Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

Writing an essay on all the points at which we’re socially conditioned to fail children — to give them up too early so we can get back to work, to cling to them at just when they need to start moving away from us, right on up to the higher ed debt trap... it’s overwhelmingly sad.

I think this is the beginning of my calling, tbh. I think I could easily spend my life training parents of <4 year olds to mother/father the crap out of their very young children & then start the painful process of measured “abandonment” with the bumpers up.

(TBC: “measured abandonment” is painful for the parent, not the child. IMO, there are good reasons to believe that a child who is not tolerating the forced separation of preschool/kindergarten well is not ready to go. One tough morning is one thing; when it’s sustained, listen.)

It’s important for parents to know that the educational infrastructure is not evidence-based in the child’s best interest. If it were, high school classes wouldn’t start until after 10 AM and bunks would be provided for students whose parents needed them out of the house prior.

It's uncomfortable writing as a non-parent, but I'm emboldened by the way the children I'm working with respond to me. I sort of naturally moved into a very childlike position myself, sitting when the adults were standing & frequently pulled into kid-play by the kids themselves