It is a telling indictment of modern mainstream parenting culture that most parents can hardly wait for the Christmas Break or the Spring Break to end so they can send their kids back to school. The end of August brings similar remarks of “Can’t wait to get back to the routine” and “The kids are going squirrelly–must be time to send them back to school”.

Mainstream parents have endorsed and swallowed the myth that children thrive on routine. Yes, I said it’s a myth. Children are imaginative, creative and exuberant: how can they possibly be authentic when confined to a routine? And yet I hear it all time. Children thrive on routine. No, they don’t. The truth is that adults thrive on routine, especially adults who are responsible for the care of creative, imaginative and exuberant children.

I can see that there are lots of adults who are eager to get their kids back to a routine because the adults are unable to cope with the spontaneity of the children. Conversely, I also hear parents who complain that when their children are at home they don’t do anything–except watch TV, play video games and mope around the house. The parents of these kids think that they need school so that their children will be entertained. These parents have never considered that their children are desperate to take back control of their own time but that school has so wrecked the children that they don’t even know what to do with their own time.

Some families take the myth of thriving on routine to an extreme. In the last 2 years, Partner-Guy (he’s an elementary school teacher) has had 2 students who have lost a parent during the school year. In one case, the father of a Grade 3 girl died suddenly of a heart attack on a Tuesday and the child was sent to school on Thursday. The funeral was on Friday. She was back at school on Monday. In the other case, the mother of a Grade 2 girl died after a lengthy illness. The girl missed about a week of school while her grandparents visited but when they returned home she was returned to school. The girl cried on a daily basis and simply could not cope, and when Partner-Guy suggested that maybe she needed more time at home with her father and grandparents, the principal insisted that she would be better off keeping to her regular routine at school. Good grief.

You know what children thrive on? Predictability and familiarity. This is more than just semantics. School offers routine but it does not offer predictability, even with all its schedules and rules. There is just nothing predictable about 20 children of different backgrounds and experiences forced to be together every day. One day you have a best friend; the next day she hates you. One day you make a beautiful picture that everyone compliments; the next day your underwear is sticking out the back of your pants and everyone makes fun of you.

Predictability only happens within the familiarity of a safe environment where everyone treats each other with kindness, patience and respect. This the exact opposite of school. In fact, most families barely manage to do it. Routines become so etched in stone that people stop thinking. They zone-out. They are completely unable to think outside the box. Their brains are stifled by routines.

Predictability and familiarity allow children to thrive because it reduces their stress. Routines do not get rid of stress. In fact, the routine of getting to school on time and picking up the kids at daycare on time and going to swimming lessons on time is very stress-producing. And is the purpose of keeping kids on a routine to prepare them for life as an adult? Then why do most adults thrive on sleeping in on the weekends?  Why do most adults seem to hold their breath until they get two weeks of vacation respite AWAY from the routine?

Routines are not a component of living a life of freedom and joy. I can’t think of any reason why, as an adult, I would chose to restrict my life by imposing a strict routine. I am thrilled to be earning an income in a way that allows me to chose my own hours, my own priorities and my own paycheque. Unless our financial viability is in grave danger I will not chose to return to a job with a standard 5-day work week.

I don’t thrive on routine either.  Do you?

My sister’s son’s teacher thinks he’s not doing his best. She says some of his work displays his best effort, but the work is inconsistent and he will have to try harder this term.

Fortunately, my sister does not place a lot of value on the teacher’s opinion of her son, but she asked me what she should say to the teacher at the parent-teacher interview. I said she should ask the teacher if SHE is doing her best.

 Do you do your best all day every day? Did you use your best effort when you made your bed this morning? What about the lunch you threw together to bring to work–was that your best? Did you teach your best lessons today, and was every interaction you had with every child and every adult your best? Is that outfit the best you could come up with today? Did you even look in a mirror when you fixed your hair? Where’s your motivation to eat better and lose weight? Aren’t you motivated to do your best and be your best?

This idea that children must do their best effort on every mundane, contrived assignment from the teacher is as ridiculous as it would be for my sister to talk to the teacher in the manner I suggested. What she could say to the teacher is “In my opinion, when a five year old is away from his mommy all day and has to get along with 19 other kids all day, just surviving it is doing his best.”

As adults we don’t do our best on every task all day long. I do my best to make a fabulous supper that everyone will enjoy about once a week, not every day (and the rest of the time we eat a lot of rice!). And I pre-treat the stains on my children’s clothes once in a while before I do the laundry, not every time. When motivated, I do my best on the little mundane tasks of life, and the rest of the time I do good enough.

Can’t we assume that an eight year old boy is intelligent enough to pick and choose what he wants to put his full effort into?

Doesn’t it really come down to what adults expect from children? Why is it that if we see that a child has demonstrated a particular skill one time that the child should be able to perform at that level every time? My daughter Jasmine learned how to do up zippers last fall, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t done up a zipper for her since then: Some zippers are tricky. Sometimes fingers don’t do exactly what we want them to. Sometimes another piece of clothing (or a little sister) is in the way. In other words, the circumstances of every day are always different, and just because she can’t or doesn’t do her zipper one time, it doesn’t mean she isn’t trying her best.

Doing Our Best Buiding

My attitude toward my children is that they are always doing their best. To go one step further, I actually believe that children are wired (to be read: predisposed) to always do their best. Even when a child is having a full-scale melt down, I believe she is really trying her best to handle the situation. Babies even are trying their best. After all, they are just trying to survive.

My daughter Holly used to say “I was just trying” whenever things seemed to go amiss (such as spilling her cereal or tripping over a toy or dropping the Duplo creation she spent 30 minutes on). Yes, of course she was trying. Trying her best. And when she cries about the spill or the fall or the broken sculpture, she is doing her best to handle her disappointment or hurt or frustration. And sometimes I want her to do something that she is not very motivated to do (like play with Julian so I can have a shower) and then it is no surprise to me that she does not use her full effort to entertain the baby. It is perfectly natural that she reserves her best effort for doing the things that matter to her the most.

Let’s stop pushing kids to put their maximum effort into the things that don’t matter to them.  Instead, let’s trust them to pursue their strengths and interests with all the fortitude and passion they were born with.

I can’t wait to see the results!

A mainstream magazine I glanced at the other day featured yet another story about how kids need more exercise.  Actually what the article says is that Canadians, both children and adults, need more exercise but not as much as was originally recommended.  Overall, apparently, we’re fat and unhealthy so the original recommendation was too much to expect us to achieve.  Instead, we are told by Health Canada that we still need more exercise, but we can relax because they’ve lowered their expectations of us.

Let’s look at this another way.  Since most children, apparently, can’t reach the original target of 60-90 minutes of physical activity per day, Health Canada has decreased their recommendation to just 60 minutes.  And even for the children who were capable of ‘exercising’ for 60-90 minutes daily, it is now, apparently, OK for them to stop at 60 minutes.  Set the bar lower, and don’t encourage anyone to go beyond it, even if they’re capable.

Is it possible that kids who are just borderline overweight will now begin to exercise less and become fully overweight?  Are we now trying to create a society of marginally healthy people?  People who are content to achieve a mediocre level of health?  Get the overweight kids to bring their weight down a little and don’t worry if the healthy kids pack on a few pounds.

Now I’m just being facetious of course, but honestly the whole topic of children and exercise is so ridiculous that I just can’t help ridiculing the article.  And it seems that every magazine I glance at is committed to running articles about getting kids more active.  I laugh when I see these articles.

It is backwards logic.

Just an Active Day at the Toronto Zoo

First we lock kids up all day.  We yell at them not to run in the halls.  We stop them from skipping and dancing.  We make them walk slowly up and down stairs all holding the railing.  We free them from their cells for 15 minutes during which time they are expected to use the bathroom and then put on all their winter garments and still have time to run around outside.  We give lip-service to the idea that kids should walk to school (although this only applies in the city, obviously) but then we give some kids diagnostic labels and we happily bus them from their homes to other schools to accommodate their exceptionalities.  And then after doing everything that we can to make them be still we lecture them and shame them because they are overweight, unhealthy and inactive.

No healthy, active child would ever choose to go to school and sit in a desk for 300 minutes per day.  Never.  And no child would chose to be still for a long period followed by 60 minutes of continuous physical activity.  The concept of exercise as we tend to apply it is meant for adults and not children.  Adults like to compartmentalize their activities and so they separate physical activity from their jobs and their families and their social time.  Kids just don’t think that way.  They don’t need time scheduled as physical activity time.  They just need the freedom to move their bodies when they are inclined to do so.

My children do not participate in any scheduled activities and during the winter they rarely play outside.  But they are active all day.  They run up and down the stairs at least 20 times daily.  They dance and skip from room to room.  They climb over chairs, tables and couches just to get from one place to another, rather than going around the furniture.  They jump on the beds and sometimes crawl under them.  I have seen Anna balance on one foot while eating her entire lunch.  I have seen Holly jump on two feet from room to room to room for a whole afternoon.  I have seen Jazzy scramble up onto the bed, jump to the other side, jump off, run around the end and climb back up, over and over, shrieking and laughing and loving every minute of it.  My kids are getting enough physical activity.

An authentic child plays authentically, moving with freedom and joy from one activity to another.  An authentic child is active, curious, creative and busy.  If mainstream children are going to be blamed for their own inactivity, maybe we should start giving them the freedom to choose what they do all day.  Just a thought.