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).

Sometimes the behaviors that drive you crazy when your kids practice them on you (in particular, resisting and generally refusing to comply without inquiry) are the very ones you want them to implement when faced with situations involving pressure from their peers or other sources. In those other unpredictable situations you want them to be discerning.  You don’t want them to follow without question. What’s annoying when it’s done to  you could well be a boon when it turns up at a party or behind the wheel - in the face of the unpredictable.

And it’s easy to point out the difference in the situations; you know that what you’re trying to get them to do is in their best interest (at least you have decided it is).  And they should be able to tell the difference.  But the point is that their parents are the only ones kids can safely practice on, so it’s actually quite wise, and a relief, that they at least begin with you. If you won’t honor the inquiry implicit in their resistance (as distinct from engaging in a power struggle about it), they’re likely to give up on practicing, or take their practicing elsewhere.

I’m wondering if, for every thing a person is in favor of, it’s necessary to be against something else, or if it’s possible to be for something without a corresponding against.

I’d like to think it’s possible, because it seems as though it would be very good for humanity if that were the case, but as I flip through the various things I’d say I’m in favor of, I’m consistently finding corresponding againsts.

So then I get to thinking about what we do with our againsts.  And our fors, for that matter.  If there does have to be an against for every for, are there ways to manage the againsts that will bring more and less of what we’d like to see around us?

I love my digital camera.  Honestly, it takes better pictures than I deserve to be taking with my limited photographic skill.

The thing I can’t stand about it is that it’s designed to decide by itself what to focus on.  It’s supposed to be smart this way.  Even if something’s not in the middle of the frame, if the camera thinks it’s the most important thing, it’ll choose it.

Our relationship to children and childhood is a little like this at the moment.  We’re looking at kids through an auto-focus mechanism in which a preexisting force determines what we should look at, and thus not only what we’re able to see clearly but what we decide to put our attention on and pour our resources into. The things we know to look for and look at include reading or not reading, remembering multiplication facts or not, paying attention during the school day or not, getting in fights or not, doing homework and chores cheerfully or not.

The things we don’t tend to look for or see are the things about kids that are already beginning to determine and predict what they actually have to offer and what might make them thrive.  We might notice in passing, but we don’t give our attention to these things, because we’re busy with what the camera wants us to look at.  We don’t see the hints as to what activities and tasks kids are best-suited to, what kind of social situations are most comfortable for them and thus bring out their most pro-social behavior, what kinds of work they’ll likely be able to thrive at and sustain as adults.  Even though it’s right there in the frame.

What might change if you made the switch to manual focus?  What would you see?  Who is your child already, beyond the ways in which she doesn’t excel in school or other activities?  What does she do for hours at a time (exclusive of those things she does out of exhaustion or resistance)?  When is she full of vitality?  Who are the people who bring out the best in her?

You’ve seen your child’s brilliance and capacity, but you may also have been encouraged in this way to think of it as peripheral.  What if you moved it to the center of the frame, and let the rest get fuzzy as you go to work on honoring, validating, developing the brilliance and capacity that’s already there?

Just heard about this film scheduled for release this coming fall… http://www.racetonowhere.com/

Kids often tell me they don’t like reading, except for things they like.

What the heck?  I can’t tell you how many zillions of times I’ve heard this.  Somehow we’re giving them the impression that  these People Who Like Reading that they’ve heard of and know about like reading everything.  When I encounter this, I assure whomever it is, up one side and down the other, that this is not the case. I know because I’d make a good Exhibit A.  I love reading things I like and want to read, and I detest reading anything I don’t like and don’t want to read.  It sounds ridiculous.

One way we could probably curb this confusion is to stop saying simply that we love to read.  It’s usually not true, anyway, without the rest of the sentence.  It’s like I was saying here about finishing the sentence to make it true.  Unless you really just plain love to read anything that’s put in front of you - love it for the reading of it and not anything to do with the content - you could do many kids a great service by saying something like “I love to read when the writing’s really good,” or “I love to read books that are about people like me,” or “I love to read road signs,” or “I love to read magazines.”  Then they’d start to get a more accurate picture of this reading world of ours, in which we all have taste and rarely read just because there are words in front of us and we want to spend time reading them because we don’t have anything better to do.

Let them know there’s something in it for you, and then they’ll have the freedom to find out whether or not there might be anything in it for them.

What if school had never existed?  What if when your child was born, or when you were considering having a child, you had to decide how he or she would spend years 5-18 just as you decide how the child spends years 0-4?  

Here’s what I think you’d do.  You’d look at your child, and you’d look at the world as it is now, and you’d decide what kind of environment and what kinds of activities would make sense to introduce.  You’d probably take into account what kinds of careers were at the forefront of the economy (though I’m not sure, because I suspect that some of this orientation/focus is the result of school, and if it didn’t exist then neither would the accompanying orientation), or maybe the occupations that had the happiest healthiest people in them.  You might look at the natural abilities of your child, and see where the overlap might be.  And then, I suspect, you’d go looking for or create opportunities for your child to develop and grow in accordance with what was so in the world and with your child.

If you look at how school is today, at the schooling that’s available for your children’s attendance, does it match?  Are they getting what makes sense for them?  It probably isn’t a yes or no answer.  They’re likely getting some things that you’d want for them, and some that you wouldn’t.  And they’re likely missing some that you’d have put in if you’d been the sole engineer of the extent of their young lives.

We aren’t often invited to consider this, but if we stop and take the time to look, it puts our attention on the gaps.  And if your attention is on those gaps, rather than only on the areas in which your child struggles in a system designed in a different time with different priorities and different children, you just may find a path out of the chronic unworkability and insufficiency.