What if the process of social development weren’t so focused on kids making friends and instead on kids finding people? There are all kinds of relationships and experiences that develop social skills, so why put all the eggs in the friends basket, particularly given how narrowly the word gets defined?  What if it were just as important to find mentors, coaches, people to look up to, people to be looked up to by, treasured relatives or neighbors or acquaintances that have a specific way in which they relate to you uniquely?

These might be people who aren’t necessarily your friends, but call you to grow and change as a social being, in different ways.  And there’d be less pressure to Have Lots of Friends.  It wouldn’t mean you didn’t have to find friends, there’d just be less pressure to.  There’d be less emphasis on this one kind of relationship you had to have.  You’d just be out there in the world interacting with people, finding the ones who offered something and to whom you had something to offer.  They might not be the same age, might not be anyone you want to spend a lot of time on the phone with, might not share any interests, might live far away, so you might say you didn’t have a lot of friends, but there you’d be, developing as a social being in spite of it.

There’s more than one way to learn to read.  Actually what I mean is that there’s more than one way to read.  I think we’re pretty clear that there’s more than one way to learn.  But people actually read differently.  Some never get the hang of sounding out, for example.  Sylvia Ashton-Warner built a whole system of literacy teaching around choice and recognition of words.  Here’s a link to a post with an excerpt from her book Teacher as well as a lengthy bio.  The book is worth reading for anyone interested in learning of any kind for any reason.  Another related resource is Katie Johnson’s book Doing Words which describes the method she developed based on Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s work.

From Teacher: “Organic reading for beginners is not new; it’s our rejection of it that’s new.”

I set up a table at the local farmers market today, to invite people to talk about building kids’ lives around who they already are, as an alternative to struggling in programs where they just don’t fit.  I talked to parents, grandparents, kids, former teachers, a physician, and a speech therapist.  I got the impression that people are interested in talking about issues of learning and pathfinding in new ways.

Just before I left, a small group of young adults who’d been working nearby came over to find out what I was up to.  I told them a little about how I work with kids - looking for ways to make it possible for their lives to start right away, not later, after they’ve finished getting ready for life.  Their participation in the conversation was intent and intense, which makes sense.  They’re the ones who are at the place in their lives where these questions and issues are at the forefront whether they want them there or not.

They’re busy figuring out what to do next:  Should they Just Get a Job?  Should they commit to another chunk of education (either because they want what it will offer or because it will mean they don’t have to decide what to do for another couple of years)?  Should they venture down some other less beaten path?

If you know a young person who’s facing this kind of inquiry, I invite you to remember what a gift it can be (particularly from parents, other relatives and trusted adults) to have the chance to talk through such large-looming options without the tangle of judgment and opinion that is so easy to include.  It’s not easy to do, but it’s worth the effort.

And further, it’s worth figuring out how to make sure that other youngers don’t have to wait until they’re out on their own to work through some of the questions of where they might fit, belong, thrive.

* I haven’t mentioned the Teenage Liberation Handbook lately - for anyone who’s interested in pathfinding, and looking for resources to support it at any age, it’s a great reference. And another for the older young folk among us - Jenny Blake’s Life After College blog (helpful with or without college - a reminder that it doesn’t all just fall into place for anyone upon diploma receipt; there’s always figuring and discerning to do).

Every week I meet with parents who are committed to offering their children a level of success and vigor that takes considerable innovation, determination, patience.  I’m always inspired by their willingness to proceed without a map, when it’s so much easier to just follow a well-trodden path.

It’s been a lot of years since I first read Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences; I’ve started reading again from the beginning, with Frames of Mind (1983).  It amazes me that such a compelling argument for widening the scope of what we consider worth recognizing, acknowledging, developing in young people can have brought us such a short distance from where we were when he first published this book.  If you haven’t read it, especially if you’ve got a kid who doesn’t seem compatible with the traditional school offerings of our time, I’d recommend you have a look.

From one of my favorite books (for its simple and delightful illustrations, wit, and metaphorical applicability), Moving Heavy Things: “Never lift what you can drag, never drag what you can roll, never roll what you can leave.”

I like to think about this any time I’m trying to do anything that doesn’t seem to be working.  Am I forcing an outcome that doesn’t want to be forced?  Is there a less effortful way to do it?  Does it need doing at all?

If we’re serious about fighting childhood obesity (and thus, obesity), it seems to me the best place to start would be decreasing the amount of sitting kids are required to do every day.  Of course we also need to make more nutritional food available to more kids, but that will take a lot more than letting them get up out of their seats.  Kids already want to be moving more, so we won’t likely be met with much resistance.

A recent University of Buffalo study offered another reason to infuse the young day with motion: reduced  stress reactivity, which from the sound of it not only offers an immediate benefit to the body but can also help reduce the chance of developing heart disease.  ”The perception of a stressor as a threat is the beginning of the stress reactivity process, so if you can dampen that initial perception, then you reduce the magnitude of the fight-or-flight response,” says James Roemmich, the senior investigator on the study.

Apparently sending the body into fight-or-flight, which the world is fairly adept at doing, is not so good for it.  We’re not likely to eliminate the stressors any time soon, so we’ll do well to reduce their ill effects to the extent we can.  And if one thing we can do is let kids move around more, which they already want to, that seems like a good place to start.