I wrote the New Years wish below four years ago, and I still find it relevant to my thinking about the world I wish for our children. It pairs nicely with thinking and writing I am currently doing regarding resilience–a hot word these days in education circles. Most of that conversation strikes me as increasingly off-track in that we act as if we need to teach kids resilience when I believe our energy would be better spent helping kids to maintain the resilience they are born with. Having seen children time and again face the most dramatic kinds of adversity they will ever face with strength and resolve, I worry that a too hovering approach to young people risks eroding the strength that is naturally placed within them. By our hovering, we can inhibit their growth. I say that knowing full well as a parent our responsibility to keep them safe, to protect them from a world that can be dangerous.I have no perfect answer here, but I believe we must strive as the adults in lives of children to strike the right balance between providing guidance and freedom for our kids. I have a feeling I will write more about this soon, but for now I will repost “A New Years Wish: Let Kids Wander.”
And the wandering was not merely in the physical world.With few playmates and a much restricted realm for movement, imagination grew and grew; curiosity flowered; small pain was never fatal. It became the whetstone for a sharp-edged resiliency. Merry Christmas.RB
Beautiful. Perhaps I should know, but I don’t…Whose lines are these?
Sorry to disappoint but they are the muttering of R. Byrd.
Wow–not a disappointment at all. In fact, perhaps the best comment on the blog so far.
https://youtu.be/O1ozcAkPtGU