Letters And Numbers Everywhere

Even before a child has spent a second in our classroom, their parents have heard me at least twice warn them, "We do not push letters or numbers at Woodland Park." In fact, I usually emphatically say that I will not intentionally bring letters or numbers into the classroom unless the children themselves compel me to it.

Of course, my point is that we make no overt efforts to teach them to read, or even identify their letters or numbers for that matter, we'll let their kindergarten teachers deal with that, but it's an impossible promise to keep. For one thing, most of the 2-year-olds come in already knowing that ubiquitous A-B-C song and they obsessively count everything, so there's that.

But making it even more difficult to keep my word is our school's commitment to reusing and recycling. Those darn things all have letters and numbers on them and the kids are forever pointing them out, saying things like, "That's my letter! G!" or "That's the number 2!" Arg! What do I look like, your kindergarten teacher?

If you look carefully, and children do, you'll see letters and numbers everywhere. The kids even ask me sometimes what the words mean as if they're somehow driven to figure out the strange symbolic codes of their fellow human beings.

Naturally, I blame society for its obsession with labeling everything, printing Diet Coke . . . or Miracle-Gro . . . 

. . . or Brown Cow . . . 

. . . or whatever on our upcycled "toys."

Heck, the parents even label their kids with words and numbers.

I suppose I could deal with it if the world would limit itself to these external labels, but really, shouldn't the insides of machines be safe havens? You might have to look closely, but they've managed to sneak a 4-9-5 in there, thinking the kids wouldn't notice. Shame on them!

You would think that gardens, at least, would be a place to escape these words and numbers, but no.

They even sneak words onto the garden spades!

I often come across articles about how to make a preschool classroom into a "literacy rich environment." Where are the articles about how to banish literacy? That's what I'd like to know. Every time I turn around, there they are, letters and numbers and words all chock-a-block with meaning.

And kids interacting with them, fiddling around, unlocking their secret abstract meanings in the course of their play.

I want to do it the pedagogically correct way as a preschool teacher, leaving these things out of the classroom until the kids are developmentally ready for them, but it's too many and too much for me. The minimum they could do is avoid putting letters and numbers on things that children find exciting or interesting.

Believe me, the undersides of these vintage Matchbox cars are riddled with

vital information about their makes and models that kids 

are always trying to decipher -- truly aggravating!

Yeah sure, sometimes we need to use a few letters for things like documenting our classroom rules . . .

. . . or recording thoughts for posterity . . .

And, yes, newspaper with all its thousands of tiny words and numbers really is the best, least expensive paper mache material.

And the burlap from discarded coffee bags is useful in all kinds of contexts.

All of these things, naturally, kind of throw letters and numbers into the faces of the kids, but I'm hoping these types of utilitarian accidents of literacy education are more than compensated for by my rigorous efforts on other fronts, although I despair.

They appear like magic.

They hide and turn themselves upside down.

They manage to inject themselves onto those fragile brains from every angle and during every moment of the day. Printed, typeset, handwritten, uppercase, lowercase, they're all there all the time.

I do my best to make our school a letter and number-free zone, but I'm just one man.

Why can't they just stay in books where they belong?

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Still Hiding In The Bushes

Jen over at A Path Less Taken recently posted an excellent piece about her experiences as the parent of teenagers. It reminded me of this post from a year or so ago. A year is a long time in the life of a teenager, but I'm happy to report I stand by every word. When people ask me, I still honestly answer, "I love being the parent of a teenager." I have so much more to say about our experiences together, but in the interest of privacy and respect, I won't publish most of it until she's much older. She has previously approved this piece, however, so I feel comfortable in running it again. 

This is a blog mostly about preschool aged children, but being the parent of a teenager, I'm here to tell you, as unlikely as it might sound to those of you with the younger kids, that's where they're all headed, god willing.

When my daughter Josephine was in sixth grade, she and a friend wanted to go to a dance, at night, in an all-ages venue. This wasn't the usual chaperoned school event, although I'd heard of the organization hosting it and knew nothing bad about it. On the other hand, I'd often walked by the place and been slightly taken aback by the scruffy looking teens hanging out there, although it was purely a reaction to their dress and hair, not behavior. I'd spoken with her friend's father so I knew we were all on board with the plan of us each driving, and our kids meeting up there. As we got close to the venue, Josephine asked, "You're not going to walk me to the door are you?"

"Well, how will I know you've hooked up with your friend?"

"We're meeting right out by the street. You'll see us."

"Okay."

"Thank you. Mama would walk me to the door. She'd probably try to come inside."

"Really? She would do that? I wouldn't do that."

She paused for a moment, then said, "No, you'd just pretend to leave me, then hide in the bushes." And sure enough, she was more or less onto my plan, which was to drop her off, park the car nearby, then spend my evening within a 2-block radius eating dinner and window shopping. It bugged her, but at the same time I think she also felt a little relieved to know that I'd be nearby, just in case. It's not that I distrusted her, I told myself, but rather that I didn't trust those other kids and what they might all do together. I often look back on that as my first real experience as the parent of a teen.

Probably the most common response I get from new acquaintances when I mention my teenager is something along the lines of, "That must be stressful," or "A challenging age," or just, "Good luck." It's a sort of culture-wide joke we tell about teens, one we all have the right to tell because not so long ago (or so it seems), we were all dopey, mopey, distracted teens ourselves. That this characterization doesn't match my experience as a parent so far, however, has started to really make me wonder over what we think about adolescents.

I genuinely love being the parent of a teen. I like her teen friends. I don't mind her messy room, her clothes, her hair, or even the fact that she seems to spend all her free time trying to expand her social world. In fact, I admire her persistence and energy, wishing I had a little more of it myself. Other parents bemoan the fact that all their kids want to do is "hang out," even forbidding it, worried that it's just a set-up for getting into trouble, and it is. But I think I understand it: after 15 years of being relentlessly on her parents' radar, being off it, just hanging out with friends out in the world, is enough of a unique experience all by itself.

And while I'll never come to peace with some of the "stupid" risks she's taken, and will likely take in the future, there's also a piece of me that knows, deep down, that she's going to do whatever it is she wants to do, try whatever it is she's wants to try, and the only say I really have is to give her my best, most honest advice, and love her. Indeed this is the bottom line truth for every parent, so if I'm going to do that job, I need to do everything I can to keep those lines of communication wide open, to not be overly shocked or punitive or despairing, but rather to have conversations about the real risks and rewards. I sometimes feel the pull toward putting the hammer down the way other parents do, to just say, "Because I say so." The world of drinking, drugs, sex, and driving, after all, has laid waste to so many young lives, but authoritarian parenting is far more likely to lead to the chaotic, chronic behaviors we label as delinquent. So while I attempt to walk the middle ground, when I err, it's on the side of permissiveness, starting with a desire to say "yes," if only she gives me time to think about it; time for us to talk about it; time for me to find a good hiding place in the bushes.

Sometimes after our talks, she decides to not take the risk after all. More often she goes ahead then later tells stories of being there with all her friends whose parents put their foot down in righteous opposition and now have no idea where their child was and what she was doing. The kids are all there taking the same "risk," but at least I know where mine is, equipped with my best advice, whether she takes it or not. 

I recently came across a fascinating article in National Geographic entitled Teenage Brains, in which author David Dobbs discusses teenaged brain development (which goes on into our early to mid-20's) in the context of evolution.

The resulting account of the adolescent brain . . . casts the teen less as a rough draft than as an exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creature wired almost perfectly for the job of moving from the safety of home into the complicated world outside.

These are the years when their brains and bodies are making the final preparations to leave the nest, to head out into that thrilling, dangerous world, and whatever we feel about it as parents, it is their destiny. As neuroscientist B.J. Casey puts it:

We're so used to seeing adolescence as a problem. But the more we learn about what really makes this period unique, the more adolescence starts to seem like a highly functional, even adaptive period. It's exactly what you'd need to do the things you have to do then.

I'll let you click over and read the entire article about the biology behind why adolescents take risks, seek novelty, and bond so passionately with their peers. It's all adaptive behavior even if we sometimes view it as quite the opposite. I walked away with a renewed admiration for the teenaged brain, but this is the part that stood out for me:

We parents, of course, often stumble too, as we try to walk the blurry line between helping and hindering our kids as they adapt to adulthood. The United States spends about a billion dollars a year on programs to counsel adolescents on violence, gangs, suicide, sex, substance abuse, and other potential pitfalls. Few of them work.

Yet we can and do help. We can ward off some of the world's worst hazards and nudge adolescents toward appropriate responses to the rest. Studies show that when parents engage and guide their teens with a light but steady hand, staying connected but allowing independence, their kids generally do much better in life. Adolescents want to learn primarily, but not entirely, from their friends. At some level and at some times (and it's the parent's job to spot when), the teen recognizes that the parent can offer certain kernels of wisdom -- knowledge valued not because it comes from parental authority but because it comes from the parent's own struggles to learn how the world turns. The teen rightly perceives that she must understand not just her parents' world but also the one she is entering. Yet if allowed to, she can appreciate that her parents once faced the same problems and may remember a few things worth knowing.

In the meantime, you'll find me hiding in the bushes.

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

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An Imperative Force

We build at least one new volcano every year at Woodland Park. Our current one is purple with sparkles. Periodically, to great fanfare, we fill it with baking soda, dish soap, liquid water color, and vinegar to create a sudsy eruption. The kids like it, but after a couple rounds the hew and cry goes up to "Put a cork in it!" By that they mean for me to empty the "lava chamber," pare the ingredients down to just baking soda and vinegar, then as quickly as I can, shove a cork into the top, sealing the chemical reaction inside.

We then move off to an exaggeratedly "safe" distance . . . waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting. We try counting down from 20. We try chanting for it to blow. A few kids risk running right up to it, then racing away. We almost give up. Then suddenly, Boom! the cork blasts into the air. On good days we've had corks go a good 25 feet.

That's how things under pressure work: you stuff a cork in them and eventually the cork will be, sooner or later, ejected. If you jam the cork in too tightly then you get a blowout somewhere else. We once put a ghastly split the side of a 2-liter soda bottle that way.

My point is that an imperative force will always vent itself.

That's how play is: an imperative force. It will happen whether we damn well permit it or not, Boom! If I keep the kids sitting around at circle time too long, for instance, things first start to fizz with a little shifting about, then side conversations or accidentally-on-purpose tormenting the kid next to you with your restless foot, if I keep pushing forward without letting them vent their built up instinct to play it will lead to a full-on rebellion. The kids will play. I might be able to keep the cork in it for awhile, but the children will eventually erupt.

This is true of play on a day to day basis and it's true over the long haul, where, perhaps a better metaphor is the slow motion imperative force of, say, the dammed and levied water of the Mississippi River which will, no matter how clever our engineers, repeatedly, then eventually, wash away the place known as New Orleans because it's been built exactly where the water wants to go. It might not happen in our lifetime or even our children's lifetime, but one day the river will win.

Recently, a reader sent me a link to this Psychology Today article, which I'd read a few years ago, but re-read yesterday, noting that it had been reviewed and updated earlier this year. It's a good, long piece that quotes many child development experts on the pitfalls (depression, anxiety, stress, dependency) of what we've come to call "helicopter parenting." If you've not read it, I recommend taking a look: it's not good for kids to be over-managed and over-protected by mom and dad, mainly because it robs children of play, and specifically the part where they get hurt while taking the risks inherent in play (physical, emotional, and social), which is a natural part of the way we learn many of life's most important lessons about self-regulation, confidence, motivation, hard work, dealing with stress, and getting along with others.

The part that leapt out at me upon this read-through of the article, however, was this:

The end result of cheating childhood is to extend it forever. Despite all the parental pressure, and probably because of it, kids are pushing back -- in their own way. They're taking longer to grow up. Adulthood no longer begins when adolescence ends, according to a recent report by University of Pennsylvania sociologist Frank F. Furstenberg and colleagues. There is, instead, a growing no-man's-land of postadolescence from 20 to 30, which they dub "early adulthood." Those in it look like adults but "haven't become fully adult yet -- traditionally defined as finishing school, landing a job with benefits, marrying and parenting -- because they are not ready or perhaps not permitted to do so" . . . Using the classic benchmarks of adulthood, 65 percent of males had reached adulthood by the age of 30 in 1960. By contrast, in 2000, only 31 percent had. Among women, 77 percent met the benchmarks of adulthood by age 30 in 1960. By 2000, the number had fallen to 46 percent . . . Take away play from the front end of development and it finds a way onto the back end. A steady march of success through regimented childhood arranged and monitored by parents creates young adults who need time to explore themselves. "They often need a period of college or afterward to legitimately experiment -- to be children."

The article doesn't say this, but I will: if you think the risk-taking involved in early childhood is harrowing, the "play" in which most post-adolescents tend to engage is often downright life-threatening, involving drinking, drugs, guns, sex, and, of course, cars. This is how play too often looks when it winds up on the "back end." I don't think it's unfair to assert that play -- real play -- in early childhood is a kind of vaccination against many of those dangers we have come to associate with the mutation of post-adolescence.

Play is an imperative force. It's not healthy to put a cork in it. It's not healthy to dam it up. In fact, it is ultimately impossible to do so. The volcano will erupt and the river will flow. It's up to those of us who work with young children to provide plenty of room to engage in freely-chosen, self-directed, open-ended play so that they can learn the important things they need and want to learn today when those lessons are more naturally, easily, and indeed, more safely learned.

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

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