If you haven't had the pleasure of listening to a child narrate their own experience, you're missing out. Until children learn to think their thoughts, they’ll speak them, narrating their experience and perspective of external and internal stimuli. Children are often content to pretend (what we may call a daydream) conversations with the real people in their lives. This form of storytelling is eminently important to their development. Adults, when sharing space with a storytelling child, seem to be instinctively and intuitively drawn to engage, when observing would suffice.
And so, I began to wonder what might happen if I weren’t to respond to a child’s innocent narration... Was this impulse to interject intuitive or perhaps a cultural phenomenon? I doubted that my participation in their narration were desired, and even less likely helpful to their experience.
To test this theory, I made a rule for myself: I wouldn't engage with children unless they engaged with me, and even then, I would monitor my level of involvement. I figured their reaction would determine the outcome (and maintained the right to interject if and when appropriate). Would they learn faster? Build more confidence? And generally become more capable with the space I gave them? The most "progressive" schools seemed to think so, and I tended to agree, but hadn't actually put it to the test. And so it began
From comments about snacks to conflict with friends, siblings, or themselves, I learned to butt out. Or at least not to butt in. And I began to see the whole of childhood as "play." I pretended not to hear their comments, laughter, or (sometimes) tears until my attention had been sought out. (exceptions are made, of course, for cases of true pain and actual danger)
This pretending became my own form of play, albeit unintentional and quite by accident. It's secretive but never neglectful, and always permitted. I began to feel engaged as a spectator, audience member, or fly on the wall. While every moment may not have been a learning opportunity, the children had space to consider their perspective on various situations, and explore the options available to them, perhaps discovering a unique resolve that I wouldn't have come up with. I was reverse-engineering my way out of the negative, argumentative, directive, and top-down method of engagement. My unsolicited interjections began to feel intrusive to their freedom of exploration. We may not have been equals, per say — I was still an adult, and they were children, and we were well aware of this fact — we began to profoundly respect one another. They were still learning about the world, and were aware that I had a way to show them, yet they wanted to try to figure it out for themselves. Whatever it was. Then an amazing thing happened: Though I wanted to show them my way, sitting on the edge of my seat at times waiting for them to tag me in, I found myself awe-struck by their proficiency to problem solve. Continuously finding new and curious ways to do things that I hadn't thought to try, but that worked just as well.
I found my rules became my behavior, and my engagement had taken a full 180. I no longer sat at the edge of my seat, waiting to be asked for help. I no longer wanted to show them my way.
I WANTED to see what they would come up with.
And I realized one day that my stress, amazingly, had essentially vanished.
All because I wasn't interrupting, engaging in, inserting myself into, monitoring, or directing children's play.
Play is serious business, and just as I appreciate space to focus, children appreciate space and autonomy to determine when my attention is wanted, needed, and helpful.
Play is for learning valuable skills.
Skills like noticing the world around us, learning to distinguish between a threatening stress and simply being surprised or startled.
Play is for learning to problem solve.
Play is for learning to observe; to pay attention to how the world looks.
Here's the kicker: Play isn't always fun and games, but it is always a choice. The natural evolution of the rules follows the needs and desires of the players.
Play ends when a player checks out, whether they remain in the game or not.
Play never begins if a player fails to check in, regardless if they're physically present or not.
Adults are notoriously guilty of this, always keeping one eye, and the majority of our minds, on something else.
Play is disrupted when the audience member speaks out of turn, interrupting the narrator.
In essence, until children learn to think their thoughts, they will speak them out loud. Considering their observations and curiosities, speaking them aloud to themselves, and around us. As adults, providing children the space needed to process these thoughts can feel neglectful. When in fact, space can be a profound sign that we HAVE BEEN paying attention to their development and earned autonomy. This rule comes with a caveat: In this process of reverse engineering myself out of full - almost intrusive - engagement into "full" autonomy, I learned to consider the various personal, social, and biological cultures that may be present. And so in my attempt to provide autonomy, I'm able to ensure that I don't accidentally replace attention with a feeling of neglect. Each person is different, has unique expectations, and personal affections to the treatment they receive, and the response they provide. Therefore, the process of moving from full engagement to full disengagement looks vastly different for each child and adult involved.
When allowed, play is those moments when they're bossing each other around or being bossed around. Play is when they're hurt or happy or sad or bored and they choose not to seek us out but to attend to a scraped knee or even pretend a conversation -out loud- with a fictional version of us so they can explore various, unexpected, and alternative endings.
Children crave the flexibility of pretending the version of us in their daydream: our fictional selves, the version of us that only appears in stories they tell themselves.
The version of us that follows a unique script: their narration.
And so, unbeknownst to us, we end their play when we disrupt their narration.
By giving children space, their focus will not be on us and directing our behavior, but on their internal experience. They may exist in a world of their creation, focusing on the feelings of emotional and physical joys and upsets.
Away from our disruption, children may finally listen, pay attention to, follow, and learn to trust their own experience. And, who knows, as we observe their play, we may find ourselves learning a thing or two from them. And so, my attempt to provide a handful of children autonomy in our shared space proved to be beneficial not only to them, but to myself. There was no question whether the children's confidence had increased, but they were learning and exhibiting skills that they'd been terrified of for years. Their stress levels appeared to have lowered, and we were on exceptional (and extremely respectful) terms. I began to see, and treat, every relationship differently. Relationships with adults, children, and even my dog at times (we're all just animals, after all).
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