More Harm Than Good

  Not allowing a child to use their muscles, their inner assessment skills, or to get to know their physical and mental capabilities is doing more harm than good. 

Not allowing a child to learn to trust themselves, but instead teaching them to lean on the assessment of adults does nothing to promote true safety. In fact, I'd argue that it creates an unsafe environment. 

 Not allowing a child to fall and learn how to get back up and try again is setting them up for a life of not being able to deal with failure. 

No one is suggesting that we allow children to jump off of a roof onto concrete, but bumps and scrapes are a part of childhood and an important learning tool. 

It is not our job to stifle the child's natural ability to decern what is too risky for them. 

It is not our job to restrict a child from learning to trust themselves and know their own capabilities. Let's make sure we are not doing more harm than good by "protecting" children. 

Instead, it is our job to design environments that support the child's inner need to take risks, jump, climb, run and roughhouse. To provide safe spaces for children to self-assess. 

To allow children to fall and get back up again. To feel the feeling of making a misjudgment and be motivated to alter their way of moving. 

This environment along with the time to explore it will allow the child to develop key skills needed to "be careful" to self-assess, to develop the proper muscles to safety perform challenging tasks.  

This new found trust and self-knowledge will present its self cognitively, physically,  as well as socially and emotionally contributing to the building of a whole complete child.  

Let's be sure that we are not doing More Harm Than Good. 

You Can See It

Like the layers on a cake, knowledge is built.. Like a block tower, knowledge is built block by block layer by layer, if you watch closely, you can see it.

We observe for this growth and development of understanding, the construction of new knowledge.  Children's play is so full of it... it's in everything they do, If you look closely, you can see it.

When a child goes from filling and dumping to filling and transporting then dumping.

Then to filling, transporting, refilling, then dumping.

 Then later repeating these actions while adding tools, adding ramps, and adding additional play partners.

We are seeing their understanding grow, their intrinsic interest deepen, and the difficulty level rise.  If you look closely, you can see it.