Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

When you burn your bridges and decide not to look back, new vistas of possibility open up. All your attention is focused on forward movement and finding ways to make things happen. Retreat isn’t on your radar. Only then do things start happening; the universe suddenly seems to join your team.

What are you committed to? Are you really committed to it?

My 3-year-old son Lucas has a favorite book that we read almost every night: The Very Bumpy Bus Ride. He also likes it when Sammy (9) reads it to him. But one night—I can’t remember how this started—we started being silly about how we read the words. Oh yes, I remember that, after Sammy had read it to him for several nights, when I came back, he thought it was funny how I said “Mrs. Fitzwizzle.” All I had to do was say that once and he would crack up. So I tried saying it several times in a row, and he cracked up even more. I can still get him to laugh, just by saying that name.

From there we started messing with the other words. Doing baby talk or talking like a ventriloquist or flipping the sounds around, as in “The Bery Vumpy Rus Bide.” (This spoonerism approach in particular cracks Sammy up.) Now Lucas contributes to the word massacre by mixing his sounds around and being silly about it. He practically has the whole book memorized, so he’s getting pretty good at saying the sentences while flipping the sounds around, saying nonsense words that rhyme with the originals.

In the past, I might have had some concerns about this game, fearing that he’s learning the words the wrong way. But now I laugh at the thought. He clearly knows the words, and adding this layer of processing complexity (starting with the original and coming up with a non-sensical rhyming word) does two positive things, as far as I can tell. It reinforces his knowledge of the words by engaging with them in new ways. And it makes him want to continue by keeping things fresh and fun.

Another thing I like about reading the same book over and over again is that kids start making some pretty astute observations. I imagine that the earliest tendency of most kids, when being read to, is to associate the words they hear with the pictures they see. The letter symbols, to them, are just extra clutter on the page. This was also evident with Lucas when he would ask me to “read” particular things he saw in the picture. And I’d tell him, “It doesn’t say anything about that. The only words are these ones down here.” Once he started to realize that, he made the observation. “Daddy, isn’t it funny that on the big-picture pages, there aren’t very many words, but there are lots of words on the small-picture pages?” That’s when I taught him how to spell “counter-intuitive.”

If you want to hear more stories about the diverse ways in which kids engage words and eventually learn to read, I highly recommend Peter Gray’s recent article about this topic: “Children Teach Themselves to Read” .

Yesterday was another beautiful day. I went on a run and stopped by at our beach to enjoy the sun. After I got back, it was PlayTime with Morgan again. She said she wanted to go to the beach again, but she ended up getting upset about not finding the clothes that she wanted to wear. When it became clear that she wasn’t going to budge, I suggested that we just do a regular PlayTime at home. But no, she still wanted to go to the beach. I asked her to “climb out of your hole”—a phrase that my wife recently started using with me when I’m in a bad mood, but that didn’t help either.

Then I noticed her American Girl doll and said, “Shall we play with dolls at home instead?” And just like that, she jumped up and said, “Okay!” and we were off. It turns out that Samantha and Kit are actually long lost sisters, with amnesiac parents named Paul and Polly, both of whom faint a lot. Also, Samantha loves horses but has never had one of her own. Imagine how excited I was—I mean she was—when she got a new horse for her birthday. Polly taught her all about how to groom the horse, brush its hair, curl its mane and tail, and even fix up a broken leg. Polly knows her stuff; she could barely get it all out when talking a mile-a-minute. The rocking horse still has its paper cast on this morning, but it should be able to come off soon.

That’s why I like PlayTime. Even in the face of a near melt-down, playing dolls with your Daddy can have an instantly positive impact on your emotional state.

First, it’s challenging for me to focus on and visualize the scenarios they create. I have to listen and concentrate. And even though it’s only 30 minutes, I still find myself losing focus and asking, “Can you say that again?” I want to be clear on what it is I’m supposed to be doing. It’s better to fall slightly behind and then catch up quickly than to fall way behind, reveal it obviously by saying something dumb, and then witness that look of betrayal and disappointment. “Where have you been, Daddy?” But I’m slowly getting better. And I have hope that it will get easier. I haven’t reached that plateau where I’ve gotten caught up effortlessly in the play. There have been moments, but they’ve been isolated and short-lived.

I wonder if 30 minutes isn’t long enough for me to get past the hump of inertia? Maybe I need to expand the time a bit. This might help me let go of any clock-watching tendencies and lose myself in the play. Yes, I wonder if PlayTime just needs some tweaks.

If the kids love it so much, why would I want to change it? Well, I definitely take comfort in the fact that they love it regardless. Even if it never gets easier for me, that alone makes it well worth the effort. But making it more engaging for me, I think, would also increase the quality of the experience for both of us. And if my first tweak is to extend the session by 10 minutes, then I’m sure they’ll have no problem with that. It does always seem to end too quickly for them.

The second aspect that’s challenging is related to the first. Not only do I have trouble getting the play going, but sometimes the kids do too. At first, I thought this was just a matter of age. Sammy (9) had no problem at all getting started. All I had to do was keep up. He didn’t need any guidance, just supportive energy. My first PlayTime experience with Morgan (6) was a bit slower-paced, and it took her a while to get started, but soon she was off to the races too. With Lucas (3), I had to be more of a leader and be creative.

But since those first experiences, each of my kids have had their off-days. Sometimes it’s indecision about how to use the time. Other times it’s just a matter of not being inspired. So this is another reason I want to get better at it. When they’re not feeling particularly creative, I can contribute more and get the juices flowing.

Last night, I did PlayTime with Lucas. It took a little while to ramp up, but gradually he got more and more into the fantasy. He loves to shrink himself and go in tiny cracks in the floor or walls and then emerge out from some other surface. He’s definitely getting better at PlayTime. If he can do it, so can I. Right? Starting today, PlayTime will be 40 minutes long.

He quickly came up with an idea for some role-playing. We both found ourselves stuck inside a massive labyrinth with all sorts of nooks and crannies and walls and hidden doors and chutes and stairways. We had to be careful not to step on any floor tiles that released arrows or trap doors. Our task was to find our way out. Along the way, we came across strange creatures (played by our kittens) that looked benign but actually secreted dangerous green slime. We also came across a room full of treasure, and we almost met our doom when the treasure became so alluring as to make us mad with greed, losing our minds. In one case, I saved him; then it was my turn to be weak, and he saved me. We also changed size several times, whirled our way across dimensions in a magic elevator, and narrowly escaped being eaten by a 10-headed monster with 40,000 arms.

At one point, I had him laughing hysterically, and, in accordance with Cohen’s advice in Chapter 5 (“Follow the Giggles”), I tried to see how long I could sustain it. After cracking up and saying, “That was hysterical,” my son told me, “Okay, let’s get back to the game.” Heh, I was making him laugh, yes, but I was getting off task. I’m clearly still learning.

We started at 3:49pm, so I thought to myself, “We’ll wrap it up at 4:20,” rounding up to the nearest 10. But I was so exhausted by the time 4:18 came around, I was thinking 4:19 would be a good stopping point after all. As it happens, when he saw it was just about time to finish, we extended it slightly and wrapped things up nicely at 4:23pm. We made ourselves wake up from our dream and found ourselves lying on the floor, grateful to be safe and at home.

We’re interested in trying out one technique in particular. In chapter 9, “Follow Your Child’s Lead,” Cohen introduces “PlayTime,” a scheduled, more intense form of playing with your kids where you make an explicit, concerted effort to follow their lead, wherever they want to go, for a specific period of time.

The basic format of PlayTime is quite simple. The parent or some other adult sets aside regular one-on-one time with a child. The adult offers the child undivided attention with no interruptions and with a clear focus on connection, engagement, and interaction. In a sense, PlayTime is just Playful Parenting Plus, where the “plus” means more enthusiasm, more joining, more commitment to closeness and confidence, more fun, a more welcoming attitude toward their feelings, more willingness to put one’s own feelings aside, more active and boisterous play. In addition, you don’t answer the phone or cook dinner or take a nap during PlayTime.

One of the things that attracts me to this particular technique is that it is a commitment for a specific period of time. It is “time-boxed.” I get to go all-out, knowing that I don’t need to worry about pacing myself beyond the agreed-upon length of time. It’s a safe way to start building my playing muscles. A high-weight/low-rep strength training program. At least that’s one way to look at it. And I don’t have to feel guilty when I’m not doing it all the time.

Another thing I like about it is how much the kids will love it. We’ll be upfront with them about what we want to do. And we’re going to schedule specific times. With two parents and three kids, that’s six sessions total. We’re going to cover each of these once a week. And we’re starting with a 30-minute period. That may seem short, but we want to be realistic.

During PlayTime, I’ll let my child know that what we do is entirely up to them. I’ll follow along, infusing the play with whatever energy I can muster. And I’ll let them remain in charge for the duration. It will be hard work but it will also be rewarding. We’re going to forge some nice connections, and I’ll have a chance to get some deeper glimpses into each of my children’s worlds.

After I’ve had some chances to try this, I’ll be reporting back on my experiences. Stay tuned.

How do we ensure that kids don’t lose touch with their natural state of being fully engaged, playful, free, and having endless reserves of energy?

One way to approach this question is to identify how kids do lose touch with this natural state of being. Or more specifically, identify what we as a society do to contribute to this loss.

Don’t get me wrong. Growing up is at its very nature a loss of childhood. The idea here isn’t to pretend that kids don’t have to grow up or that they should stay kids forever. On the contrary, kids would never allow such a thing. From the moment they’re born, they’re constantly striving to figure out how to function in this world, and as they grow, their drive to become highly functioning adults only grows. We shouldn’t try to work against that drive or try to “keep them children”.

So the question is not: how can we help them remain childlike? Instead, how can we help them become engaged, playful, free adults? And then—once we observe that they are already engaged, playful, and free as children—how can we ensure that they don’t lose that ability as they grow into adulthood?

The simplest answer that I can think of is this: get out of the way. Our society has shown in general that we don’t know how to do this. Instead, we intervene endlessly.

WARNING: RANT TO FOLLOW

This is nowhere more evident than in that orphan of industrialization we call traditional schooling. We put our kids into environments—for extended periods of time—in which their freedom, and their ability to play and converse with each other, are severely restricted. We tell them what we think is important to learn and thereby devalue anything they might have otherwise been interested in. We act as if they won’t learn or won’t want to learn anything unless we make them do it. It’s incredibly antithetical to and ignorant of the actual nature of children.

Schools are obsolete, but we as a society don’t realize this. We forget, or never realized, that schools were designed by social engineers at the height of the Industrial Revolution to create a docile, massive workforce in which people aren’t burdened by curiosity and instead are satisfied to do exactly as they are told, day in and day out, making widgets or helping machines make widgets.

END OF RANT

People are resilient. While school destroys some, most of us get through it okay, and a number of us go on to live happy, fulfilled lives. But my strong suspicion is that we do so in spite of, not because of, our experience of being traditionally schooled, of having our freedom and play severely restricted for large segments of time during our most formative years. We survive; we don’t thrive as we might have. We conform to the contours imposed by the sliced-up world of academic subjects, and we don’t grow into the actual contours of our abilities and interests—the actual contours of our potential.

When I see a person who is a master at their art or craft, I see a person who has grown into the contours of their potential, a person who has either escaped or overcome the cookie-cutter stamp of traditional schooling.

When do you ever see kids fully engaged, playful, free, and having endless reserves of energy?

When I read that question again, it sounds almost silly. When do you not see kids fully engaged, playful, free, and having endless reserves of energy? Left to their own devices, they seem to find that state automatically! I’m sometimes astonished when I watch kids play, at how deeply a given “game” goes. The imagination seems to never run out. “I’ll be the pirate, and you be the dragon!” “How about…we do this…and then you do that…and then I do this…” ad infinitum. The kids energize each other with their ideas. They’re naturals at what adults often forget and have to re-learn in improv class. And they’ll do this all day if you let them. And the play gets more and more sophisticated and complex, and can span multiple days even.

So maybe I’ve got things backwards. Instead of starting with adults who are masters at what they do and then trying to find ways to introduce such experiences to children, maybe it should be the other way around. Maybe the adults are the ones who need to learn from the children!

I suddenly get the sense that the greatest masters of art, the greatest business people, the greatest athletes—they’re the ones who have somehow maintained a connection with their childhood. They managed to not lose that youthful energy that’s so characteristic of children. They’re children-at-heart; only the scenery and the materials have changed. They’ve moved on from the playground to the business world, for example, but the structure is the same. They’re still playing and having fun and doing what engages them and what they’re good at.

So now here’s my answer to the first question: The structure of mastery is no better exemplified than in a child at play. The problem isn’t one of finding out how to help kids be masters. The question instead should be: How do we ensure that kids don’t lose touch with such natural states of being?

That sounds like a good question to address in Part 3.

Here’s an example that I liked, Jason Mraz singing “I’m Yours” live in Korea. You can tell that he chose the right career (and of course millions of fans agree).

In every case that I can think of, in addition to the aspect of full engagement, another essential element is play, or playfulness. This is sometimes more explicit in the case of improvisational arts. But even in highly structured contexts, such as a pianist performing a piece of classical music or an actress performing her lines, there is so much that can be improvised, if not the notes or the words themselves. The master has a freedom that they’ve built up from their talent and discipline and hard work, such that now it looks effortless, and they can experiment in the moment, playing with possibilities, trying things out, exploring new pathways.

Another aspect: seemingly endless reserves of energy. These performers just keep on going and going. Encore after encore. I have a neighbor who is studying tap dancing in New York City. He was made for his art. I can’t believe how long he can keep dancing in a single evening. His shirt might be drenched with sweat, but he keeps going and going, drawing energy from the enthusiastic crowd.

So how does one reach one’s full potential? How can we help kids have experiences like this? How can we find out what activities, or art forms, or sports, or careers will match up with who they are? More importantly, how will they find out what fits them, what they enjoy doing, what they’re good at doing?

The inimitable Guy Sidora in action

How does someone like Guy Sidora invent a new art form, a new way of teaching, a completely unique career not heretofore invented? A combination of speech and bouncing balls and sound and movement that perfectly fits who he is and what his talents are.

First, my hypothesis: practice makes perfect. More specifically, if you can create experiences like the above for yourself, you should keep on doing it and let it develop fully into the particularities of who you want to be and what you want to do. If we can identify moments like the above in the lives of children, we should see to it that they keep on with it. They’re on the right path to mastery. They’ve captured the structure of the experience, even if they’re still exploring what details will ultimately work best for them as they approach adulthood.

So, before returning with part 2 of this article, I’ll leave you with a question to ponder: When do you ever see kids fully engaged, playful, free, and having endless reserves of energy?

Read Part 2

On innate curiosity and survival in the 21st century:

Every child has a deep drive to become a highly functioning member of the adult society into which he or she was born. That’s what survival is about in today’s terms. And curiosity is the tool that guarantees survival.

On how traditional schooling messes things up:

All children have done a great deal of exploration on their own before they begin in school. They’re channeled into specific curricula usually once they’re part of a school setting. With enough exposure to learning things in the way that other people have chosen, with enough time learning what other people have chosen for that person—at the time that others find it important—most students lose touch with their own curiosity. Most children become less effective learners each year that they spend being taught by others.

On the importance of conversation (a.k.a. talking) to a person’s development:

It’s not only the way we are exposed to new ideas and to find ways to refine them and to make them more sensible and strong. It’s the way to get into another person’s head; it’s the only way to really get into another person’s head and incorporate what they think into what you think. And we engage in it for long periods of time, every single day of our lives.

What that should mean for our approach to education:

Children should be in situations for most of their waking hours in which there are opportunities for real and intense exchange of ideas through talking. To have conversation restricted thwarts their education.

On the importance of play:

The other major area of learning for people is through play. Play is following a path of action or thought freely…We each have our favorite kinds of play. And often when we think about it, the kinds of things that are our favorite kind of play are the things that restore our spirits, the things we return to when we need a lift. Play is vitally important to creativity. If one cannot be free to follow new paths, one can’t accomplish much….Not only do you accomplish things while you’re playing, you reinforce the knowledge that you’re someone who can always accomplish more, who can push your own boundaries. Through play, you get in touch with yourself as a creative human being. Through play, your horizons expand constantly. There’s nothing more important, from the earliest age on.

Schools (including Sudbury schools) did not invent these “methods of education”—play and talking. They’re natural and automatic and they work extremely well. The genius of a Sudbury school, in my mind, is the acknowledgment of these realities and the creation of a structure in which they can both flourish freely. Of course, there’s more to it than that, and Mimsy goes into these as well, such as the nature of participatory democracy, how School Meeting functions, how discipline is handled through Judicial Committee, etc. Some essential ingredients that go into creating the structure in which play and talking and thus learning can flourish: respect for people of all ages, freedom to pursue one’s interests, and responsibility to create and uphold agreements in one’s community.

But my biggest takeaway is Mimsy’s affirmation of what I’ve been learning over and over again. Two “secret” ingredients of any person’s education, regardless of what school they go to, are play and talking. The Sudbury approach is to let kids go as deep as they want in both areas. The traditional schooling approach is to drastically restrict both and then replace them with time spent doing something else. Relative merits of “something else” can be discussed, but that’s telling it like it is.