We don't teach reading and writing here.

No really, we don't.

Yes, we call ourselves an accredited preschool childcare program. But if you walk into our classroom, you will not see brightly coloured cartoon alphabet banners adorning our walls. The books on our shelves are chosen purely based on their relationship to the children's current interests. There is no drilling of letters and sounds, no singing the alphabet song unless the children initiate it, and well... almost no direct instruction, except music and the "advanced drawing class" that some of the older children choose to attend.

And yet, our children are remarkably literate (with the possible exception of a couple of kids with differing learning needs and one whose first language is not English and does not use our alphabet).

To be fair, we accidentally taught the oldest preschooler how to write last spring. Oops. He was doing some drawing exercises for his advanced drawing class, including making lines, points, angle lines, circles, and curvy lines. Susan pointed out that everything he would ever draw was made of those elements. I then made the mistake of mentioning that all the letters and numbers are made from those basic shapes as well. Oops. Over night, he unlocked the secret to writing. He started by copying out all of his classmates' names over and over again. He wrote his name and his best friend's name on anything he could get his hands on. He asked how to spell the name of his favourite Pokemon character. Now, he has the tidiest, most compact printing I have ever seen from a five-year-old (it rivals that of some nine-year-olds) and in the ensuing year, I have spent countless moments telling him how to spell the things he wants to write down, letter by letter.

I suppose we may have accidentally given some of the children other literacy tools. Just this morning, a group of children at the art table discovered an amazing thing. It all started when the newly-returned 4-year-old asked one of the soon-to-depart Big Kids how to spell her name. He wrote every letter as she dictated, until the final letter, where he misheard "T" and instead wrote "P".

"Wait a minute! That's not how you draw my name!" exclaimed the name's owner.

"Melissa, what does this say?" asked the writer, turning to me.

I wasted no time in reading the name he had written, emphatically pronouncing the P at the end. Hilarity ensued. That could have been the end of it, but the boy's analytical mind went immediately to work, and he wrote his own name, replacing the final letter with a P. "What does this name say?" I obligingly read it, again being sure to pronounce the final P.

I could see the wheels turning in his head, and all but heard him thinking "Oh boy, if changing one letter makes a name say something different and silly, I wonder what happens when I add letters, or change more letters..." and all of the sudden, I was being bombarded with pages of coloured paper with felt-marker letters scrawled across them: "What does mine say? What does this say? Read mine now!" The boy had unwittingly stumbled across one of the most important pieces of knowledge that are Top Secret to children who are too young to go to school: Letters stand for sounds, and sounds combine to make words. And by drawing them into his joke, he shared his forbidden knowledge with not one, but two of the Big Kids! Why, one of those girls handed me a page reading "ACHHHHO" to read, and then fell over laughing when I told her it said "ach-OOO!" and THEN she had the nerve to write it again on another page! And she read that page to her friends, without any teacher to decode it! Kindergarten won't know what hit it in September.

Toddler assertiveness training?

I recently came across an article explaining why a video of a little boy repeatedly trying to hug a similarly-aged little girl despite her very clear resistance is profoundly disturbing. I want to add my two cents.

I would estimate the kids here are around or just under two years old. The girl pushed the boy forcefully away from herself, making him fall down several times, and at one point shouted something at him. He said something back (they're not speaking English, and the annoying added soundtrack obscures their words) and continued to pin her against a wall over and over again. The boy probably hug-attacked the girl ten times or more before she got smart and tried running away, at which point he chased her and kept trying to spin her around by her wrist to face him again for more hug-abuse.

If we were talking about teenagers here, or even school-aged children, you would all be dropping your mouses in horror and dashing off to file complaints with the police or at least the principal. But because they're "babies" and they "don't know what they're doing" this is somehow supposed to be adorable and perfectly acceptable.

I have been the responsible adult present countless times when a situation like this begins to develop. I think this is a fantastic learning experience for both children. On the one hand, I could just stand by and let the natural consequences unfold. On the other hand, these situations tend to rapidly lead down a road with Multiple Incident Reports at the end of it, and they also ignore or negate one of the most important lessons that I strive to teach children of all ages: Your body belongs to you. No one is allowed to touch your body without your consent (of course there are circumstances in which adults necessarily override this right with young children, and it is challenging to avoid doing so unnecessarily...). So, had I been the adult present at the incident documented in the video, I would have stepped in. I would have stepped in after the second or third hug-attempt, to give the children a chance to work it out naturally. I would have talked them through their conflict, given them the tools they needed, reinforced each child's body autonomy, encouraged respect, compassion, and kindness, and provided an alternative behaviour for the "troublemaker". Sounds pretty complicated for toddlers, doesn't it? It's possible, though! Hard work, yes. But rewarding. The three remarkable two-year-olds in our preschool class spent about 11 months each in the toddler room learning these skills before they "graduated" into the preschool room. The teachers in the toddler class do really good work!

So, here is a fictional scenario based upon multiple actual incidents from my Toddler Teacher days:

Jimmy tries to hug Sam; Sam pushes him away forcefully, wearing an angry expression. Jimmy gets up and tries again, with a similarly strong reaction from Sam. As he moves in for round three, I say "Jimmy! I hear Sam saying 'NO!'. Sam does not want a hug right now." If necessary, I interpose as much as my body as possible between the two children, even if it's just an arm. I then address Sam: "Sam, you can talk to Jimmy. You can say 'No! Stop! I don't want a hug! I don't like it!" I pair each of these exclamations with the ASL sign for "stop":

 (More later on why I prefer using the ASL "stop" with young children rather than the commonly-used palm outward "traffic cop stop"). Back to Jimmy: "Jimmy, if you want a hug, you can ask your friend: Hug please? Or you can hug Missa. I like hugs. Would you like a hug right now?" If Jimmy says no (in any way at all, verbal or nonverbal), I will model the desired behaviour by respecting his answer: "Okay, Jimmy. I hear you telling me 'no hug'. I won't hug you right now." Hopefully, Sam is satisfied, Jimmy gets a grown-up hug if he wants one, and both children are ready to move on to more enjoyable tasks.

(I deliberately avoided assigning a gender to Sam, and Jimmy could just as easily be Janie. At this age, gender plays a much smaller role in these exchanges.)

Usually, one or both of the children is surprised by my intervention in the first place, and the conflict pauses immediately, but sometimes the persistent "aggressor" just tries harder to achieve his goal. I will stop him from reaching his target by the gentlest means possible. I might also describe any communication I see: "I hear Sam's voice. Sam says 'nonono!' Sam is signing 'all done.' Sam is pushing Jimmy away. Sam's face looks afraid and angry." Reminders (frequently mistaken for admonishments) to "use your words" and "keep your hands on your own body" and "ask before hugging" are generally reserved for kids who have already gained enough skills to understand what the reminders mean (read: preschoolers!). Toddlers are still learning about the power of expressive language, have not yet developed a whole lot of impulse control, and are frustrated by tasks requiring complex reasoning. Reminders won't help them navigate a peer conflict any more that a reminder to "signal correctly" and "give right-of-way to the inside lane" and "don't miss your exit" will help a first-time driver navigate a traffic circle during rush hour.

If we equip our toddlers with the skills they need for asserting their body rights, they will be better prepared to protect themselves from physical abuse as they get older. They will be more likely to stand up for themselves and for other people who are being harassed, bullied, and abused. They will be less likely to harass, bully, or abuse others, because they will already know that everyone has the right to feel safe and that there are other ways to attain their objectives.

If we stand by and allow things to carry on as they did in that video (and I will admit to snickering when the boy would "pretend" to fall down after the girl's shove failed to knock him to the ground), we are teaching our toddlers that it is a good idea to continue to harass people to get what we want because eventually they will give up. We teach them that it is acceptable, even expected, for one group of people to persistently insist on violating the rights of another group of people, and that the "nother" group of people ought to learn their place and let it happen without too much fight. We teach them that it's cute and funny to be mean to someone else. That, my friends, is NOT OKAY.

Democracy only feels fair if you're on the winning side.

This afternoon, Susan took a group of children out to the small park, leaving six in the classroom while the stragglers finished using the bathroom and performing other necessary tasks. They were leaping and running about the room, threatening to knock down or dismantle the "penguin house" their friends had been working on for the past two days, so I invited them to come sit with me while I told them a story. By the time I was finished telling a short tale (shamelessly borrowed from Robert Munsch, like many a great story), The Littlest Preschooler was finished with his jobs and had come to join us.

"Are we ready to join our friends outside?" I asked, enthusiastically.

"NO!" "Nah." "Nope." "I don't want to..." were the replies.

"Well, that was a unanimous no..." I observed.

The Littlest Preschooler turned to his friends and pronounced (albeit with some difficulty, as I'm sure he was using a word he had never tried to say before) "Dat was a unanimis no, eveebody."

Wanting to make sure each child's voice was heard, I asked them one at a time whether they would prefer to stay in or go out. All said "stay in" except for Z, who wanted to go out.

"Susan already has as many kids as she can have by herself, and Anna has to go help the toddlers right away here. That means that either we all have to stay inside or we all have to go outside. I'll ask one more time and then we'll decide."

So I asked them all again, in reverse order, after casually mentioning that the "new bikes" (tricycles recently donated by another program in the same building) were out there. C, the youngest of the girls, leapt to her feet and patted my thigh excitedly. "I have a helmet!" She practically vibrated with enthusiasm.

In the end, C and Z wanted to go outside, and the rest wanted to stay in.

"Well, the most people want to stay in, so we are going to stay in the classroom and work on the things we have in here."

"But I want to go outside!" protested Z.

"I know, and so does C.  But A, Ch, JD, and H all want to stay in here. More people want to stay in."

I could sense a big arguement brewing, so I opted for a visual representation. I held up four fingers on my right hand. "Four children really want to stay in." Then I held up two fingers on my left hand. "Two children would rather go outside. Which one is more?" After a short discussion, we all agreed (except for Z, whose mind is difficult to change!) that 4 is more than 2. "Guess what!" I gasped. "That's called a vote. This is how adults decide important things. Everyone says which thing he wants, and the thing that the most people want is the thing that happens. That's just about as fair as we can make it in a situation like this."

"Oh." Z was not happy to discover that I was standing by his opponents' decision.

"That's called democracy. YAY, DEMOCRACY!"

"YAY, DEMOCWASEEE!" crowed The Littlest Preschooler.

Then, the children spontaneously formed a percussion band and rocked out to their innovative cover of "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep: The Remix" for twenty minutes.

You can't do this.

Today, being a cold and rainy day in which I had already tried to develop rain-related hives, we decided to stay inside. After our always-amazing music class with Miss Jesse, we went for a walk about the building (which is a rehabilitation hospital) for a change of scenery and to pass some time before lunch. So the children organized themselves (with minimal cajoling) into our standard "field trip" formation: Everyone hold hands with a partner! And away we went, two-by-two, to see what we could see (I will one day write about my thoughts on being forced to hold someone's hand when you don't want to, but for now. we'll let it rest). We walked and quietly chattered about the things that we saw.

Our pace was relaxed; we had nowhere in particular to go, and I, The Leader, had The Littlest Preschooler for my partner, meaning we generally followed his contemplative, drifting tempo. We went up an elevator, wandered through an atrium and, by chance, encountered the father of one of our former/future classmates (a child who had left us to stay home for a year with his new baby sister, but will return next month to drop off his sister in the toddler room and come be one of our Big Kids. Older siblings apparently get some version of maternity leave if they're below school-age when the squalling attention-stealer arrives).

We noticed and commented on several of the paintings that adorn the walls in the hallways, and graciously accepted the compliments and somewhat-condescending observations of the people that we passed (Oh they're so cute, just look at them...) and because we really were doing a marvellous job of sticking together, being respectful of this borrowed space and of each other, when we came to the ramp leading down the hall from the elevators towards our classroom, I bestowed upon my young friends the privilege of partaking in one of our favourite rituals: Running down the ramp. This is not to be confused with The Ramp, which has a double switchback and comes out on the second floor. This is just a sloped hallway. Not particularly steep, but steep enough to be both fun and challenging for the younger children, and just plain fun for the rest.

Our Running down the ramp ritual looks like this:
1. A teacher stands at the bottom of the ramp and calls each child by name, one at a time, while the other teacher(s) remain with the waiting children at the top.
2. As each child's name is called, he or she runs, grinning wildly, down the slope, revelling in the barely-controlled descent, using gravity as an accelerating force instead of fighting it as usual. Their flights end when they reach the teacher who has called them down, either because they've judged correctly the maneuvers they need in order to stop at the last instant, or because the teacher has physically caught them or stepped into their careening paths.
3. The children who have reached the bottom press themselves tightly against the wall to avoid being crashed into, and cheer their friends on, until, one-by-one, every child has had a chance to come zooming down. The teachers at the top come down to join us, we re-form and we continue on our merry way.

So there we were, the first four of nine children already pressed against the side wall near the bottom of the slope, and the fifth one on his way down, when the pediatric PT receptionist came by and said "You can't do this. We can't have this here."

"Really?" I replied brilliantly.

"No. It's not safe. Someone might fall."

The children were all silent. The one who had been in mid-flight sort of drifted quietly to my side.

"Oh. That's really too bad. This is one of our favourite things to do."

"The gym is just around the corner" she suggested.

"Yes, and it's fantastic when we can actually get in there." (our scheduled gym time has been drastically reduced this year, and we sometimes only get half the gym, which we frequently forfeit to the toddlers because half the gym is not enough for up-to-sixteen preschoolers learning how to control their large body movements without hurting or terrifying the up-to-twelve toddlers trying to share the same space.) "We learn how to handle ourselves on slopes by experiencing them."



She proceeded to tell me that she "was supposed to tell" us and that "we've had it happen before" and that if someone trips and gets hurt, "it's a liability issue for the hospital."

The children paid closer attention to this conversation than they have ever paid to anything before, collectively, in the year-and-a-half that I've known them. Speaking my mind was not an option. Instead, I kept my face and my tone calm and pleasant. I said "Oh, okay. What a shame. Thank you for letting us know." The receptionist continued on her way up the ramp to wherever-it-was she was headed. Nine preschoolers, one field placement student, and one newly-hired staff stared uncertainly at me.

"That's too bad." I was mostly buying myself the time to think.

"We aren't allowed to run down the ramp anymore." Some of the children squirmed a little, but no one said anything.

"What a shame that they don't trust us to know what our bodies can do. It's too bad they don't know how capable our children are." I expressed genuine sorrow with just a hint of frustration here.

"And half of us have already run down, but the other half are still up at the top." When in doubt, restate the facts.

"The lady told us we can't run down. Hey Julie (fake name, of course), I wonder if it would be fun to scoot down on your bum like a slide." Everyone smiled, and some said "yeah!" and I suggested different ways to come down the ramp for each of the four children who had been "stranded" at the top. I really think they saw it as being stranded. So, we had someone scoot partway down on her bottom, decide it was too much work, try slithering like a snake, only to find her shirt was too grippy, and come the rest of the way down on her hands and knees like a kitten. Someone came down the ramp crawling furiously, like a puppy. Someone came down hopping like a frog, which was probably less safe than just running, but no one said we couldn't hop. The last child, who was processing both his bitter disappointment at not getting to run down the ramp AND the conflict he had just witnessed (he's a child who is frequently in conflict with the authority figures in his life), didn't want to come down the ramp at all, but finally decided he would roll like a log. And roll he did, carefully, adjusting his course as he approached a wall, squirming out of the way when someone needed to walk past... And then we went back to our classroom and ate lunch.

I think it was important for the children to witness this conversation. It was important for them to see two adults enter into an apparently unresolvable conflict, have "their" adult respond assertively, graciously admit defeat instead of creating a bad situation, and manage to make the best of it in the end. I know I didn't handle it perfectly, but I think I did pretty well, all things considered. Sometimes, things just work out.

They talked about it a few times throughout the day. In their retelling of the tale, it wasn't Melissa who accepted this edict from "The Lady" and found a way to have fun in spite of it all. No one said "Melissa did this" or "You said that". The children included themselves in the tale, accepting my unspoken intention to speak on their behalf. They retold it as a "we" story.

"We told her we love running on the ramp and she still said no."
"We said we can be safe but she didn't believe us."
My favourite comment form the children was "She said we might fall down, but we fall down all the time!" after which, the child who uttered the statement flopped to the floor and proclaimed "See? That didn't hurt!"

One boy asked me, over lunch, why we weren't allowed to run down the ramp anymore, and I reminded him that "they" were scared that our mommies and daddies might get mad at them for having a ramp there if we fell down on it and hurt ourselves.

"But we don't fall!" he protested.

"That doesn't even make sense," offered one of the oldest children, "Our moms and dads don't get mad at the floor when we fall down. That's just crazy."