1KHO 791: Play Is the Untold Hero | Dr. Deborah McNamara, Rest, Play Grow

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Honestly during a packed summer having one less daily chore to think about makes a huge difference. Maintain your cat's litter while focusing on your growing family. Learn more about Whiskers Litter Robot models and starter kits today to get set up before the summer craziness arrives. Take an additional $50 off bundles with code 1000 hours when you shop whisker.com slash 1000 hours. That's an additional $50 off bundles with code 1000 hours at whisker.com slash 1000 hours. Welcome to the 1000 hours outside podcast. My name is Ginny Orch and the founder of 1000 hours outside and I've just read a fantastic book. It is called Rest Play Grow making sense of preschoolers or anyone who acts like one but I found that this would be so applicable to parents of any age for whatever stage your kids are in but also for yourself. There is so much that you learn about in this book and the author Dr. Deborah McNamara is here. She also has a book called Nourished. Welcome Deborah. Thank you so much for having me and for your enthusiasm. I'm delighted you loved it. I loved it. People you know young kids you are so misunderstood. Yes they're so misunderstood. Okay so would you give us a little bit of your back story. You did a postdoctoral internship with Gordon Newfield and I just actually had the opportunity of interviewing him and I've been talking about his book constantly. Hold on to your kids. This takes it I think in a like there's different depth here in Rest Play Grow as well as really focusing on these earlier years. So how did you get interested in this topic. I had a child and I was a counselor and while I was dealing with adults with their own counseling issues I thought now that I'm a parent I want to try to figure out what that looks like in terms of raising a child in today's world where we understand attachment and human development and so I basically said I need to find some experts in the field that I can anchor into some science and I found Gordon Newfield's work and that was 22 years ago and so I've done nothing but study with Gordon work with Gordon and felt strongly that his developmental relational approach needed to get out into the world and obviously being a parent and a researcher and an author wanted to contribute my own spin on all those things so that's why I'm here. Oh I love it. Did you say that his was it his wife who helped you come up with a title of it. Yes Joy actually did and Gordon did as well so we were sitting around just at a conference and I said yeah I don't know what to call my book and you know it's like naming your child you know you want something special and you're thinking twice about it and what it means and Joy Newfield she's just so succinct and she just gets it and she translates things so easily and she said well it's just rest play grow that's the developmental roadmap you rather play than you grow I'm like Joy can I can I use that for the book she goes sure whatever we actually called our conference that for the longest time the second part of that making sense of preschoolers or anyone who acts like one I didn't call it young children although the book actually ranges from you know one and a half all the way up to seven and also as you say you know anyone in a period of development where you want to make sense of adolescents and so on very similar things but interestingly enough I was while I was writing the book my mother-in-law had prefrontal dementia if you know anything about prefrontal dementia basically all your impulse control goal goes your emotional regulation is non-existent you live in the moment it's just one dominant emotion at a time and so when I was writing the book I'm like you know in trying to understand her disease and how to help her it was frustrating to make sense out of that she couldn't she wasn't the same mature person that she used to be and I was writing rest play grow and I thought oh I'm just gonna use everything in this book with my mother-in-law and so when I was writing Gordon Newfield and saying okay I'm gonna call it rest play grow making sense of preschoolers or young children we're having this debate and then I said and I put haha and in brackets anyone who acts like one and then he sent a note back and said that's your title I said no it's not this is my book it's you know I want it something you know nice and not silly and then I get a phone call like that and I pick up the phone and it's Deborah and I'm like Gordon he goes just listen and so he said to me you need to call it this this name and I'm gonna tell you why because people assume that maturity is a foregone conclusion and it's not when you say anyone who acts like one you're already alerting the reader to the fact that maturity can get stuck and that this is a book about human development in the deepest sense it's about making sense how the pieces come together and how they can come apart and I said okay I'm sold and I'm so grateful that he did talk me into that but it came from my mother-in-law who was sick with dementia and in maturities in maturity no matter what age right yeah I had this bolded in my notes this was part of his forward it says the fundamental the fundamental human problem is that we don't all grow up as we grow older and kind of like what you were talking about earlier which is like you're seeing these adults that are having these struggles how can we guide our kids toward maturity as they're in these younger years and as they start to grow up so you talk about that they're misunderstood a ton in this book about place they're gonna be talking about that as well this tears of utility is a phrase that I've been using all the time now so a lot in here and then you go through things that are just very specific like bedtime and separation and anxiety in young children so you are going to learn so much from this book can we kick it off with this seven because you talked about sort of like these first seven years and you said in here research you have a whole section about preserving the spirit of childhood and you wrote research has examined the efficacy of starting formal schooling at age seven so can you talk about the time that kids need to just be kids so when we look at that magical age of five to seven there's a shift that PSA well his work someone typified it as the five to seven shift we're basically the proof frontal cortex integrates and so the child is then able to have impulse control emotional regulation think twice doesn't live in the moment and is capable of work because work requires a delay of gratification meaning that the activity may not be fun but the outcome is fun and so you can you can hold two things at once now if you take a young child and you try to make them live in the outcome they get very frustrated they get very upset and it can actually turn them into a position of defense around learning and around schooling and that is why most of the wisdom the developmental science the practices of countries that are based in developmental science and understanding the development of a young child place play at the forefront of development because young children are not built for work and this is about brain development and for the last hundred years when you look at you know Dr. Gessels work and all the developmentalists we're not growing brains faster the bottom line kids are built to play not work when the brain is in a place of integration then we can introduce work it doesn't mean that we don't learn through play but if you want to preserve the spirit of childhood which is this they live in the moment they learn through play then we need to have a play context that is and a play sanctuary for them where they unfold in the most robust way possible. Oh what a book there's so much in here about play and you say that it's the you know they're really starting to get rid of it in some preschools and kindergarten I want to read what you wrote one of the biggest issues in education today is the preservation of play in preschool and kindergarten settings preschools and kindergarten have become the final battlegrounds for the preservation of early childhood never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that we would have to defend children's right to play and there's so much beautiful information in this book about play we're going to talk about that soon I just want to be clear you talk about preserving the spirit of childhood we can train a child to do a lot of things at early ages but we shouldn't mistake this for maturity. So you talked about David Elkind how like even in the 70s they were like this is too hurried you know what would David Elkind think about 2026 with all of the things that kids are exposed to including technology but part of this preserving the spirit of childhood also includes keeping children's hearts soft. We've actually really never talked about this on the show Deborah like having the charge to keep their hearts soft. Can you talk about the problem of thwarted emotional expression? Yeah well we talk a lot about attachment but I don't think we understand that the ultimate purpose of attachment besides having our kids depend upon us well what's the purpose of dependence? The greatest challenge we have as human beings is we get hurt we emotionally get hurt we get wounded we don't fit in we don't belong unkind words someone doesn't like us we feel rejected we get we make mistakes I mean the list goes on and on so as human beings our greatest strength is our capacity to care however that also comes with the ability to be wounded so what is you know what is attachment's greatest purpose is to take care of the human heart like we don't get to all the we don't trace attachment and its purpose all the way to the roots and so we know that the emotional system in the human being is responsible for most of the growth in terms of the early years in the prefrontal cortex and the architecture of the brain is really built upon this emotional center and so the greatest task that we have as parents is to keep our kids heart soft so they can feel their vulnerable emotion they go put words to it they can have their tears to the things that do not work which ultimately shape the emotional system and brain development and helps unfold the child I would say the other thing though and if I were to go back I mean this I wrote this 10 years ago and you know Gordon wrote his book 20 years ago if you can believe it and and there's still because they're built in developmental science the science hasn't changed but what I would say I would advance in terms of this knowledge is that we take care of our children's emotions by also delivering them to play play is the untold hero here when it comes to emotional development and so part of attachment is yes to keep their heart soft and not be a wounding source but at the same time to also deliver them to the context in which the ultimate expression of emotion can happen which is play a tree never yelled at you for being too loud you know the mother nature is huge in her invitation for play and being outside I mean you're a whole podcast you know and you just can feel the expansiveness of what can hold you and your own emotions that can feel too big too much too difficult and so yes keeping their heart soft is fundamental to human development if they're if if they can't feel their vulnerable emotion we have developmental arrest they don't grow and that is at the heart of why some people grow up and some people fail to mature and if we had to go in as most of my work is as a counselor is to go in and get that emotional system moving in the right direction again so that growth continues wow I have never heard of any of this I mean it's critically important to know what a book and you explain it so well so you know we talk about the pervert preserving the spirit of childhood this is like about not pushing things too early and then what you just said about their emotional expression you say emotions will take more than a mile if you try to press them down parents fear that the emotional expression will never stop it will take over and there will be no end but really it's the opposite and I thought this was an incredibly large ramification to consider you wrote when emotional defenses so kids can become hardened part of the job here to protect the spirit of childhood is to is to try and keep things soft but children can become hard and when emotional defenses have been erected a child is less likely to see or hear things that could hurt them this includes not being able to see one's mistakes not remembering events that would bring back vulnerable feelings not being able to see trouble or rejection coming and significant attention problems in short anything that makes you feel bad cannot be seen or heard I was going to affect your whole life well look at the rates of attention issues and alarm problems that we have in our kids today you can't just say this is about screens it's not just about screens that obviously contributes but this is about something more fundamental to human development which is the capacity to feel your vulnerable feelings and that that doesn't come from just teaching them feeling words it doesn't come from you know reading them books about emotions I'm not saying any of those things aren't wonderful things to do but the brain has reasons for why vulnerable emotion can be felt or not felt and it is all around our survival if you have to walk into a wounding classroom every day if going and sitting at the table is a wounding affair if your brother or sister bully you or whatever the situation might be or there's conflict retention in the home or in your outside world and you don't feel safe the brain takes its ultimate sacrificial play to press down and inhibit emotion so that those emotions don't get in the way of your survival the brain is not broken it is not dysfunctional and it certainly isn't disordered when it does this it has order in its own way that we've lost insight or wisdom into wow I mean it's just a draw-dropping book then you say adults don't typically even notice when vulnerable feelings have gone missing in a child but you do have in the book a list of signs that the child might be erecting emotional defenses so it's so important it's on page 140 so the book is called rest play grow and you're going to get so much out of it I want to stick with this emotional I mean I guess like for me I remember when we've got five kids and I remember when our oldest was I don't know eight or nine and I was like why is he still crying you don't even know you're like I thought the crying was gonna stop you know when they're two or you know they're not a baby anymore they're four I have I haven't stopped crying I mean yes yeah right I don't know why I was thinking that and you know I it was maybe more about like just small triggers like my hamburger has cheese on it and I didn't want it have cheese on it but this this language I'm talking about this all the time now Deborah that I never had her before it's in Gordon's book and it's in yours but yours goes in much more depth is this phrase tears of futility tears of futility I was like oh my goodness okay this is such a great phrase because there are so many things in life that you cannot change and so you're saying that one of the jobs of the parent is to walk a child through the futilities of life so can you talk about you know you're talking about tears and tantrums Gordon said early childhood is a violent time good thing that they're small and they have bad aim but they're frustrated and so instead of which I feel like the tendency is like stop stop you know like trying to get them to stop having these tears and these tantrums our goal actually is to come alongside of them so that they can learn to accept things that are futile yeah well that's how the brain is shaped it's shaped by things that it realizes can't work won't work never ever can come to pass and so you know their brains are not wired up at birth to understand the world and the limits and restrictions and futilities that exist so that's such a big part of our early years is representing the world to them as it exists but also maintaining our relationship and attachment and keeping their heart soft so if you take a heavy hand here if you become an adversary if you wound at the place of relationship how can you lead them to tears you have to feel safe enough to be able to feel and so this is the challenge that we have as parents so yes they have many futilities they can't always win I mean I'm sure we could all tell stories about our kids playing games you know four or five and you think oh we're gonna play a card game won't this be fun oh no it won't be because someone's gonna win and someone's gonna lose and but they're you know they want more cookies than they can have they want to stay up later they want to uh they don't want and anyone to be upset they want to change your mind they have all these ideas um they're resilient and resourceful you know because they just they have this perseverance and tenacity to know what they want and to continue to go for it that's not a problem but the reality is is that the world isn't shaped around what you want and your desires and so you have to be able to settle into when things don't go your way when it doesn't come to pass when adversity is on your doorstep you know a three-year-old who doesn't get a cookie is a 13-year-old who doesn't who has a friend who disappoints them or a teacher who says no that is a D or you know you fail your driver's test I mean these are the building blocks for resilience along the way so how do we help to get them to their tears well simply saying it's okay to cry won't work in fact they'll probably not cry at that point it's not through the head it's through coming alongside which again when we have to turn these things into words and into science it loses some of the human element of it like if you saw someone who is needing to have their tears what would you do to make it safe for those tears to come out you know maybe they need to hear the futility which is I don't think that's going to happen now that's going to be a no this is going to be hard to hear whatever your words are I'm not going to give parent words I think it's just you know people can find that within themselves but the whole thing is to make it safe enough to feel what isn't working and every kid has a different temperament if you have five kids you know that they each get to this place differently and so it's an art and a science but you're walking beside them and some futilities are really really big some really mean a lot to them and some are very minor and so you know the constant goal is is if a child really can't handle and know in something then what is our lesson to learn about what they're struggling with to learn about the world the amount of futilities in here is the list is lengthy and you call them common childhood futilities and I was like I think these are adult futilities as well they are so I'm gonna list a couple of them the futility of trying to hold on to good experiences the futility of wanting to make something work that doesn't the futility of wanting to send a sibling back the futility of wanting to be smarter to be perfect to control circumstances to turn back time or undo what's been done the futility of trying to defy the laws of nature to want to win all the time to be bigger than one is to be best in first at everything the futility of wanting to be wanted where one isn't you are it's very important that young children be able to read where they are not welcomed and respond accordingly the futility of wanting to know what's going to be what's going to happen as we move towards summer everything starts to look a little different the schedule loosens up there's more time outside more travel more life happening and that's a really good thing but it can make consistency a little harder to maintain having something flexible that supports learning through those changing rhythms can make a big difference and that's where ixl fits in so well ixl is an award-winning online learning platform offering interactive practice in math language arts science and social studies from pre-k through 12th grade it adapts to each child's level keeps them engaged and gives parents clear visibility into progress what i really appreciate is how simple and organized it is everything is laid out by grade and subject so you can quickly find what your child needs whether that's staying sharp over the summer or getting a head start for the next year and because it's personalized kids can move at their own pace which helps keep momentum going in a natural way make an impact on your child's learning get ixl now and 1,000 hours outside listeners can get an exclusive 20 off ixl membership we may sign up today at ixl.com slash 1,000 hours visit ixl.com slash 1,000 hours to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price so adab i was like i've never heard of this and i thought you know i think so often we try and like cover it or like oh it's not that big of a deal but that's the wrong path and even the crying right like you're like so often is trying to get the crying to stop and what you said was when children cry the hurt has already happened crying is not the hurt but the process of being unhurt what what yeah crying is the process of being unhurt tears are the best indicator of an emotional system that is functioning well that quote actually came from elphi assolter who's an incredible developmentalist and it's it's really about again not being i think so many times what happens is that we equate a child's sadness and upset with the responsibility in us to cheer them up or to be happy or it triggers our own emotions about guilt or whatever that might be going on for us and and our own frustration in having to stop and pause to make room for the frustration there's so many things that a child's emotions can stir up in us and so i do think that we have a you know particularly in north america we have a culture that tries to make it better pursues happiness calm down cut it out it's not so bad think positive thoughts let me give you something you know just think happy thoughts or you know this as if we could talk ourselves into emotional health and well-being if that were true we'd be there right well we need to get to the the vulnerable emotions which let's let's be honest it's it's hard to um sit in sadness it's not like oh i'm going to wake up today and make some nice time for sadness and just sit and dwell in it and i mean it is um especially if you have highly sensitive kids or are highly sensitive yourself these are big emotions not to be toyed with and not to be underestimated in terms of their power but even more so that they need to find their way into expression and that could be through play that could be through words that could be through tears it's not just one pathway here yeah i know i'm focusing on this one a lot just because the wording was so helpful for me to read and i'd never heard the language before and you talk i mean to say that tears are the when you're crying you're becoming unhurt in that the tears are threatened their their expression is not equally supported for boys and girls and you talked about like okay during these small encounters when they are crying about it that these small encounters with the futility are helpful in setting the stage for the bigger issues that will come so i just thought this is a really useful thing to read i wish i would have read it ten years ago rest play grow i you know i think it just it helps you understand yourself better like even in my own mind i'm like i'm just gonna cry some tears of futility like you know it's not gonna change it's not gonna change and to know that tears are good indicators the capacity to cry tears in the face of emotional distress you write is uniquely human tears cry it in sadness shed toxic waste products from the bloodstream when tears are shed there's also a release of oxytocin i know we spent a lot of time here but i never heard anybody talk about the tears of futility and it makes a lot of sense and i think it gives you a little bit of a roadmap as you're trying to help protect the spirit of childhood in your home so okay now we but we can switch topics we've been on that one for a while let's go to what you talked about earlier play is the untold hero there is so much in this book called rest play grow about play young children cannot thrive or flourish in a world without play the very essence of who they are will become man i'm really struggling with my reading today the very essence of who they will become is defined by it can you talk about what has changed the drop in play is dramatic even just recently well i used to be um on faculty a tenured faculty at a university so i used to see students university students and their parents who are coming in to the university and the shift in the numbers of kids coming into university parents worried about kids future the shift to global economy knowledge based environment that you you need to have some knowledge some skill set has absolutely exponentially contributed to this idea that knowledge intellect learning problem solving is of paramount importance i don't think we can deny that coming from an academic perspective i've seen that push and i think it is a huge driver because it puts pressure on play because in play the outcomes are not obvious what is happening is developmental and so you'd have to have a lot of wisdom and understanding of the purpose of play in order to protect it in a world that's very outcome driven yes and very quick now in terms of an expedient in terms of those outcomes and so it's put a lot of pressure on those environments where early learning is now pushed you know how early do you read um you know the skill sets um you know Gordon always jokes you know wait till they get into the womb to try to do learning and i mean you know we say it jokingly but i mean yeah i actually think that would be the case there's this prevalent myth over the last 50 years that earlier is better and there is i think a fear in parents where people give a lot of lip service to yeah plays important plays important and then they don't protect it because they're worried about the outcomes for their kids if they don't protect it in a world that is so driven in the opposite direction and the other thing i will say that happens is they say oh we're doing play-based education but they've turned play into work and it's not true play and so i think we're really we're lacking an understanding of the purpose of play and the science of play if we did we'd understand that the best outcomes for learning creativity brain development emotional development i mean the the creative problem solvers that you want tomorrow are not built through worksheets they're built through play but people have not connected the dots or if they have they're terrified to trust them yeah yes the the decrease i mean just 50 percent decrease from 1997 to 2003 that's before screens play is not urgent you wrote and therefore is easily lost in the activities of daily life to protect and preserve time and space for play use routines or rituals or the 1000 hours outside challenge that will help you as well i actually spoke at this early childhood education center once and they it was a play-based you know no screens and they had directives i guess from the government i'm not quite sure they had to fill out this paperwork and so they always had to be saying like what were the kids learning you know this was for like really young children so they had these worksheets up like how to teach a kid how to kick high how to teach a kid how to kick hard and it will be like place your left foot on the ground and make sure no one is close by and they're like walking the kid through i was like what are we what are we doing here oh hi i agree completely the um i was in a school the other day and they said uh someone there had um was an early child care provider early educator in ireland and she says we have lots of learning outcomes through play but the way that we do it is we watch children play and then we just check off what they're learning the kids are never wiser and we trust that it's going to unfold and play so there's no instructions needed they're just you know observing and providing the conditions which are really important providing the environment providing the safety and the conditions where kids can unfold and play because yes they are learning lots if we need to have outcomes demonstrated we can do that without interfering with the play that is unfolding right okay so let's talk about some of the reasons why this is incredibly important one of the things that you talk about in rest play grow is that play is the birth place of personhood can you elaborate on that oh well i mean to become your own person is an act of discovery and you can't discover who you are without the with pressures of getting it right or pleasing other people or what the world expects of you you have to have a bit of a sanctuary where you can unfold in and can experiment and you know when i was thinking about play and listening to my kids play and and my life was shaped i had a mother who protected play for me which is the greatest gift she ever gave me was basically go outside and play or help me do the laundry and it's like i'm out of here mom and she basically i lived my life outside quite feral it was wonderful and i remember in those moments of watching my kids play or being in play it was like i was listening for what is inside me to be echoed in the world around me and i would feel that draw towards that and so it is that resonance between who you are expressing it and finding it in the world it was my bike that delivered the speed i needed and the adventure i needed and the world that made sense it was the imaginary worlds i created with my sister the music the stories the skits um where i unfolded everything i can see in who i am today i can link back into those days of play i've got one daughter who's going in into environmental science and wants to study the land and earth and silviculture and how we grow stuff and carbon capture but i have pictures of her young child digging up potatoes in my backyard like it was all there i've got another one who is loved potions and puzzles and putting things together you know she's three and she's just you know covered in dirt and all sorts of stuff and what did she go into chemistry i mean the roots of who you are is discovered in play you can't give someone personality you can't give them their interest their desires their passions these things are born from within and they're born in play which is a protected sanctuary where we discover who we are like if we got this we would just stand back and deliver the space knowing this is where this comes from this is where this unique gifts that get realized come from we would stand in awe of it and that's just one reason of why play is so important your play has become suffocated under an adult-centric quest for speedier development despite research demonstrating that children's brains reach the same cognitive benchmarks today as i did a hundred years ago so play is the birthplace of person whom how about this you talk about their brain when children are playing their brains are being sculpted by their interactions with the environment the complexity of the actual brain is enhanced most of all by hours spent in play play is nature's answer to growth so basically we have this backwards by pushing all this early academic work which what people are trying to like enhance their kids brain they're like no no it's enhanced most of all by hours spent in play so can you address to that sort of like early academic push in terms of seat work and worksheets and how that is totally the wrong direction well yeah the brain isn't built on information it's built on discovery like if we understand that those for six years the brain is really open it's an open-ended system that is being built by the feedback in the environment right and so it's wiring up in response to the environment if you're only putting in narrow information and you know narrow channels of understanding the world then you're not going to get a very robust integrated problem solving network system you know it's like the knee bones connected to the you know leg bone it's just like they're all connected and so you need to have that exquisite feedback loop being built it's like language it's movement it's your sensory system it's the emotional system nature just doesn't say okay it's time to wire up your body it's time to wire up your emotions now it's time to wire up your language i didn't know nature was sophisticated we're gonna do it all at once let's just go out into play and boom you got this massive feedback system that's happening and it's recalibrated over and over again so what do you want to do you just want to pick a channel and sit sit them down with a worksheet and just plug in repetitive exercises sure you'll get some enhancement in that particular brain area but when you look at the outcomes in grade three or grade four you don't have a better problem solvers and you push you know you push literacy too soon like learning how to read too soon these and i've had kindergarten teacher tell me over and over again in grade one you keep pushing reading too soon they don't have reading comprehension in grade two and three you see a loss of reading comprehension they might understand you know what the the word is but when you're you're ramming in information that's decontextualized and not integrated you don't build a more robust brain and problem solving apparatus you limit you truncate and it's such it's such an important period of time for brain development why would we why would we do this no early learning reading programs i found could ever work and then you know like grade five oh sorry grades six years of age is usually when most kids the brain is integrated enough they could put words into sentences into context and then you get this push forward but then i get people pushing back and saying well their brains are ready for early literacy you know at three years of age and the Nobel Peace Prize winner said well of course they are but that's why we we read to them we talk to them we sing to them they play they chatter i mean it's not like we're not building literacy and we're not building upon those brain networks but why does it have to look a particular way where you've got to sit down and do drills and outcome based learning it doesn't work for kids under the age of six they're not like us and we need to stop applying our adult psychology onto young children we are we are robbing them of what they need to grow wow yeah wow the complexity of the brain is enhanced most of all by hours spent in play so we cannot be suffocating it with this adult adult centric quest i love the wording you even talk about in this knowledge based economy we want kids to have lifelong learning you know to be enthusiastic about lifelong learning and creativity and innovation play is the answer for that let's hit one more thing although there's more than we're even talking about in this book called rest play grow about the importance of play but you you brought this up earlier when you use the phrase play is the untold hero talking about emotions play is therapeutic for young children because it allows them to express deep emotions safely you know we ought to foster play sanctuaries for young children as a means of promoting emotional and mental health so if we look around at this youth mental health crisis would you relate some of that to lack of play in early childhood it's screens got in the way of relationship and play and those two things are most important for children to develop well how are we going to grow and develop when screens have taken down the two primary dynamics and and context for growth play to release emotions discover the self grow more robust a sense of agency and relationships that help anchor you and safety and rest so that play is possible so you put screens in there and you've taken down to the contexts that are required for growth and so here's the thing yes we can take away screens and and adolescence is way too late but we've got to think in the early years how are screens now infiltrating into early childhood and i actually recently went back and did a presentation on screens and young kids because i now have 10 years worth of research and it's worse than i thought oh wow it's worse than i thought at the outcomes i mean you can you could have predicted and did predict that you know across the board we'd see developmental losses but uh the degree to what has happened is um it's devastating i read a statistic recently that said in the 1970s the average age of screen exposure of first screen exposure was age four like a four-year-old they hadn't seen a screen at all until age four and now and it's just been 50 years right just a 50 year gap it's four months oh yeah it is a wild change and it's also about it's it's not just what kids are also watching kids are also watching there's it's twofold actually um they found that the greatest deficits were kids uh young kids who had two two hours or more of screen time a day and the rates of that were quite high but the other factor is that when we're on our screens our kids can't find us so it's twofold because of course they're calibrating to us they're anchoring into us if they can't find us behind our screens and they're also behind their screens then we've got this we don't have the context for relationship and play we just don't are you thinking about writing another book i have a few in mind right it's just so hard to know which one about all of these things are so important yeah and i do have there's three in particular three key areas that i think are so key right now that we don't have the science we need we're taking some really serious wrong turns and and i think without the developmental science and putting those pieces together i don't think we're going to find our way through um and so you know i mean i feel so grateful because i've been gifted this robust integrated theory and research and evidence-based practice of human development from gordon and it can explain and make sense out of and also pave the way through our problems today around human development and well-being but we have to put the pieces together and so much of what's happening right now is it's piecemeal it's fragmented um people are providing antidotes here and there and so we're confused well what is the path here then how do these pieces go together um and i think that's the great challenge is that we don't have largely our developmental lists have to come really out and and really put that roadmap out there like you know you talk about david alkind you talk about athea sultry you talk about gordon newfield i would throw gabber in there as well you know and jessil he's a another great developmentalist but people who had the whole picture and could see the trajectory and explain when things were working well or when they got stuck it's become so fragmented and disorienting for parents and that's what drew me to this work is i'm like okay i can rest in this i can make sense of it i don't have to remember someone's script or what they're telling me to do or like oh i could get so frustrated with that well just say this and like i can't remember that first of all and second of all i don't know why i would say that to my child i haven't even made sense out of it and i don't want to be someone's parrot um and you know that's what play delivered was a very you know robust sense of self i have to understand it before i do and um and don't suffer fools gladly so it's like i need to understand why before i'm going to do something so i it's the scripts and tips and techniques never never work for me they frustrated me and then i found gordon i'm like well why well why i was that student i'm like well why gordon and what about this and when i did my two years of postdoctoral internship i'd come in he's like debber we could talk about this for the next week and i'm like well that was just number one on my agenda and i'm kind of thinking because you just i just wanted to make sense of it and understand but as my sister says to me deb not everybody needs to know what you're curious about you just need to know what to do only a sister can say that to you right that's so funny oh my goodness yeah your family they just know you so well i love that i love your sister picks up on that well what's interesting to me intriguing to me and i talked to gordon very recently like within the last two weeks and you know i've recorded probably 750 episodes for this podcast in the last four years and before that we've been just all we're doing is prioritizing getting outside that's the end all be all but for me it's been a journey of learning why this works why it's helpful you know why we're not really experiencing a lot of the modern-day parenting problems and why it works for a two-year-old as well as a 12-year-old as well as a 16-year-old and not everybody I've interviewed has a book but the majority do so let's say I've read 600 books in the last four years wow i didn't know about the tears of futility i didn't know about the peer orientation i didn't know about the collecting i hadn't read about any of that yet so think about the people who have read way less books you know like maybe they've read four or five parenting books i'm like you could really miss this and this is this is the foundation of everything that attachment is the foundation of everything the collecting these you know allowing your kids to have emotional expression and and walking them through that and so i'm thankful that i read it now at least and i'm thankful that you agreed to come on and talk about it and i just it makes me wonder debora how many other people are like me who are like wait wait i was missing that whole entire piece like i would have been the type that's really pushing my kids into peer relationships because everybody talks about socialization and we homeschooled so i think just based off of them being around if there was a buffer there yeah they're like stuck with us for a lot of time but that wasn't my intention for doing it i didn't know so do you think that there are so many people that have no idea i don't know i wish i knew i'm so glad you do and i'm so glad that you invited me and gordon on to share that what it means to you so people can you know make choices about you know what resonates for them i think the developmental agenda gets lost because again we're very quick to want fixes and answers and so we've lost patients with natural development we've lost patients with the wisdom that all things unfold with time and and good care i mean sometimes i feel like i'm just a hundred-year-old grandmother talking i really do because i think it's just it's common sense i think there's a lot of wisdom in in just slowing down and thinking through things but again i guess that people feel a lack of confidence around what to do with parents today i know i certainly did and the more i made sense of what my kids need the more understood human development the more relaxed i became you know i became because i understood that i i had what my kids needed we are going to make mistakes we can disagree with what we did yesterday and do something different today i used to say to myself okay well there's a new sheriff in town and she's going to look like this tomorrow and she's going to do something different around that temper tantrum or that resistance or whatever it was and so i just don't know if parents hear that i today i hear a lot of parents who are really confused who don't feel they are enough get so many messages that you're not enough and everybody's inventing new ways to parent it seems in different ways i'm like well i don't know if we need a lot of new ways it's just really some new insight and and we have what it takes inside of us we are deeply feeling thinking caring beings and i think those are the answers and so while you may never have read these books there was a side of you as a mother that knew what you wanted to do i knew that being outside was important you didn't need to read the science of play to know that that was critical for your kids and the fact that you were driven to homeschool and that you saw benefits in that and believe that this was enough and you were enough to be able to deliver them to a robust education and learning that was already inside of you that you allowed to be realized you listened to that right so you didn't need to read the books and and great that you didn't um i did need i do turn to you know knowledge i do turn to um you know science because i mean i got a phd it's just i was ingrained in just to go and do that and you know i'm a very curious kid who is always asking why why why and so if the pieces don't fit i have a harder time following you know in line that way we're all built differently so i don't know why we're struggling but it's my hope just every day that i show up to do the work that i do is that a parent discovers that they're the answer and that they they wrestle with that and they know that um that that was nature's plan for us all you know and i and i think about you know it was really interesting when i was writing rest play grow the first and the last chapters i just knew automatically um and the first one was how we grow kids up and the last chapter was how kids grow us up and the last chapter was probably the easiest and fastest to write it just flew out of me and you know one of the things that my dad had said stayed with me over and over again which was how grateful he was to enter to be alive as long as he had been alive and is alive um to see not only have to not to not only have known his own grandparents also to be a grandparent to nine and i thought that's it that's a developmental trajectory is to never forget your place in that story of human development and what you are um delivered from and who you're meant to be delivered to and so i just wish everybody could rest in that developmental story again that's my my greatest wish for us all it is a fantastic book a fantastic book about parenting and really about life you wrote children are not meant to work for love they are meant to rest in someone's care so that they can play and grow this is why relationships matter expect young children to make relentless demands of parents especially when they're frightened or upset this is a natural process the early years are hungry ones young children are restless seekers you know they want to feast on human connection and you know exploring the world so you talk in this book also about collecting rituals which was another thing i'd never heard of also in gordon's book hold on to your child do you want to read this so that you can understand that as well i'd love to wrap it up with what you just brought up which is how i just thought this was so beautiful debora okay so you talk about becoming your child's best bet and you say as we endeavor to become a child's best bet perhaps i was like this is so beautiful perhaps they are also ours their immaturity calls forth our maturity this whole passage actually if you don't mind i want to read it real quick i was like this whole passage is so moving this is right at the toward the end of the book their intense need for relationship forces us to live in communion with others and to help raise them they remind us daily of the mystery splendor and roots from which we unfold as humans some say nature is mad in delivering us such immature beings yet i cannot help but think her wise as adults we face forward into aging and separation but in holding on to our children we are forced to look back to our beginnings like the grandparent to the grandparent nature ties the ends of our life cycle together the old connected to the new the endings fused to the beginnings opposites entwined the paradoxical rendered seamless endless these invisible ties of relationships hold us together the human life cycle unfolding generation after generation as we endeavor to become a child's best bet perhaps they are also ours what a book i hope you write another one it's so good thank you i highly highly recommend highly recommend this is a book about how brain development is spontaneous but it is not inevitable deba I so appreciate your time we always end our show with the same question what's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside hmm playing outside first of all thank you for reading that passage it was one of my favorites too my favorite childhood memory I think it was playing on the swing set with my sister in the backyard with the two doberman pincers that were in the neighbor's yard behind us and I would tell her if they ever jumped over the fence because they would come and they would scare us um that I would run in and grab the sword that was on the wall it was some curpan or something my parents had from some trip they'd done and that she was to stay there and to wait and I would go get the sword and this story that we unfolded it provided a bit of a shield around our play area in the backyard so that we never felt unsafe because the dogs were there and could jump over and we would pick the leaves off the trees and we would get on our swings and sometimes she was the conductor sometimes I was the conductor and say where are we going to go today and we have our leaves for tickets and we would invent all the places that we would go and you'd have to give a ticket and then one of us would tell the story where we're going playing with my sister outside in her backyard I cannot believe the amount of adventures we'd have every day it was just yeah it was just amazing there's this man named David Epstein who has a book coming out in May it's called Inside the Box and it's about I think the subtitle is How Constraints Make Us Better and it's really like it's aimed toward adults like um Johann Sebastian Bach had all these rules for what he could compose and this you know this one basketball player only had half of a basketball backboard growing up and it made him you know be more creative with his shots like these constraints make us better but I was like oh this so applies to childhood doesn't it like especially if we're not handing over a screen that goes to an a limitless world if we're just playing outdoors and your leaf can be your ticket it's like the constraints that are already built into nature force creativity and imagination absolutely and what a gift that is for kids yeah so little distraction you can listen to your own voice within and you can create something from that voice yeah Deborah this has been such an honor thank you for saying yes thanks for being here yeah thank you well I so appreciate your generous words and your time and reading the book and being so knowledgeable about it and asking such you know thoughtful questions um you know and being obviously so singularly minded about play and the value of it because I you know what you do prevention wise to support families and parents like you know you could you could have a hundred counselors but if parents got the message in your podcast here like you're doing so much prevention you have no idea thanks for that yeah thanks for saying yes and I hope we stay connected thanks so much Ginny I really enjoyed this for entrepreneurs like you sign up for your one dollar a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup