play outside. As she vacuumed and scrubbed beautiful homes overfilled with possessions she paid close attention to what children did all day. Often they were gone at lessons, after school programs, or playdates. When they were home they usually sat staring at screens. Toys in their carefully decorated rooms appeared to be tossed around as if the small owners had no idea how to play, only how to root restlessly for entertainment.

She thought about it, talked to the oldest people she knew, and read everything she could. Then she informed anyone who cared to listen that her child would not have toys. Not a single purchased plaything.

Will (name changed) and his mother live in a small mobile home park. By most standards they are poor. Their income is well below the poverty line. They don’t have a TV or computer (although Will uses the computer at the library and watches the occasional TV program at babysitters’ homes). But their lives are rich in what matters. Together Will and his mom grow food on several shares of a community garden, bartering when they have extra produce. They make all their meals from scratch. These routines activate a whole array of learning opportunities for Will, quite naturally.

They are close to most of their neighbors in proximity as well as in friendliness. While his mother is working Will is cared for by several different seniors in their trailer park. He not only likes to help his mother garden, cook, and take care of their small home but he also likes to take part in helping his neighbors with small tasks. He carries groceries for certain ladies, helps an older gentleman with a birdhouse building hobby, and sometimes gets to assist another neighbor in automotive repairs. He gets a lot out of these meaningful tasks. Children long to take on real responsibility and make useful contributions. Giving them these opportunities promotes their development in important ways.

Sounds nice. But what about play?

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When Will was a baby his mother made all sorts of toys. Most took no time at all. Food containers became stacking toys, a small water bottle with beans inside became a rattle, a sock stuffed with drier fuzz and tied in knots became a soft animal.

Will is now six years old. He plays as any child naturally does. He makes up games and turns all sorts of objects into toys. His mother saves money by not owning a car, so Will has commandeered a large portion of the shed that would normally be used as a garage. Mostly he uses it to stockpile his own resources. He has scrap wood, a few tools, and cans of nails. He likes to straighten bent nails for future projects, working carefully now that he recently discovered what smacking his fingers with a hammer feels like. Recently he found a discarded lawn mower tire, so he’s looking for three more tires to make a go-cart. In the evenings he likes to draw elaborate pictures of this upcoming project. He particularly enjoys playing in the soft dirt along the side of the shed where “robot men” he makes out of kitchen utensils use their potato peeler and wisk limbs to churn through the soil, leaving tracks as they clink. When he visits friends he happily plays with their toys, although he doesn’t always “get” that certain TV or movie-themed toys are limited to the plot-related storylines. So far he seems to have no urge to possess the same toys.

What about birthdays and holidays? Will’s mother does give him gifts. But she limits her gifts to useful items—crayons, clothes, tools, a compass. Each weekend her folk band practices at their mobile home. Will quickly mastered the harmonica and begged for time on the fiddle, so her big gift to him this year was a used child-sized fiddle. She urges the other adults in his life to gift him with experiences—a trip to the beach, a day of horseback riding, a visit to a museum. Out-of-town relatives now renew a children’s magazine subscription and send him regular snail mail letters, both of which are helping him learn to read with very little prompting.

Will’s childhood has a lot in common with the way children have learned and grown throughout history. As historian Howard Chudacoff notes in Children at Play: An American History, play is vital to development. It’s has everything to do with autonomy, exploration, imagination, and fun. It has very little to do with purchased playthings. In fact, structured programs and commercial toys actually tend to co-opt play.

Studies with rodents show those raised in enriched environments (toys and changing items in cage) have enhanced brain development compared to rats raised in a standard environment (plain cage, unchanging). We’ve misinterpreted these results. Rats don’t naturally live in boring, unchanging cages. They live in nature, which is by definition a challenging often constantly changing environment. In nature rats have far more complex lives than they ever might in a cage. Such an interesting life IS an enriched environment. It’s the same for children.

Sure there are devices that will “read” to a child. These are not more enriching than being read to by a responsive adult. And there are all sorts of adult-designed games. They’re not more fun or enticing than games kids make up on their own or with friends.

In fact, the overstimulation of blinking, beeping, passive entertainment isn’t beneficial for children. Joseph Chilton Pearce wrote in Evolution’s End: Claiming the Potential of Our Intelligence that the overload of television, electronics, and too many toys limits a child’s sensory awareness. Their brains and nervous systems accommodate intense bursts of sound, light, and color during their earliest years. Rather than developing the subtle awareness fostered by time spent in nature, in conversation, and in play they instead are wired to expect overstimulation. Without it, says Peace, they’re bored.

And yet, so many people are amused when tiny children are clearly pushed to the limits by a toy too overwhelming for them. (Every search for a video to illustrate this seems to think “baby scared by toy” is funny.)

The children Will’s mother cleans for, who are kept busy in adult-run programs and have access to electronic distractions, don’t have Will’s advantages. As he plays and innovates he’s actually promoting the kind of learning that translates to a lifetime of passionate interests. Studies show that children who are free to explore their interests without adult pressure and interference are more autonomous, eagerly pursuing excellence through healthy engagement rather than heavy-handed adult pressure.

Ask the oldest person you know to share some memories about play from his or her childhood. Chances are you’ll hear about pick-up games, handmade toys, and free time that spun long summer days into marvels of imagination. That’s what Will’s mother wants for her child.

play develops intelligence, benefits of free play, deprive your kids of toys, handmade toys,

First published in Natural Life Magazine.

Let The Youngest Teach You Mindfulness

December 6, 2011February 2, 2014 / Laura Grace Weldon / 10 Comments

child-paced, slow down, slow to appreciate,

Image from jesse.millan’s Flickr photostream

Ask any child. When adults meet them for the first time, standard questions include, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” right after classics like, “What grade are you in?” and “What’s your favorite subject?”

Such questions, unintentionally, gauge a child’s progress toward adulthood. That’s because adults tend to be future oriented. We’re distracted from the present moment by the need to plan and work toward any number of goals—what to do about dinner, how to juggle next week’s schedule, when bills can be paid. These distractions take our attention away from what is in the here and now. When we think ahead so often we have less time to notice, let alone appreciate, what makes up our lives minute by minute.

What is impatience except denying the value of the present moment? The watercolor effect of rain on the window, the meandering quality of a child’s conversation, the long wait for a pot to boil—these can be occasions to experience impatience or opportunities to breathe deeply and be present, gratefully.

Leaning so often toward the future unconsciously demonstrates to our children that later is more important than now. Yet as we know, later never comes. As long as we’re alive there’s always “later” to strive toward. Worse, we are surrounded by advertiser-driven messages telling us that we aren’t there yet, that we need to do more or become something more in order to have friends, be successful, find love.

The nature of early childhood is the perfect antidote to this hurry-up attitude. That is, if adults truly pay attention to the lessons the youngest model for us. Young children who are not yet pulled by the adult world’s messages are oriented to the present moment. When forced to disregard what is vital to their bodies and spirits—pretending, daydreaming, playing, snuggling—they rebel. They are who they are, where they are. They’re not caught up in the future tense which dimishes the here and now. They demonstrate the oldest way of knowing.

Pay close attention to the youngest children in your life. Let them help you learn solutions to our cultural overdrive.

As we slow down we have time to truly know each other and to truly know ourselves. We’re more aware of the messages our bodies send us and can act on those signals before they become symptoms. We have time to reflect. Time to remember our dreams when we awaken. After all, time is the only true wealth we have to spend.

slowing down, slow movement, child-pace, mindfulness, mindful living, mindful parenting,

Image from kla!’s Flicrk photostream

Relentless Optimist Interview

November 16, 2011 / Laura Grace Weldon / Leave a comment

Image: no1believes-me.deviantart.com

I have the honor of an interview this week on JustPacifism. I talk a bit about my Busy Addiction, who my mentor has been, and how we can make a more peaceful world. Pop over for a read.

Mentor: Fancy Name For Grown-Ups Kids Need

November 9, 2011November 2, 2012 / Laura Grace Weldon / 19 Comments

mentor, role model, adult pals for kids, children in the neighborhood, real work for kids,

image courtesy of LisaW123’s Flickr photostream

The little boy just wanted to “do stuff.”

His parents let him traipse around with his wagon on garbage collection day. He’d take home pieces of wood, carefully pulling out nails to store in a can, so he and his friends would have the necessary materials to build forts or go-carts. Occasionally he found small engines that he’d do his best to fix. No one intervened to tell him his pursuits weren’t safe, although he was expected to clean up any mess as well help around the house.

His neighbors didn’t mind having this kid appear whenever they did something interesting—fix a car, build a shed, tend a greenhouse full of plants, run a garage sale. He was eager to learn and even more eager to help, so they did what adults have done throughout time. They shooed him away occasionally but mostly they shared what they knew.

He made use of what he learned. By the time he was 12 or 13 years old, these neighbors let him take on their home and car repairs, recognizing he was able to do a more exacting job than they might have done themselves. He gained more than skills from the adults in his life. He may have been leaning over a car hood with Clyde, but he was also learning how to understand the function of each system by paying attention. It seemed he was only helping Mr. Christman with the heavy tasks of operated a greenhouse but he was also taking in something important about growing old with dignity. It appeared he was working alongside his grandfather but he was also seeing how reputation, honesty, and treating each person with respect builds a small business.

Because he developed richly rewarding relationships with people of all ages, relatives as well as neighbors, he had plenty of examples to draw on as he matured. He saw how different people handled decisions, disciplined their children, laughed off trouble, solved problems, stayed in love.

His experience was rare. It’s becoming rarer all the time.

Throughout nearly all of their childhood and teen years our kids are segregated in day care, school, sports, and other activities. Even when they benefit from the very best programs, if they’re restricted to the company of same-aged peers doing what adults consider educational and enriching they are deprived of the riches found through fully engaging in the wider world. This subverts the way youth have matured throughout human history, when children learned right in the context of family and community—freely able to watch, imitate, and foster relationships with people of all ages.

We put kids in an oddly uncomfortable position when most adults in their lives are focused on them. Children want to center themselves, not have adult attention centered on them. Kids long to model themselves after adults who are engaged in meaningful, interesting, and useful activities of their own. When their experience of adults is limited to those who are there to care for, educate, or entertain children (important callings but not all that adults can do) the dynamic is shifted. The age-old desire to gain mastery and take on responsibility, eagerly becoming a capable adult, doesn’t have the same pull.

There are plenty of educational initiatives to bridge this gap, particularly for teens. These programs connect students with mentors or bring community members into schools to talk about their careers. While these efforts are admirable, such stopgap measures aren’t the way young people learn best. They need to spend appreciable time with people of all ages—observing, conversing and taking on responsibility. Real responsibilities, real relationships.

How can we remedy this?

Re-engage kids in the community.
Foster strong extended family relationships.
Respect and support the ways young people find their own mentors.
Encourage potentially rich connections that can be made online and in the work-a-day world.
Recognize that each person gathers what they need from interactions with others.

That little boy? He grew up to be a remarkably capable, beautifully open-hearted, and endlessly positive person. I married him.

Fun Theory

October 20, 2011October 18, 2024 / Laura Grace Weldon / 6 Comments

I’m not aware of any official Fun Theory in the field of learning. But fun shimmers under the surface of motivation and focus like a very big fish. And the fish named Fun shouldn’t be ignored.

I lifted the term Fun Theory from an old Volkswagen campaign. One of their videos shows busy commuters choosing an escalator instead of a staircase. People are rarely motivated to do otherwise. But when the same stairs were transformed into a giant electronic piano sixty-six percent more people chose to hop, dance and run up those musical steps. Fun works. (It also sends the Volkswagen logo around the world in a great example of viral marketing.)

It’s no surprise that pleasure is motivating, although what one person finds enjoyable may not be remotely engaging for the next person.

That’s the key. Fun is highly individual. It can’t be easily pre-packaged, even though promoters of textbooks, curricula, and enrichment programs assert their products do just that.

You can tell when educational materials and experiences don’t engage the young people in your life. They exhibit, shall we say, obvious symptoms. I won’t list them here. These symptoms tend to cause us all kinds of angst.

A child’s stubborn insistence that learning be meaningful and interesting is actually a sign of positive selfhood. We need to pay close attention to each child to really see what sparks enthusiasm, evokes awe, sharpens focus, builds on interests, and challenges abilities. That’s what advances learning.

The elements that make an activity or interest compelling for any one person can’t be neatly summed up, nor should they. A person is too complex to reduce to a List of Handy Motivators. But you might want to consider such factors if you’d like to understand why your child prefers to do things his or her way, or why some enriching activities “work” and others don’t. Below you’ll find brief notes about some of the factors that make learning intrinsically pleasurable and interesting. Think of your child as you read over the list. Think of yourself too. You’ll recognize many unique ways that lively, engaged learning happens quite naturally.

Trial and Error

Learning is fun when errors don’t feel like failures. Watch a group of friends figure out what tools and design elements they’ll use to make bracelets from a cast-off metal objects. Their initial results will likely be both positive and negative. Their mistakes will help to guide and refine their progress. Thomas Edison said of trial and error, “Results! Why man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.”

When your child is building a fort out of branches she may experiment with several approaches. This open-ended process allows her to repeat successes and learn from errors, getting ever closer to the desired result. Trial and error often pulls the learner forward to greater mastery. It’s also tremendously enjoyable.

Meaning

Full engagement in any pursuit that is meaningful to the individual may not sound like a prescription for fun. But it is, because it tends to lead to what is called flow: a sense of focusing so fully that we lose sense of time, discomfort, even self.

Artists and athletes aren’t the only ones who experience flow, children easily merge into this state. A child may experience flow while engaging in make-believe, drawing, swinging on a backyard swing, playing the guitar, fixing a bicycle, even organizing a shelf.

You may not be able to predict what has meaning for your child, but chances are it fuels learning. Your daughter’s fascination with horses may lead her to equine-related mathematics, history and science. Her learning is enlivened with wonder and purpose. That absorption is also fun.

Discovery/Exploration

Discovery is highly motivating and feels quite a bit like fun. It lures babies to put everything into their mouths. It propels us to try new music, peer around forbidden corners, travel to distant places.

When a friend brings up an obscure bit of information, your preteen may check it out later only to find an unexpectedly engaging exploration through subjects that never interested her before. Or perhaps your son’s curiosity is piqued by a new venture he wants to try like making homemade cheese. The project opens up to ever wider explorations such as homesteading skills, the claims of raw milk advocates, and recipes using artisan cheeses. For most of us independent discovery has the greatest allure.

Novelty

What is new and unexpected heightens attention and activates all kinds of interest. That’s why marketers are constantly coming out with newer versions of the same thing. Novelty leads readily to exploration or play. By itself, novelty wears off quickly. (Those commuters will tire of the musical stairs and probably go back to using the escalator.)

You can rely on something new to stimulate interest. Just remember that too much reliance on novelty doesn’t help children build their own deeper resources of attention and interest.

Play

Play isn’t “just” for fun. It’s an essential component of learning. Stuart Brown, author of Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul said in an interview, “…evidence continues to accumulate that the learning of emotional control, social competency, personal resiliency and continuing curiosity plus other life benefits accrue largely through rich developmentally appropriate play experiences.” Unstructured free play is particularly important. We already know it’s fun.

Direct Experience

Hands-on efforts make learning come alive with pleasure and satisfaction. Frank R. Wilson notes in The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture that brain and hand use have always been connected. When a young child is put in charge of preparing vegetables for a stir fry dinner his efforts may not be entirely helpful, but the sensory experience of washing, chopping, and tasting offer him much more than growing competence in meal preparation. The sensory experiences enhance comprehension and lock in learning. When a child expresses interest in puppetry she may want the opportunity to make puppets, stage puppet shows, and go to puppet guild meetings. The more fully involved a child can be the more direct (and lasting) his or her learning will be.

Challenge

Challenges are fun as well as educational because they keep us right at the edge of our competence, pushing us on to the next level (exactly why video games are so compelling). A ten-year-old may enjoy the logical challenge of debating his older brother, the practical difficulties of planning and filming his own scary movie, the physical and social risks of showing off at the skating rink. These self-selected activities push him to advance a whole range of abilities. Challenges keep us too absorbed to grin but for our own good reasons.

There are plenty of other “fun in learning” factors such as relationship development, collaboration, sensory pleasure—surely you can think of more. All these elements are intertwined so completely that they only make sense when we see them as connected.

I think that’s why we need to pay attention to what’s fun about learning. Yes it’s different for each person. But what’s universal is that each of us is capable of fascination, excitement, and wonder. Why fish around for methods to motivate and sustain a child’s attention when joy is right there, showing us the way?

Portions of this post excerpted from Free Range Learning.

Healing The Next Generation

September 7, 2011 / Laura Grace Weldon / 3 Comments

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Image courtesy of corazondedios.deviantart.com

The science of epigenetics shows that the choices we make today will resonate in the minds and bodies of our grandchildren.

How? Each of us has biochemical markers that signal our genes in response to input such as nutrients, toxins, even behavior. As a result potential gene expression is switched on or off.

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Nucleosome Wikipedia

These epigenetic changes persist well after the original stimulus for change is gone. Some of them pass on through generations like biologic memories of what our ancestors ate and breathed, as well has how they felt about their experiences. This also means that our personal choices today can become a living inheritance sent on to those we won’t live to see.

As Duke University genetics researcher Randy Jirtle, Ph. D recently commented,

We can no longer argue whether genes or environment has a greater impact on our health and development, because both are inextricably linked. Each nutrient, each interaction, each experience can manifest itself through biochemical changes that ultimately dictate gene expression, whether at birth or 40 years down the road.

Image courtesy of corazondedios.deviantart.com

Much of the research about epigenetics correlates to earlier studies showing that parental stress has a negative and long-lasting effect on their children, often well into adulthood. That’s true of the effect of prenatal stress, parental stress during early childhood, parental depression, conflict in the home, unemployment, poverty, and homelessness. Epigenetics may, in part, explain the strong correlation between these stressors and resulting poor mental and physical health in the next generation.

But there’s good news too. Studies have shown that early nurturance can flip “dimmer switches” on genes related to stress, permanently shaping offspring to be calmer and better able to handle new situations. Healthier too.

Chances are good that I was born with genes predisposing me to anxiety or depression. My sorrowful grandmother nurtured my own mother as best she could despite very stressful circumstances. In turn, I was lovingly nurtured and well attached to my parents. As a result, these predispositions were more likely to be dimmed or switched off in me. I hope to carry on this legacy of positive epigenetic changes by gently parenting my children. Epigenetics show us that grandparents and parents can bless children to come (including foster children and adopted children) even if they don’t live to see those children.

As a society, we’ve known for a long time that serious parental stress leaves a legacy of pain into the next generation. Maybe the science of epigenetics will be enough to convince us that parental support and nurturance doesn’t just benefit the child. It also benefits society as a whole.