How to Before Have to

Communities fail to achieve autonomy when the system for education focuses on teaching rather than learning. It is essential that we learn how to accomplish, confront, and complete necessary skills and tasks with an open mind early in life, before the need to arises. So that when a need arises, we are not shocked or overwhelmed by our lack of knowledge and skilled, but prepared and proud of our self-sufficiency.

For children to learn, they must

1. Be in a good mood, and

2. Do it themselves

From Laundry to Love, learning the ropes of the world takes time. Harnessing and exercising patience and practice is central to developing into curious and autonomous individuals, capable of taking on life's challenges.

I didn't learn to do my laundry until I left for college, and I hadn't learned to ask for help without feeling ashamed of my lack of independence until well after that. My confidence was low and my sensitivity was high. I doubted and thought very little of myself, and expected the world to agree.

But it wasn't lack of independence that caused doubt so much as lack of experience. I'd been given the tools and (more important) freedom to learn so much that wasn’t available to many of my peers, but also the freedom to opt out of the mundane tasks that need to be done--the helpful tasks that western culture groans over and, now more than ever, outsources to a machine or hired help..

Children love to help and, like the adults they become, and the adults we are, they need to feel significant, helpful, important in their community. Contributing to household tasks provides this sense of importance to the family unit - their community. But it does more than this--learning tasks in our early years helps us learn more complex tasks later on. Learning to do chores when helping is fun allows them to remain enjoyable. Not because the task is enjoyable, but because the chore is innate, and the appreciation they’re shown is significant.

Learning to ask for help is a good example of this.

We must learn to ask for help when needs are obvious, like tying a shoe or getting a cup from a cupboard. Children don’t know that these needs are obvious. Children simply know that they’re thirsty or are having trouble doing a task they haven’t mastered yet. Practicing with simple and common tasks normalizes the act of asking for when the need becomes less apparent, and we risk exposing our ignorance. Like confronting and managing an emotional or mental health stress. Learning to ask for help when we’re young helps to destigmatize the need for help later in life.

Not only can the need for help be less apparent when we’re older, but unsolicited advice and help can feel like an intrusion on one’s autonomy. And so we don’t ask. And if we don’t ask, we can’t learn. And we’ve told ourselves that if we aren’t asked, we can’t help.

Patience, I (currently) believe, is the foundation of all things good in the world. Often requiring prerequisite skills, the most worthwhile and satisfying tasks are learned gradually, take effort, and experience failure.

Before we can be receptive to learning a new task, we must learn abstract skills like emotional regulation, the ability to seek and ask for help, and admit to a fault or lack of knowledge.

Children pay attention to the way the world works, the way it reacts to them, and the way their bodies feel in response to everyday, environmental stimuli. While their method may not seem as fine-tuned or efficient as an adult's, it'll get there with space and time. It is essential that we have patience to allow for their practice.

Practice, like patience, suggests a need for grace in time. Tasks must be done repeatedly before they’re mastered, and under various emotional and physical circumstances.

And so, children must learn to do, by doing. From Laundry to love.

There will be dirty clothes, and there will be heartbreak, these are facts of life and the ability to overcome the stress of them relies on our preparedness and resiliency to encounter unexpected and unfamiliar circumstances.

Learning how to do laundry will be overwhelming when the pile is overflowing, there are no clean clothes, a paper is due for an 8am class, and laundry takes patience. There is detergent, waiting, switching clothes to the dryer, more waiting, and then sorting.

Learning to overcome heartbreak is much the same. Friendships are made and lost. People move, pass away, and break ties. Learning to cope with these situations in the space of one’s own head allows us to consider our body’s physical, emotional, and physiological responses so that we’re prepared to autonomously manage them when help and support isn’t readily available.

Learning "how to" early in life doesn't only make it easier, but it makes it possible when you "have to" do the laundry on a deadline, fitting in every other mundane task life has managed to throw at you.

Flexibility, a friend reminds me, is the key to happiness.

With flexibility, all things are as possible as they’ll ever be.