Home and unschooled children do this because they feel valuable, innovative, creative and have something intrinsic and of value to contribute -  something that is not learned but rather formed from their own will, so it is uniquely their own.

Schooling, on the other hand, is the imposition of intellectual content and facts upon the child – filling them with OUR outside info, entering all of our data. Children are not data banks….

Learning is ongoing, spontaneous and relevant to the surrounding, the situation,  one is in at the current time. Learning should be an exciting and engaging voyage of discovery of the world, and of one self. So the primary difference I see – is that un or homeschooling is an invitation to awaken and ennoble capabilities that exist within the child. The difference between this and what we know as traditional schooling is profound.

Learning is not something we need to go somewhere to get… Learning is happening all of the time. ~ Kytka

In one  way we see that child as this container that is assumed to be empty – where the objective is to fill it. The other way is where see the child as a container that is assumed to be full – where the objective is to draw from deep within.

That difference is significant and we need to understand how we view our child,  because education and parenting decisions will be made on this view. Much like the optimist sees the glass as half full and the pessimist sees it as half empty – take a moment to really ask yourself and think about how you see your child.

Does your child need to be filled, or is your child already full and we just need to draw and pull forth from the child?

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. ~ Albert Einstein

This may seem a simple exercise, but if you really go deep into this belief – you will see that many of your parenting decisions you are making come down to this core belief about your child.

Now my belief, being an optimist is that the child comes to us perfect and complete. In truth, we really do not know the true essence of wisdom and where that forms. One’s soul has so much to do with it and yet in society in general the more popular view is that we tend treat children like they are empty containers to be filled in rather than step aside and allowing their inherent wisdom to pour forth. Yes, there are cultures and religions that have a different view – but they do not make up the mainstream majority.

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself. ~ Galileo

It is already there. It is a part of the package. The child is already full and complete. And we have continued to ignore this, thinking that we can somehow improve what is already a perfect system.

I recently did an interview on a telesummit entitled “What The Experts Know” and if you are interested in a replay of that, simply click on the link.  Additionally, I did a 2+ hour webinar on the subject as well where I went even more in depth.

This powerful webinar shares so many reasons why you should re-think what lies behind the school or homeschool decision and truly come to understand HOW CHILDREN (how all humans) LEARN.  To learn more about the webinar, please click the banner below.

Puppetry (finger puppets, small puppets and marionettes) are common within Waldorf schools because they are a living play imbued with inner imagination and fantasy. Puppet shows draw the child into a story, watching it unfold step by step, grow and change, and these pictures are taken right into the stream of life forces, without creating hard and fixed impressions. The draw forth from children their imagination and allow the story to take them where they need to do as far as the inner life working pictures.

Puppets and puppet shows are not only beautiful, but provide many advantages. Rahima Baldwin Dancy, a Waldorf early childhood educator, notes that “when stories and fairy tales are translated into cartoons or movies, they lose their evocative quality and are often too powerful…for young children. But when stories are acted out in front of the children using stand-up puppets or marionettes, the experiences have a very calming and healing effect on the children.”

Because of its value, puppetry has fast become one of the most popular forms of educational instruction in traditional elementary schools. The California State Curriculum Guide states that puppetry is an ideal instrument for aiding in language development. According to Frisch (2004), at their most basic, puppets are an exceptional means of conveying a message. However, the value goes much, much further. Puppetry integrates more art forms, disciplines and subject matter than any other creative or dramatic medium. Exploring the puppet theater arts opens the door to history, music, math, science, creative writing and language arts, painting, sculpting, acting, dance and many other disciplines that have their roots in a multitude of cultures, some of which have puppetry traditions that extend back for thousands of years.

Through puppetry children can learn new ways to express themselves while learning new skills, leading the child on a path of self-discovery and expression that help instill confidence and boost self-esteem. The cooperative effort needed to create a puppet show develops a child’s ability to work with others, share ideas and solve problems.

Storytelling is felt by some to be one of the arts that are diminishing in importance in our culture. Yet our curriculum places strong emphasis on this experience for children. Each day in the Seaside Playgarden, children sit in the circle to watch and listen as their teacher tells from memory a simple folk tale or a fairy tale. Visual images are created within the active minds of each child. The stories change with the cycles of the year and much has been written about which stories are important and why. On special occasions a more complex story may be told with the support of simple felt table top puppets or silk marionettes the teacher and parents have made.

Storytelling imbues the imagination and fantasy, and is a loving way of communicating values, principles, and challenges, among others. Oral stories may be curative (Dancy, 1989, pg 184) where a made-up story may be told to a child or group of children who are exhibiting a particular problem or behavior that you hope will change. In our school, curative stories in kindergarten are about unruly horses or chatty squirrels.

While stories can reflect life’s challenges, the oral storytelling provides a strong basis for the development of “picture consciousness” (Meyer 1981), or our imaginations. Dancy (1989, pg 168) notes the “role of imagination or the ability to think in images is recognized as an important component in creative thinking. Albert Einstein said he discovered the theory of relativity by picturing himself riding on a ray of light.” Meyerkort, who heads the Waldorf early-childhood teacher training program in Great Britain, notes that imagination is essential for many reasons: initiative (to see potential, rather than static existence), compassion (imagine and empathize with another’s predicament), love (imagine a person’s potential, possibilities for growth).

Images that are envisioned from something a child hears in a story are based on their imagination, are not static, and can transform over time in one’s “mind’s eye”. On the contrary, images from television or movies, or even books with detailed pictures, take the imagination away from the child and provide it to them in a static way that “sticks”. Thus oral storytelling embraces the inner fantasy and creativity in all of us.

Our personal favorite is to make our own table puppets which require no strings (like marionettes), hands or fingers. They are basically a waldorf doll style head and then a tubular body (imagine a waldorf doll head on a toilet paper roll). The body is made from a nice heavy felt and then filled loosely with batting to help give it weight and keep shape. Over the years we must have made over 100 of these and many of them still reside with us, while some have been lovingly passes along to families with younger children.

With wit and ingenuity, Maija Baric shows you to transform wooden spoons, pieces of string, holey socks, outgrown clothes and other scrap materials into beautiful, durable and functional theatrical puppets. Once you have made your puppets, discover how to bring them to life, build staging, scenery and props, create sound effects and devise performances. Your puppet creations will bring something truly magical to the everyday world: use them to transform storytime at home or in the classroom; ease children’s bedtime rituals; and make a birthday or other occasion really special.

Other Recommended Resources Include

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Felting is an ancient art, dating back to the Bronze Age. Fragments of felt have been excavated and dated back 2000 years. No one is certain about it’s inception or original origin. In Asia, the nomadic people used felt to create the walls and flooring of their yurts, the homes they traveled with. Within those homes, those nomadic people also created art with their wool to protect and invoke blessings on them and their homes.  ~ The Art of Felting

Anyone can make cute and cuddly creatures from a handful of fluff and a barbed needle! There are only a few books written on the subject and most of those focus on ‘flat’ needle felting on a surface. But I have also located some books about sculptural needle felting, which means the ability to create 3-D animals and figures using the felting needle to sculpt wool.

Here is a link to some gorgeous felted art to look at and get deliciously inspired….  Nushkie Design

It is easy to master the techniques once you know how the felting needle works with wool fiber to create felt.

There are all sorts of wools one can use, and we recommend trying them all. Below is a video that shows how to blend the different colors together.

Do you have pets that have long hair that you brush? Then check out one of our personal favorites, Crafting with Cat Hair: Cute Handicrafts to Make with Your Cat. Yes… your pet hair can now be used to make keepsake toys.

Children just LOVE the felting process.  With some wool, water, soap and friction you can make your own fabric for clothes, bags, hats, wall hangings… the list is as endless and your imagination and once you try it, you’ll be hooked!

Love doesn’t just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. ~ Ursula K. LeGuinn

I invite you just to browse the book covers below to see the versatility of this beautiful ancient art form and to consider starting felting with your child.

Featured artwork courtesy of Love In The Suburbs

Candlemas is one of the traditional times for taking down Christmas decorations (Twelfth Night, on January 6th, is the other). If you are very careful (because they are tinder dry), you can burn them. Or, better yet, return them to the earth mother by using them for compost or mulch.

Certain foods are traditional for Candlemas, including crepes, pancakes and cakes, all grain-based foods. Pancakes and crepes are considered symbols of the sun because of their round shape and golden color.

If you have a fireplace, clean out your hearth and then light a new fire. Sit around the fire and reflect on your hopes for the coming year.

What do you hope to accomplish?
What are you passionate about?
What seeds do you wish to plant?

Discuss these ideas with others or write them down in a journal but make them concrete in some way so that on Lammas (August 2nd, the festival of the first harvest), you can look back to see what progress you’ve made.

Candlemas Recipes

Gingerly Baked Custard

3 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
3/4 teaspoon Finely Grated Fresh Ginger
3 large Eggs, lightly beaten
2 1/2 cups Milk
1/3 cup Granulated Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/4 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/4 teaspoon Nutmeg

Mix brown sugar with ginger and divide evenly onto bottoms of 6 buttered individual custard cups or ramekins.
In medium mixing bowl, blend eggs with milk, sugar, vanilla and seasonings. Pour evenly into prepared custard cups. Place cups in a large pan, then fill with hot water to come halfway up sides of cups (a hot water bath or bain-marie).
Bake at 350 F. oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until knife inserted near edge comes out clean. Remove cups from bain-marie. Run knife around edges to loosen. Place serving plate over top of cup and carefully invert custard onto plate. Serve warm or cover, chill and serve cold.

Honey Cakes (Liebkuchen)

1 cup margarine
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup honey
1 cup sour milk* (see below)
2 Tablespoons vinegar
6 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon mace
1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon

Prepare sour milk and mix dry ingredients. Set both aside. Cream margarine and sugar, add egg, beat until light. Add honey, sour milk and vinegar. Mix thoroughly. Chill one hour. Roll out to 1/4″ thickness. Cut into 2″x3″ rectangles and place on buttered cookie sheets. Bake at 375° for 6 minutes. Frost with plain vanilla frosting.
* For sour milk, add 1 T. vinegar to 1 c. milk and let stand for 10 minutes.

Basic Crêpe Recipe (makes about 8 crepes)

1 c. Flour
2 Eggs
1 ¼ c. Milk
2 T. Butter, Melted (unsalted butter can be used for dessert crêpes)
¼ t. Salt for dinner crêpes (only a pinch of salt for dessert crêpes)
1 T. Sugar (for dessert crêpes only)
Butter for cooking

You can either mix all ingredients in a blender, food processor or with a whisk till smooth. It’s best to let the batter sit for ½ hour before cooking. You can add a little more milk or a little water if you find the batter is too thick.

Use a skillet that’s about 6 – 8″ in diameter. (I used an 8″ pan and got 8 fairly large crêpes.) Put about ½ to 1 teaspoon of butter in the bottom of the pan, enough to coat it. Melt on medium high heat. Pour in about 2-3 T. batter and tilt or gently swirl the pan so that the batter covers the whole bottom of the skillet. Cook on one side until golden brown. Flip. Cook the other side till it starts to become golden, which should happen quickly, and remove from heat. Repeat this process until you’ve used all the batter.

Here are many different ways to fold the crêpes:

1) Rolled – Put filling on one end of the crêpe and roll it up, sort of like a cigar.
2) Folded in Half – Put filling on one side and fold over in half.
3) Folded in Threes – Put filling in middle of crêpe, fold the left third side over and then the right side over.
4) Folded in Fours – Just like folding in threes, but then also fold over the bottom and top.
5) Folded as a Triangle – Put filling on half of crêpe and fold the crêpe over in half, then fold in half again.
6) Layered – Put filling on whole crêpe, put another crêpe on top – you can keep layering as long as you want. This would usually be done with thinner fillings.
7) Folded like a Burrito – Put filling in middle, fold over two opposite ends about 1 inch, and roll over the crêpe starting at the side, till it’s completly rolled up.

And… you can make them savory or sweet!

Savory Crêpes (or Dinner Crêpes)

• Ham and Gruyere or Swiss Cheese Crêpes – Cube ham and fry, place in crêpe with shredded cheese and place in warm oven, at 300 F, to melt. This will take about 10-15 minutes. Cover if needed to prevent the crêpes from drying out. (A variation is to make this with chopped tomatoes.)
• Mushrooms and Swiss Cheese – Sautee mushrooms in a little butter. Place in crêpe and top with cheese. Fold crepe and place in warm oven, at 300 F, to melt cheese. This will take about 10-15 minutes. Cover if needed to prevent the crêpes from drying out. (A variation is to make this with chopped tomatoes.)
• Spinach and Goat Cheese – Sautee spinach. Spread goat cheese on crêpe, top with spinach and fold.

Dessert Crêpes (some of these could be good for breakfast too!)

• Apple Cinnamon and Walnut Crêpes – Sautee chopped apples and walnuts in a little butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Scoop mixture onto crêpe and fold.
• Lemon and Powered Sugar Crêpes – Sprinkle confectioners sugar on crêpe and squeeze a little fresh lemon juice on top. Fold and eat!
• Your Favorite Jam Crêpes – Simply smear the crêpe with jelly, fold over or roll and top with a sprinkle of powdered sugar.
• Nutella and Whipped Cream Crêpe – Spread nutella on crêpe, top with a dollop of whipped cream and fold up.
• Banana and Nutella Crêpes – Spread nutella on crepe, and top with thinly sliced bananas. Fold crêpe and enjoy!
• Sugared Crêpes – Sprinkle crêpe with sugar and fold or roll up. These work well if you want to eat them by hand.
• Ice Cream Crêpe – Put vanilla ice cream on crêpe, some hot chocolate syrup and whipped cream and fold it up.
• Hot Fudge and Strawberry Crêpes – Clean and slice strawberries and place on crêpe, cover with hot fudge and a dollop of whip cream. Fold and enjoy!

You can see that your imagination is the only limit when it comes to making crêpes!

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On February 2nd, it’s time to celebrate Candlemas, Imbolg, or Brigid’s Day (all names work, depending on your beliefs). It’s time to recognize that winter is on its way out, the light is beginning to return, and spring is finally on its way! It is a great time to do rituals involving the hearth and home. If you have a fireplace, give it a good cleaning along with the rest of your house, and celebrate Candlemas with a nice hearty fire. If you have any Yule greenery left over, then this is the time to gather it up and toss it in the flames.

During the fourth century, Christians began commemorating the day that Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple. By Jewish law, that would have been the fortieth day after His birth. (Luke 2:21-38). You may remember that a prophet named Simeon predicted that Jesus would bring “a light of revelation to the Gentiles.” So the feast day became associated with candles. Each community’s elder or priest would pray a blessing over candles, then pass them out for people to take into their homes. Eventually the celebration came to be called Candlemas.  The verse “I Am the Light of the World ” (John chp 8 vs 12) is connected with Candlemas.

During the middle ages and renaissance, the feast took on other meanings. In parts of England, Candlemas became the day to take down your Christmas greenery and start spring cleaning. And, as the opening poem shows, many Europeans adopted a superstition that a sunny Candlemas foretold a late, cool spring.

Whether Candlemas be dark or clear, forty days of winter will still be here.

February 2 is also the middle of winter as astronomers calculate it (the mid-point between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox). Pre-Christian Celtic cultures celebrated this time of year by holding ceremonies to bless the spring planting. It’s  also known as Imbolic.  Imbolc is a melting pot mixture of Celtic, Roman, and Christian traditions — and even briefly mention a few holidays not from Europe, such as Setbun, the Japanese Bean Throwing and Lantern Festival; Li Chum, the Chinese Spring Festival; and Holi, the Hindu Festival of Colour. Pretty amazing, isn’t it – how all people’s of the world find their unique ways to celebrate and recognize the change of seasons.

February 2nd has one of the richest traditional textures of any holiday we celebrate. And yet, we barely celebrate it today. Sadly, the only things most North Americans associate with February 2nd are Punxsutawney Phil and the movie Groundhog Day. There is remembrance in Europe, where they make crêpes (very think pancakes) for Candlemas. Crêpes remind us of the sun, which we’re craving.

To me, those modern additions are like the stones I once found in my back yard – only a few corners showed above the soil, but a whole limestone foundation from a long-leveled building lay just under the sod. Before we disparage the modern remnants of the holiday, and maybe the whole holiday with it, it might be good to take a closer look at how Groundhog Day contributes to the richly woven tapestry of this season. Then, maybe we can decide what, if anything, February 2nd “means,” or “should mean,” or could mean, if we took the time to think about it.

Instead of making a list of New Years’ resolutions you can’t keep, what about taking one part of your life that could stand improvement and working on that, a little bit every day for a year?

To use a metaphor that is appropriate for the feast day, you are lighting one candle at a time, and not trying to keep a whole candelabra going until you’re ready for it. Next year you add another candle, and so on.

Maybe you could do one nice thing, unasked, for a family member, every day. Or learn one new word in French, or read one chapter of the New Testament, or do one physical exercise, or write one line of a poem, or send one note of encouragement to a friend, or say one kind word to one stranger.

When sleet blinds you,
hail drowns out voices,
and snow hides your path,
may you discern in each flake
a star, image of the one
that guided the Magi,
and find that in the pain
of birth, death or change
there is a light
to guide you.

This is a simple way to make life on earth a little better for those around you and for yourself, too!

Brigid is the goddess of creative inspiration as well as reproductive fertility. This is a good time for sharing creative work, or, if you don’t think of yourself as especially creative, an idea that worked or a plan that materialized. Thank the Goddess for her inspiration, perhaps by dedicating a future work to her.

Since Candlemas is a time of new beginnings, this is a good day to ritually celebrate all things new. Plan a ceremony to name a new baby, officially welcome a new person into a family or plight your troth to your beloved. Make a commitment to a goal (like a New Years resolution): this would be an especially powerful thing to do in a group.

If you plan your own ceremony, use these two powerful symbols: fire and water. For instance, wash your hands and bathe your face in salt water, which is especially good for purification. Light a candle as you make your pledge. Incorporate the third symbol of the holiday — seeds — by planting a seed or bulb in a pot to symbolize your commitment, or by blessing a bowl or packet of seeds that you will plant later.

You don’t have to be Catholic to gain spiritual benefits from the voluntary surrender of something you cherish. You can give up something frivolous or something serious, but it should be something you will notice. Folk wisdom says it takes six weeks (or approximately the 40 days of Lent) to establish a new habit, so you may end up with a lifestyle change.

Since Candlemas is often considered the beginning of spring, you can perform another ritual act of purification: spring cleaning. This would be a good time to do a thorough house cleaning, sweeping the floors with salt water, banishing the gloom of winter and creating a sparkling, shiny new setting for spring.

Here are some Reading suggestions:

Candlemas  Day Verse

If Candlemas Day be fair and bright
Winter will have another flight.
If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain,
Winter won’t come again.

If Candlemas Day be dry and fair,
The half o the winter’s to come and mair;
If Candlemas Day be wet and foul,
The half o the winter’s gane at Yule.

Candlemas Verse from colonial Williamsburg, 18th century

When New Year’s Day is past and gone;
Christmas is with some people done;
But further some will it extend,
And at Twelfth Day their Christmas end.
Some people stretch it further yet,
At Candlemas they finish it.
The gentry carry it further still
And finish it just when they will;
They drink good wine and eat good cheer
And keep their Christmas all the year.

Candlemas Day (Verse from Scottish Quarter Day)

If Candlemas Day be dry and fair,
Half the winter’s to come and mair.
If Candlemas Day be wet and foul,
Half o’ winter’s gane at Yule.

(Meaning of unusual words: mair=more, Yule=Christmas)

A Song for Candlemas by Lizette Woodworth Reese

There’s never a rose upon the bush,
And never a bud on any tree;
In wood and field nor hint nor sign
Of one green thing for you or me.
Come in, come in, sweet love of mine,
And let the bitter weather be!
Coated with ice the garden wall;
The river reeds are stark and still;
The wind goes plunging to the sea,
And last week’s flakes the hollows fill.
Come in, come in, sweet love, to me,
And let the year blow as it will!

Candlemas Day by Frances Ridley Havergal

YES, take the greenery away
That smiled to welcome Christmas Day,
Untwine the drooping ivy spray.

The holly leaves are dusty all,
Whose glossy darkness robed the wall,
And one by one the berries fall.

Take down the yew, for with a touch
The leaflets drop, as -wearied much
With light and song, unused to such.

Poor evergreens! Why proudly claim
The glory of your lovely name,
So soon meet only for the flame?

Another Christmas Day will show
Another green and scarlet glow,
A fresh array of mistletoe.

And this new beauty, arch or crown,
Will stiffen, gather dust, grow brown,
And in its turn be taken down.

To-night the walls will seem so bare!
Ah, well! look out, look up, for there
The Christmas stars are always fair.

They will be shining just as clear
Another and another year,
O’er all our darkened hemisphere.

So Christmas mirth has fleeted fast,
The songs of time can never last,
And all is buried with the past.

But Christmas love and joy and peace
Shall never fade and never cease,
Of God’s goodwill the rich increase.

Time of Candles

The season of festivities has ended.
The final yuletide greenery has died.
The land seems dull and drab and dreary.
It’s time to celebrate the feast of Bride.

The rain and melting snow have filled the rivers
whose waters wash the land free of decay.
The winter storms have culled the rotten branches
of trees and swept the autumn leaves away.

The frost has broken up the stubborn clay.
The icy air has purified the land.
And Mother Earth has suffered winters purging
no less than us, though ordained by her hand.

Through the worst of winter’s devastation
signs of approaching spring can now be found.
And everywhere green shoots appear even
through suffocating snow, ice hardened ground.

The slimmest spears of snowdrops pale and white
push through the earth; the symbol of the spring’s
return. The yellow pollen of the catkins
heralds the bounty which the season brings.

In still drab fields the lambs are seen at play;
the first born creatures of the infant year;
carefree and nurtured by their mothers milk
as Mother Earth feeds all her children dear.

Though the approaching spring is still a whisper
at Candlemas we celebrate her youth.
Pure white candles burning to remind us
to leave behind the past and seek for truth.

While human hands are turning to spring cleaning
and human thoughts consider youthful themes.
So human spirits will begin their quest
afresh and human hearts will dream new dreams.

Candlemas Eve Carol by Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

1. Down with the rosemary and bays,
Down with the mistletoe ;
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box, for show.

Refrain:
Thus times and seasons oft do shift; each thing his turn doth hold ;
New thoughts and things now do succeed, as former things grow old.

2. The holly hitherto did sway ;
Let box now domineer
Until the dancing Easter day,
Or Easter’s eve appear. Refrain

3. Then youthful box which now hath grace
Your houses to renew ;
Grown old, surrender must his place
Unto the crisped yew. Refrain

4. When yew is out, then birch comes in,
And many flowers beside ;
Both of a fresh and fragrant kin
To honour Whitsuntide. Refrain

5. Green rushes, then, and sweetest bents,
With cooler oaken boughs,
Come in for comely ornaments
To re-adorn the house. Refrain

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1) Honor your father’s history. What events shaped his life? Have his tell a story of his childhood, ask him to teach you his favorite childhood game or song…
2) Honor your father’s outlook. What have you learned from him?
3) Honor your father’s dreams. What of his hopes for you, whether realized yet or not?

After reflecting on these questions, tell someone you care about (a friend, your partner, your children, or even your father) what came to your mind. For those whose fathers have died, perform a ritual for remembering: Play an album or read a book that he enjoyed, look through some family photographs, give to a cause that he supported, or visit a place that he liked.

Share his memory and tell someone a story from his life.

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In responding to children as cute, we are responding to many qualities that rightly, as if by healthy instinct, appeal to us. Children tend to be, among other things, healthy, energetic, quick, vital, vivacious, enthusiastic, resourceful, intelligent, intense, passionate, hopeful, trustful, and forgiving – they get very angry but do not, like us, bear grudges for long. Above all, they have a great capacity for delight, joy, and sorrow. But we should not think of these qualities or virtues as “childish,” the exclusive property of children. They are human qualities. We are wise to value them in people of all ages. When we think of these qualities as childish, belonging only to children, we invalidate them, make them seem things we should “outgrow” as we grow older. Thus we excuse ourselves for carelessly losing what we should have done our best to keep. Worse yet, we teach the children this lesson; most of the bright and successful ten-year-olds I have known, though they still kept the curiosity of their younger years, had learned to be ashamed of it and hide it. Only “little kids” went around all the time asking silly questions. To be grown-up was to be cool, impassive, unconcerned, untouched, invulnerable. Perhaps women are taught to feel this way less than men; perhaps custom gives them a somewhat greater license to be childlike, which they should take care not to lose.

But though we may respond authentically to many qualities of children, we too often respond either condescendingly or sentimentally to many others – condescendingly to their littleness, weakness, clumsiness, ignorance, inexperience, incompetence, helplessness, dependency, immoderation, and lack of any sense of time or proportion; and sentimentally to made-up notions about their happiness, carefreeness, innocence, purity, nonsexuality, goodness, spirituality, and wisdom. These notions are mostly nonsense. Children are not particularly happy or carefree; they have as many worries and fears as many adults, often the same ones. What makes them seem happy is their energy and curiosity, their involvement with life; they do not waste much time in brooding. Children are the farthest thing in the world from spiritual. They are not abstract, but concrete. They are animals and sensualists; to them, what feels good is good. They are self-absorbed and selfish. They have very little ability to put themselves in another person’s shoes, to imagine how he feels. This often makes them inconsiderate and sometimes cruel, but whether they are kind or cruel, generous or greedy, they are always so on impulse rather than by plan or principle. They are barbarians, primitives, about whom we are also often sentimental. Some of the things (which are not school subjects and can’t be “taught”) that children don’t know, but only learn in time and from living, are things they will be better for knowing. Growing up and growing older are not always or only or necessarily a decline and a defeat. Some of the understanding and wisdom that can come with time is real – which is why children are attracted by the natural authority of any adults who do respond authentically and respectfully to them.

We too often respond condescendingly or sentimentally.

One afternoon I was with several hundred people in an auditorium of a junior college when we heard outside the building the passionate wail of a small child. Almost everyone smiled, chuckled, or laughed. Perhaps there was something legitimately comic in the fact that one child should, without even trying, be able to interrupt the supposedly important thoughts and words of all these adults. But beyond this was something else, the belief that the feelings, pains, and passions of children were not real, not to be taken seriously. If we had heard outside the building the voice of an adult crying in pain, anger, or sorrow, we would not have smiled or laughed but would have been frozen in wonder and terror. Most of the time, when it is not an unwanted distraction, or a nuisance, the crying of children strikes us as funny. We think, there they go again, isn’t it something the way children cry, they cry about almost anything. But there is nothing funny about children’s crying. Until he has learned from adults to exploit his childishness and cuteness, a small child does not cry for trivial reasons but out of need, fear, or pain.

Once, coming into an airport, I saw just ahead of me a girl of about seven or eight. Hurrying up the carpeted ramp, she tripped and fell down. She did not hurt herself but quickly picked herself up and walked on. But looking around on everyone’s face I saw indulgent smiles, expressions of “isn’t that cute?” They would not have thought it funny or cute if an adult had fallen down but would have worried about his pain and embarrassment.

There is nothing funny about children’s crying.

The trouble with sentimentality, and the reason why it always leads to callousness and cruelty, is that it is abstract and unreal. We look at the lives and concerns and troubles of children as we might look at actors on a stage, a comedy as long as it does not become a nuisance. And so, since their feelings and their pain are neither serious nor real, any pain we may cause them is not real either. In any conflict of interest with us, they must give way; only our needs are real. Thus when an adult wants for his own pleasure to hug and kiss a child for whom his embrace is unpleasant or terrifying, we easily say that the child’s unreal feelings don’t count, it is only the adult’s real needs that count. People who treat children like living dolls when they are feeling good may treat them like unliving dolls when they are feeling bad. “Little angels” quickly become “little devils.”

Even in those happy families in which the children are not jealous of each other, not competing for a scarce supply of attention and approval, but are more or less good friends, they don’t think of each other as cute and are not sentimental about children littler than they are. Bigger children in happy families may be very tender and careful toward the little ones. But such older children do not tell themselves and would not believe stories about the purity and goodness of the smaller child. They know very well that the young child is littler, clumsier, more ignorant, more in need of help, and much of the time more unreasonable and troublesome. Because children do not think of each other as cute, they often seem to be harder on each other than we think we would be. They are blunt and unsparing. But on the whole this frankness, which accepts the other as a complete person, even if one not always or altogether admired, is less harmful to the children than the way many adults deal with them.

Much of what we respond to in children as cute is not strength or virtue, real or imagined, but weakness, a quality which gives us power over them or helps us to feel superior. Thus we think they are cute partly because they are little. But what is cute about being little? Children understand this very well. They are not at all sentimental about their own littleness. They would rather be big than little, and they want to get big as soon as they can.

On their part, they would want to become free, active, independent, and responsible as fast as they could, and since they were full-sized and could not be used any longer as living dolls or super-pets we would do all we could do to help them do so.

Or suppose that people varied in size as much as dogs, with normal adults anywhere from one foot to seven feet tall. We would not then think of the littleness of children as something that was cute. It would simply be a condition, like being bald or hairy, fat or thin. That someone was little would not be a signal for us to experience certain feelings or make important judgments about his character or the kinds of relationships we might have with him.

Children do not think of each other as cute.

Another quality of children that makes us think they are cute, makes us smile or get misty-eyed, is their “innocence.” What do we mean by this? In part we mean only that they are ignorant and inexperienced. But ignorance is not a blessing, it is a misfortune. Children are no more sentimental about their ignorance than they are about their size. They want to escape their ignorance, to know what’s going on, and we should be glad to help them escape it if they ask us and if we can. But by the innocence of children we mean something more – their hopefulness, trustfulness, confidence, their feeling that the world is open to them, that life has many possibilities, that what they don’t know they can find out, what they can’t do they can learn to do. These are qualities valuable in everyone. When we call them “innocence” and ascribe them only to children, as if they were too dumb to know any better, we are only trying to excuse our own hopelessness and despair.

Today in the Boston Public Garden I watched, as I often do, some infants who were just learning to walk. I used to think their clumsiness, their uncertain balance and wandering course, were cute. Now I tried to watch in a different spirit. For there is nothing cute about clumsiness, any more than littleness. Any adult who found it as hard to walk as a small child, and who did it so badly, would be called severely handicapped. We certainly would not smile, chuckle, and laugh at his efforts – and congratulate ourselves for doing so. Watching the children, I thought of this. And I reminded myself, as I often do when I see a very small child intent and absorbed in what he is doing and I am tempted to think of him as cute, “That child isn’t trying to be cute; he doesn’t see himself as cute; and he doesn’t want to be seen as cute. He is as serious about what he is doing now as any human being can be, and he wants to be taken seriously.”

What is cute about being little?

But there is something very appealing and exciting about watching children just learning to walk. They do it so badly, it is so clearly difficult, and in the child’s terms may even be dangerous. We know it won’t hurt him to fall down, but he can’t be sure of that and in any case doesn’t like it. Most adults, even many older children, would instantly stop trying to do anything that they did as badly as a new walker does his walking. But the infant keeps on. He is so determined, he is working so hard, and he is so excited; his learning to walk is not just an effort and struggle but a joyous adventure. As I watch this adventure, no less a miracle because we all did it, I try to respond to the child’s determination, courage, and pleasure, not his littleness, feebleness, and incompetence. To whatever voice in me says, “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice to pick up that dear little child and give him a big hug and kiss,” I reply, “No, no, no, that child doesn’t want to be picked up, hugged, and kissed, he wants to walk. He doesn’t know or care whether I like it or not, he is not walking for the approval or happiness of me or even for his parents beside him, but for himself. It is his show. Don’t try to turn him into an actor in your show. Leave him alone to get on with his work.”

We often think children are most cute when they are most intent and serious about what they are doing. In our minds we say to the child, “You think that what you are doing is important; we know it’s not; like everything else in your life that you take seriously, it is trivial.” We smile tenderly at the child carefully patting his mud pie. We feel that mud pie is not serious and all the work he is putting into it is a waste (though we may tell him in a honey-dearie voice that it is a beautiful mud pie). But he doesn’t know that; in his ignorance he is just as serious as if he were doing something important. How satisfying for us to feel we know better.

We tend to think that children are most cute when they are openly displaying their ignorance and incompetence. We value their dependency and helplessness. They are help objects as well as love objects. Children acting really competently and intelligently do not usually strike us as cute. They are as likely to puzzle and threaten us. We don’t like to see a child acting in a way that makes it impossible for us to look down on him or to suppose that he depends on our help. This is of course very true in school. The child whose teachers know that he knows things they don’t know may be in trouble. We know, too, how much schools and first-grade teachers hate to have children come to school already knowing how to read. How then will the school teach him? When we see a young child doing anything very well, we are likely to think there is something wrong with him. He is too precocious, he is peculiar, he is going to have troubles someday, he is “acting like an adult,” he has “lost his childhood.” Many people reacted so to the extraordinarily capable child pupils of the Japanese violin teacher Suzuki. And I remember the sociologist Omar K. Moore telling me that when he first showed that many three-year-olds, given certain kinds of typewriters and equipment to use and experiment with, could very quickly teach themselves to read (which they weren’t supposed to have the visual acuity, coordination, or mental ability to do), he received a flood of indignant and angry letters accusing him of mistreating the children.

Children do not like being incompetent any more than they like being ignorant. They want to learn how to do, and do well, the things they see being done by the bigger people around them.

Excerpted from Escape from Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children. New York: Ballantine Books, 1974. Reprinted with permission of Holt Associates. For reprint inquiries, write to info(AT)HoltGWS.com. For more information about John Holt, visit www.holtgws.com.

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The chores children performed included carrying wood, husking corn, gathering berries, leading oxen, carding wool, gathering
eggs and churning butter.  This work was often turned into play as children snag and skipped along while performing their duties.

When the children did have time to play, they enjoyed the same games that their parents and grandparents had played when they were young. And so it was, passed along from generation to generation. Technology may be speeding up, but I do not believe that we humans evolve as fast as the technology around us.

These wonderful little boats are a family activity that will connect you with your child and allow the space to slow down in a normally fast paced world.

You will need

Walnuts (how many boats do you wish to make?)
A large knife & board to open
Candle (we like beeswax)
A tooth pick or a small stick or twig
Paper, cloth or leaves
Water for sailing away

Use the knife to split the walnut carefully and remember to take the nut out. What you want is a perfectly shaped half.

Cut a small shape out of the paper or cloth to create a sail.

Your sail can be a rectangle or a triangle – get creative. It may be good to make several to try different shapes to see which sail best. Natural leaves make beautiful little boats but if you are using paper, you can also color or paint your sails.

Now, light the candle and drip some wax into the walnut. If you have candles left over from holidays or birthdays,  perfect. You are also recycling and making the most use of things (which is a very valuable lesson for children, especially these days).

Beeswax is really best for this, but any candle wax works.

Just remember to only place a small amount into the nut shell. Adding too  much wax will weigh them down and they may sink – we do not want that!

Thread the cocktail stick or matchstick through the top and bottom of the paper sail to form a mast.

Then insert into the wax before it cools.

You will have to hold it there for a moment. Yes, I know tape makes this easy, but I like to make the child hold it and wait, perhaps blowing gently while inhaling the sweet beeswax aroma. I have found small moments like these teach patience and reverence without any lecturing as it is all in the experience. Remember that it is the journey which is often more important than the destination.

When all cooled that the mast stands on it’s own, they are ready to set sail.

This is a great little toy, which amused all three of my children for hours and hours. They love to put them into puddles, so no stream or creek is necessary (though to see them go downstream and send them off with wishes is fun too!) If you do not have a puddle, then a large bowl, barrel, pail or even the bathtub works just as well.

Walnut boats are the perfect example of allowing a child the empowerment to make his or her own toy, use the imagination and natural materials that are fairy easy to gather and be deeply involved in play that soothes the soul and senses, from the beeswax, to enjoying the nuts, to having to carefully pierce their sails onto the masts, these little treasures inspire all sorts of wonderful imaginative play.

It is also magical how such simple things can become favorite and cherished toys. My children still have their small basket of their small acorn and walnut boats (the ones that were not sent away with wishes).

Here are some wonderful books to inspire toy making and play things from a simpler time…

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Nurturing a child’s love for learning begins with trust. As unschoolers, we trust our children to know when they are ready to learn and what they are interested in learning. We trust them to know how to go about learning. Parents commonly take this view of learning during the child’s first two years, when he is learning to stand, walk, talk, and to perform many other important and difficult things, with little help from anyone. No one worries that a baby will be too lazy, uncooperative, or unmotivated to learn these things; it is simply assumed that every baby is born wanting to learn the things he needs to know in order to understand and to participate in the world around him. These one- and two-year-old experts teach us several principles of learning:

Children are naturally curious and have a built-in desire to learn first-hand about the world around them.

John Holt, in his book How Children Learn, describes the natural learning style of young children:

“The child is curious. He wants to make sense out of things, find out how things work, gain competence and control over himself and his environment, and do what he can see other people doing. He is open, perceptive, and experimental. He does not merely observe the world around him. He does not shut himself off from the strange, complicated world around him, but tastes it, touches it, hefts it, bends it, breaks it. To find out how reality works, he works on it. He is bold. He is not afraid of making mistakes. And he is patient. He can tolerate an extraordinary amount of uncertainty, confusion, ignorance, and suspense. … School is not a place that gives much time, or opportunity, or reward, for this kind of thinking and learning.”1

Children know best how to go about learning something.

If left alone, children will know instinctively what method is best for them. Caring and observant parents soon learn that it is safe and appropriate to trust this knowledge. Such parents say to their baby, “Oh, that’s interesting! You’re learning how to crawl downstairs by facing backwards!” They do not say, “That’s the wrong way.” Perceptive parents are aware that there are many different ways to learn something, and they trust their children to know which ways are best for them.

Children need plentiful amounts of quiet time to think.

As John Holt noted in Teach Your Own, “Children who are good at fantasizing are better both at learning about the world and at learning to cope with its surprises and disappointment. It isn’t hard to see why this should be so. In fantasy we have a way of trying out situations, to get some feel of what they might be like, or how we might feel in them, without having to risk too much. It also gives us a way of coping with bad experiences, by letting us play and replay them in our mind until they have lost much of their power to hurt, or until we can make them come out in ways that leave us feeling less defeated and foolish.”2

But fantasy requires time, and time is the most endangered commodity in our lives. Fully-scheduled school hours and extracurricular activities leave little time for children to dream, to think, to invent solutions to problems, to cope with stressful experiences, or simply to fulfill the universal need for solitude and privacy.

Children are not afraid to admit ignorance and to make mistakes.

When Holt invited toddlers to play his cello, they would eagerly attempt to do so; schoolchildren and adults would invariably decline.

Unschooling children, free from the intimidation of public embarrassment and failing marks, retain their openness to new exploration. Children learn by asking questions, not by answering them. Toddlers ask many questions, and so do school children – until about grade three. By that time, many of them have learned an unfortunate fact: that in school, it can be more important for self-protection to hide one’s ignorance about a subject than to learn more about it, regardless of one’s curiosity.

Children take joy in the intrinsic values of whatever they are learning.

There is no need to motivate children through the use of extrinsic rewards, such as high grades or stars, which suggest to the child that the activity itself must be difficult or unpleasant; otherwise, why is a reward, which has nothing to do with the matter at hand, being offered? The wise parent says, “I think you’ll enjoy this book”, not “If you read this book, you’ll get a cookie.”

Children learn best about getting along with other people through interaction with those of all ages.

No parents would tell their baby, “You may only spend time with those children whose birthdays fall within six months of your own. Here’s another two-year-old to play with.”

John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, contends, “It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed, it cuts you off from your own past and future….”3

A child learns best about the world through first-hand experience.

No parent would tell her toddler, “Let’s put that caterpillar down and get back to your book about caterpillars.” Unschoolers learn directly about the world. Our son describes unschooling as “learning by doing instead of being taught.” Ironically, the most common objection about unschooling is that children are “being deprived of the real world.”

Children need and deserve ample time with their family.

Gatto warns us, “Between schooling and television, all the time children have is eaten up. That’s what has destroyed the American family.”4 Many unschoolers feel that family cohesiveness is perhaps the most meaningful benefit of the experience. Just as I saw his first step and heard his first word, I have the honor and privilege of sharing my son’s world and thoughts. Over the years, I have discovered more from him about life, learning, and love, than from any other source. The topic we seem to be learning the most about is the nature of learning itself. I sometimes wonder who learns more in unschooling families, the parents or the children!

Stress interferes with learning.

Einstein wrote, “It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion.”5 When a one-year-old falls down while learning to walk, we say, “Good try! You’ll catch on soon!” No caring parent would say, “Every baby your age should be walking. You’d better be walking by Friday!”

Most parents understand how difficult it is for their children to learn something when they are rushed, threatened, or given failing grades. John Holt warned that “we think badly, and even perceive badly, or not at all, when we are anxious or afraid… when we make children afraid, we stop learning dead in its tracks.”6

While infants and toddlers teach us many principles of learning, schools have adopted quite different principles, due to the difficulties inherent in teaching a large number of same-age children in a compulsory setting. The structure of school (required attendance, school-selected topics and books, and constant checking of the child’s progress) assumes that children are not natural learners, but must be compelled to learn through the efforts of others.

Natural learners do not need such a structure. The success of self-directed learning (unschoolers regularly outperform their schooled peers on measures of academic achievement, socialization, confidence, and self-esteem) strongly suggests that structured approaches inhibit both learning and personal development. Because unschooling follows principles of natural learning, children retain the curiosity, enthusiasm, and love of learning that every child has at birth.

Unschooling, as Holt writes, is a matter of faith. “This faith is that by nature people are learning animals. Birds fly; fish swim; humans think and learn. Therefore, we do not need to motivate children into learning by wheedling, bribing, or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do – and all we need to do – is to give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for, listen respectfully when they feel like talking, and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest.”7

1 Holt, John. How Children Learn (New York: Perseus Books Group, 1995), p. 287.
2 Holt, John. Teach Your Own (New York: Perseus Books Group, 2003), p. 128.
3 Gatto, John. Dumbing Us Down (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers), p. 24
4 Ibid., p.26.
5 Einstein, Albert. Autobiographical Notes, Open Court Publishing Company, 1991, p. 17.
6 Holt. How Children Learn, op. cit., p. xv.
7 Ibid., p. 293.

Article Source & Courtesy of Jan Hunt of The Natural Child Project

Jan Hunt, M.Sc., offers telephone counseling worldwide, with a focus on parenting, unschooling, and personal matters. She is the Director of The Natural Child Project and author of The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart and A Gift for Baby.

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Plenty of books and articles advise us against relying on punishment, from spanking to forcible isolation (“time out”). Occasionally someone will even ask us to rethink the practice of bribing children with stickers or food. But you’ll have to look awfully hard to find a discouraging word about what is euphemistically called positive reinforcement.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, the point here is not to call into question the importance of supporting and encouraging children, the need to love them and hug them and help them feel good about themselves. Praise, however, is a different story entirely. Here’s why.

1. Manipulating children. Suppose you offer a verbal reward to reinforce the behavior of a two-year-old who eats without spilling, or a five-year-old who cleans up her art supplies. Who benefits from this? Is it possible that telling kids they’ve done a good job may have less to do with their emotional needs than with our convenience?

Rheta DeVries, a professor of education at the University of Northern Iowa, refers to this as “sugar-coated control.” Very much like tangible rewards – or, for that matter, punishments – it’s a way of doing something to children to get them to comply with our wishes. It may be effective at producing this result (at least for a while), but it’s very different from working with kids – for example, by engaging them in conversation about what makes a classroom (or family) function smoothly, or how other people are affected by what we have done — or failed to do. The latter approach is not only more respectful but more likely to help kids become thoughtful people.

The reason praise can work in the short run is that young children are hungry for our approval. But we have a responsibility not to exploit that dependence for our own convenience. A “Good job!” to reinforce something that makes our lives a little easier can be an example of taking advantage of children’s dependence. Kids may also come to feel manipulated by this, even if they can’t quite explain why.

2. Creating praise junkies. To be sure, not every use of praise is a calculated tactic to control children’s behavior. Sometimes we compliment kids just because we’re genuinely pleased by what they’ve done. Even then, however, it’s worth looking more closely. Rather than bolstering a child’s self-esteem, praise may increase kids’ dependence on us. The more we say, “I like the way you….” or “Good ______ing,” the more kids come to rely on our evaluations, our decisions about what’s good and bad, rather than learning to form their own judgments. It leads them to measure their worth in terms of what will lead us to smile and dole out some more approval.

Mary Budd Rowe, a researcher at the University of Florida, discovered that students who were praised lavishly by their teachers were more tentative in their responses, more apt to answer in a questioning tone of voice (“Um, seven?”). They tended to back off from an idea they had proposed as soon as an adult disagreed with them. And they were less likely to persist with difficult tasks or share their ideas with other students.

In short, “Good job!” doesn’t reassure children; ultimately, it makes them feel less secure. It may even create a vicious circle such that the more we slather on the praise, the more kids seem to need it, so we praise them some more. Sadly, some of these kids will grow into adults who continue to need someone else to pat them on the head and tell them whether what they did was OK. Surely this is not what we want for our daughters and sons.

3. Stealing a child’s pleasure. Apart from the issue of dependence, a child deserves to take delight in her accomplishments, to feel pride in what she’s learned how to do. She also deserves to decide when to feel that way. Every time we say, “Good job!”, though, we’re telling a child how to feel.

To be sure, there are times when our evaluations are appropriate and our guidance is necessary — especially with toddlers and preschoolers. But a constant stream of value judgments is neither necessary nor useful for children’s development. Unfortunately, we may not have realized that “Good job!” is just as much an evaluation as “Bad job!” The most notable feature of a positive judgment isn’t that it’s positive, but that it’s a judgment. And people, including kids, don’t like being judged.

I cherish the occasions when my daughter manages to do something for the first time, or does something better than she’s ever done it before. But I try to resist the knee-jerk tendency to say, “Good job!” because I don’t want to dilute her joy. I want her to share her pleasure with me, not look to me for a verdict. I want her to exclaim, “I did it!” (which she often does) instead of asking me uncertainly, “Was that good?”

4. Losing interest. “Good painting!” may get children to keep painting for as long as we keep watching and praising. But, warns Lilian Katz, one of the country’s leading authorities on early childhood education, “once attention is withdrawn, many kids won’t touch the activity again.” Indeed, an impressive body of scientific research has shown that the more we reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward. Now the point isn’t to draw, to read, to think, to create – the point is to get the goody, whether it’s an ice cream, a sticker, or a “Good job!”

In a troubling study conducted by Joan Grusec at the University of Toronto, young children who were frequently praised for displays of generosity tended to be slightly less generous on an everyday basis than other children were. Every time they had heard “Good sharing!” or “I’m so proud of you for helping,” they became a little less interested in sharing or helping. Those actions came to be seen not as something valuable in their own right but as something they had to do to get that reaction again from an adult. Generosity became a means to an end.

Does praise motivate kids? Sure. It motivates kids to get praise. Alas, that’s often at the expense of commitment to whatever they were doing that prompted the praise.

5. Reducing achievement. As if it weren’t bad enough that “Good job!” can undermine independence, pleasure, and interest, it can also interfere with how good a job children actually do. Researchers keep finding that kids who are praised for doing well at a creative task tend to stumble at the next task – and they don’t do as well as children who weren’t praised to begin with.

Why does this happen? Partly because the praise creates pressure to “keep up the good work” that gets in the way of doing so. Partly because their interest in what they’re doing may have declined. Partly because they become less likely to take risks – a prerequisite for creativity – once they start thinking about how to keep those positive comments coming.

More generally, “Good job!” is a remnant of an approach to psychology that reduces all of human life to behaviors that can be seen and measured. Unfortunately, this ignores the thoughts, feelings, and values that lie behind behaviors. For example, a child may share a snack with a friend as a way of attracting praise, or as a way of making sure the other child has enough to eat. Praise for sharing ignores these different motives. Worse, it actually promotes the less desirable motive by making children more likely to fish for praise in the future.

*
Once you start to see praise for what it is – and what it does – these constant little evaluative eruptions from adults start to produce the same effect as fingernails being dragged down a blackboard. You begin to root for a child to give his teachers or parents a taste of their own treacle by turning around to them and saying (in the same saccharine tone of voice), “Good praising!”

Still, it’s not an easy habit to break. It can seem strange, at least at first, to stop praising; it can feel as though you’re being chilly or withholding something. But that, it soon becomes clear, suggests that we praise more because we need to say it than because children need to hear it. Whenever that’s true, it’s time to rethink what we’re doing.

What kids do need is unconditional support, love with no strings attached. That’s not just different from praise – it’s the opposite of praise. “Good job!” is conditional. It means we’re offering attention and acknowledgement and approval for jumping through our hoops, for doing things that please us.

This point, you’ll notice, is very different from a criticism that some people offer to the effect that we give kids too much approval, or give it too easily. They recommend that we become more miserly with our praise and demand that kids “earn” it. But the real problem isn’t that children expect to be praised for everything they do these days. It’s that we’re tempted to take shortcuts, to manipulate kids with rewards instead of explaining and helping them to develop needed skills and good values.

So what’s the alternative? That depends on the situation, but whatever we decide to say instead has to be offered in the context of genuine affection and love for who kids are rather than for what they’ve done. When unconditional support is present, “Good job!” isn’t necessary; when it’s absent, “Good job!” won’t help.

If we’re praising positive actions as a way of discouraging misbehavior, this is unlikely to be effective for long. Even when it works, we can’t really say the child is now “behaving himself”; it would be more accurate to say the praise is behaving him. The alternative is to work with the child, to figure out the reasons he’s acting that way. We may have to reconsider our own requests rather than just looking for a way to get kids to obey. (Instead of using “Good job!” to get a four-year-old to sit quietly through a long class meeting or family dinner, perhaps we should ask whether it’s reasonable to expect a child to do so.)

We also need to bring kids in on the process of making decisions. If a child is doing something that disturbs others, then sitting down with her later and asking, “What do you think we can do to solve this problem?” will likely be more effective than bribes or threats. It also helps a child learn how to solve problems and teaches that her ideas and feelings are important. Of course, this process takes time and talent, care and courage. Tossing off a “Good job!” when the child acts in the way we deem appropriate takes none of those things, which helps to explain why “doing to” strategies are a lot more popular than “working with” strategies.

And what can we say when kids just do something impressive? Consider three possible responses:

* Say nothing. Some people insist a helpful act must be “reinforced” because, secretly or unconsciously, they believe it was a fluke. If children are basically evil, then they have to be given an artificial reason for being nice (namely, to get a verbal reward). But if that cynicism is unfounded – and a lot of research suggests that it is – then praise may not be necessary.

* Say what you saw. A simple, evaluation-free statement (“You put your shoes on by yourself” or even just “You did it”) tells your child that you noticed. It also lets her take pride in what she did. In other cases, a more elaborate description may make sense. If your child draws a picture, you might provide feedback – not judgment – about what you noticed: “This mountain is huge!” “Boy, you sure used a lot of purple today!”

If a child does something caring or generous, you might gently draw his attention to the effect of his action on the other person: “Look at Abigail’s face! She seems pretty happy now that you gave her some of your snack.” This is completely different from praise, where the emphasis is on how you feel about her sharing

* Talk less, ask more. Even better than descriptions are questions. Why tell him what part of his drawing impressed you when you can ask him what he likes best about it? Asking “What was the hardest part to draw?” or “How did you figure out how to make the feet the right size?” is likely to nourish his interest in drawing. Saying “Good job!”, as we’ve seen, may have exactly the opposite effect.

This doesn’t mean that all compliments, all thank-you’s, all expressions of delight are harmful. We need to consider our motives for what we say (a genuine expression of enthusiasm is better than a desire to manipulate the child’s future behavior) as well as the actual effects of doing so. Are our reactions helping the child to feel a sense of control over her life — or to constantly look to us for approval? Are they helping her to become more excited about what she’s doing in its own right – or turning it into something she just wants to get through in order to receive a pat on the head

It’s not a matter of memorizing a new script, but of keeping in mind our long-term goals for our children and watching for the effects of what we say. The bad news is that the use of positive reinforcement really isn’t so positive. The good news is that you don’t have to evaluate in order to encourage.

Copyright © 2001 by Alfie Kohn. This article may be downloaded, reproduced, and distributed without permission as long as each copy includes this notice along with citation information (i.e., name of the periodical in which it originally appeared, date of publication, and author’s name). Permission must be obtained in order to reprint this article in a published work or in order to offer it for sale in any form. Please write to the address indicated on the Contact page at www.alfiekohn.org.

NOTE: An abridged version of this article was published in Parents magazine in May 2000 with the title “Hooked on Praise.” For a more detailed look at the issues discussed here — as well as a comprehensive list of citations to relevant research — please see the books Punished by Rewards and Unconditional Parenting.

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