The world I want to live in focused on strengths over deficits. It is focused not only on what is going wrong, but it focuses more often on what is going right. In the world that I want to live in, we have rules for children that are based on the behaviors that we do want rather than the ones that we don’t want.
In this world, we do not look at developmental charts of what a child should be doing at a certain age. We figure out where a child is at right now in this moment and what is the next step in their development. We look at what is motivating to the child, and we use those motivators to inspire learning. It uses a growth mindset and breaks tasks into small, doable pieces.
The world I want to live in is playful. In their book Bright from the Start, Stamm and Spencer say “the critical link between play and learning – the reason we repeat something and therefore learn from it – is pleasure.”
In my world, we value parents as being the experts in their family and in their children. We encourage and inspire them to be the people that know their children best and we value their opinion about what will work for their child. We create a culture that inspires people to get to know their child well, and to continue to get to know them as they change over time.
In the world that I want to live in, people know that it isn’t fair to expect someone to think clearly when their lid is flipped. And we all work together to help each other to manage our lid flipping experiences, and we build calming rituals for those tough moments.
