Respecting individual learning styles

We have a parent meeting once a month. Almost everybody I talk to says oh, our parents would never come. Well that’s because we’ve never made it interesting. We’ve either made it a performance of the children and it should be participation and process not performance, and we haven’t really asked parents the things that they really need to be asked. One of the things that we do at the beginning of each meeting we ask parents really important questions and one of the first questions that I ask parents is what are your hopes and dreams for your kid? And I have to tell you nobody ever asked my momma that. Nobody ever asked me that about my kid. We’ve got to pay attention to that. What are your hopes and dreams?

Things to think about

How do you educate parents on how young children learn best?
How do you create a relationship with parents that allows them to feel heard?
Answer the following questions with your own children or the children you care for in mind:
-What are your hopes and dreams for them?
-What are your expectations for them?
-What scares you for your children?

Highlights from Playful Wisdom
by Michael Mendizza featuring Bev Bos and Joseph Chilton Pearce

Fred Donaldson, PhD., is unique, one of a kind and changed forever how I appreciate the need and importance of real play. See our interview in Touch the Future’s Academy (https://ttfuture.org/academy/play). We explore Fred’s personal experience that evolved into his Pulitzer-nominated book, Playing by Heart. Like Joseph Chilton Pearce, and so many others, Fred points to “culture” and how it distorts our authentic nature. He describes in depth our “contest culture” and contrasts it with what he calls “original play,” a quality of relationship and belonging with all life that transcends comparison, winning, praise and rewards. Fred shared that when he is in the authentic play-state “Fred” disappears. In his landmark book Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi notes that in states of optimum learning and performance complete attention is given to the challenge, leaving no attention to reflect on how one is doing while meeting the challenge. In our normal, often low state of energy this complete attention is split between meeting the challenge and looking good. That split of attention creates the observer, what we experience as “Fred,” the social image of self disappears. Complete attention is the baseline for what athletes call the zone, researchers call flow and children call play. More than an activity, original play is a way of being that is free from the implicit fears that our cultural identity imposes. When Fred and we return to our original nature, which is literally “to play with life,” Fred disappears. Children are ‘play-masters.’ Look closely and you will see that they are often absorbed with complete attention, meeting the discovery of the moment. We can too.

One of the things I do best is the parent meetings, the conversations that I have with parents, and one of the things that I do at one of the meetings, I give the parents an index card, a big index card, and I have them write down what they saw their child do, where they saw them play, what their interests were. Just spend 15 minutes writing about your child. And then I have people read them, if they want to, out loud and they share them and then I ask them the most important question, do you think that your child’s style of learning, what they like to do, how they learn best, and of course most kids learn best by doing, do you think that’s going to change because they’re moving on? Do you think that that’s going to, automatically because you’re going to put them in a place that doesn’t respect that, that it’s going to change? And how are you going to support that child without being antagonistic, without being angry all the time? How can you support hat child? And there is the answer, for me is this, teachers are in a position where it’s very difficult for them to do anything about the environment. They’ve got a job. They’ve got a family to support. They’re afraid of losing their jobs. But one of the most important things they can think about is that parents will never lose their parenthood. And if we had started fifty years ago helping parents know how to advocate for their kid and the energy of the kid the world would be a different place. Schools would be different. We have a parent meeting once a month.

Almost everybody I talk to says oh, our parents would never come. Well that’s because we’ve never made it interesting. We’ve either made it a performance of the children and it should be participation and process not performance, and we haven’t really asked parents the things that they really need to be asked. One of the things that we do at the beginning of each meeting we ask parents really important questions and one of the first questions that I ask parents is what are your hopes and dreams for your kid? And I have to tell you nobody ever asked my momma that. Nobody ever asked me that about my kid. We’ve got to pay attention to that. What are your hopes and dreams? Everybody has hopes and dreams. Some people have said in workshops, they’ll say oh I don’t think my parents even think about that. Yes they do. Yes they do, at some level. Nobody’s asked them. I just had an interesting thing happen. I want to tell you a story. I said this when I was giving a keynote about two weeks ago and a man said, “I am working on my dissertation and I just emailed those kinds of questions to almost every parent in our school and nobody responded.” And I said, “Of course not. Why would they?” It’s email. This has to be personal. I’ve got to be looking at you in your eye. I’ve got to be able to hold your hands. I’ve got to be able to walk out closer to you. If I don’t hear you, if you’re choked up about your hopes and dreams, I have to pay attention to this. So it’s very, very different. There’s an intimacy that you have to create.

Parents have to feel okay to tell you. One of the other questions I ask parents is what are your expectations? I have to tell you I don’t judge that kind of stuff. Everybody has expectations that are probably not realistic. For all of us it’s that way. But just to pay attention, to listen, and to listen to other parents. Another question we ask parents that I just love, what scares you? And it if so touching and so real. What scares these parents? One dad said, “Do you know what scares me, what scares me is predators and I don’t mean sexual predators I mean people who advertise to children. They’re everywhere. My kids can’t even watch television without being preyed upon.” So out of that other parents are listening. They get an idea about whoa, we should be watching this. And we keep thinking of different questions, generally, but we start with the same ones but boy that’s an amazing feeling for a parent to be that respected. So I think that’s the answer. I think, and it may seem very simplistic, but I do believe that parents would lay down their life for their child. And if we would start paying attention to their hopes and dreams and the things that scare them, I just think it’s just the beginning of a new what a new generation of parents.