In PHQP_0012 Children Want Power, Jeff explores how kids crave control and choice in their world. On this Playvolution HQ Podcast episode, Jeff gears up for a 50-mile walk challenge, wraps up the core values series with kids’ need for power, and unpacks the five principles of counting. He also urges trusting kids to organize dramatic play, recommends Free Range Kids, and wraps things up with a tasty Dad Joke of the Week!

Watch Now: PHQP_0012 Children Want Power

Welcome to Playvolution HQ podcast. I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show.

So, first up, 50 mile walk. So this is a thing I was reading not too long ago that back in the early 60s, this was actually a thing. People would go out and do 50 mile walks in a 24-hour period, what the goal was.

And I guess President Kennedy did it. I don’t know if it was before he became president or after. I think it was before he became president.

Maybe he was president. I don’t know. But then his brother went out and did it basically wearing loafers with his dog, went out and did a 50 mile walk in like 20 hours.

And so I decided I’m going to give this a try because it sounded like a fun challenge. And it kind of bumps in the things we’ve talked about on the show. One is need.

We need to all move more and that our brains like us to be in motion and to play because it’s going to be grueling going out and walking 50 miles. Tasha, my wife, and I did an 18 mile walk a couple of months ago and that wasn’t too bad. But this is going to be a real challenge.

But for me, it’s play because I got to figure out what gear I need. I’m going to, look, I’ve been looking at socks. I’m test driving some new socks, that kind of stuff.

I think I’m going to get myself a camelback for water convenience because I figured out I’m going to need to drink about 300 ounces of water over the walking period. I decided I’m going to start like at 830 at night because that just seems logistically what’s going to work out best for me. And that it’s probably going to take between 16 and 20 hours for a 56 year old dude to do this.

But I’m mentioning it here because this is part of the play too. Putting it out here in public means that I can’t chicken out and do it. So I’m recording this in early March 2025.

The plan is to do it sometime in mid April. So stay tuned and see if I follow through. Next up, topic number one, last of our core value series.

And maybe we’ll recap all 12 of them sometime. And maybe someday I’ll come up with more. But here we go.

Children want power. And I think a lot of the problems we have in early learning programs comes down to power struggles between adults and kids. And so if we can kind of see through the lens of power, sometimes we can avoid behavior, quote unquote, problems with kids.

Sometimes we can do more to support children’s efforts to lead their own learning. So power equals control over their world. And when you’re two or three or four or 11 years old, you don’t always feel that powerful in your life or your world very often.

There’s always somebody bigger telling you what to do and when to do it and how to do it. And so power struggles become a big part of childhood in a lot of ways. And by giving kids power, I’m not talking about giving them total control over everything because they’re just physiologically and cognitively unready for that.

But there are a lot of ways we can look at giving them more power in their life. Because what it really boils down to is power equals choice. This is one of the values of a real play.

I mean, the kind of play that Dr. Peter Gray defines in his five conditions of play, the first one is play is freely chosen by the players. And so if we create environments that have more choice in them, more real choice, instead of the choice between two adult dictated options, but more real choice where the block kid can choose to be in the block area and the art kid can choose to be arting and the mud kid can choose to be mudding, that really gives them power because it gives them choice. Choice over what kind of play they engage in.

If we block off certain categories of play, rough and tumble play, what we consider to be risky play, we’re really cutting off choices for kids. So anything we can do to give them more choices, we’re giving them more power as well. Power also equals autonomy and agency.

And children, including, I mean, maybe not just children, humans like to feel that they’ve got autonomy and agency in their lives. And so when we can pull back and look at the environments we’re creating and look at the relationships we have with kids, we can see that there are often opportunities to give them more choice, more autonomy, and more agency. Feeling powerful builds confidence.

And that’s kind of valuable because that has a lot to do with the way that child, that person, views themselves in the world. And so if we can be creating a cohort of young people that feel confident out in the world, and we don’t want false confidence, but when they have real choices, they get to live and experience the world in ways that make sense to them. And that builds kind of a real confidence, a real understanding of their abilities and skills, instead of a false confidence that sometimes is pervasive.

And there is a difference there. Maybe we’ll dig into that in future episodes. Children seek this power through play, choice, and voice.

They like to feel powerful in their play, getting to play what they choose, getting to make the rules and organize their play. We’ll get into play organization later in this episode, actually. And then having a voice about things are ways that they seek power.

And too much control stifles. It stifles children’s power, but it stifles their learning as well. This is why a lot of times when you have a very rigid schedule or very rigid lesson plans, kids will rebel against that.

If you’re teaching a lesson about the planets, and Kimberly would rather be in the block area, and Kimberly’s supposed to be sitting crisscross applesauce on her mat with her hands to herself, and she is touching all the other kids, and she’s laying down on the floor, she is struggling for power. She is telling you that she does not give up about your lesson and rather be doing other things. And so why not create environments where the kids can do the things that they’re interested in, that will support their leading their own learning.

Again, this goes back to big blocks of uninterrupted self-directed time for play and exploration. I guess if you’re looking for a takeaway, we want to look at empowering kids, but not overpowering, instead of overpowering them. We want to give them power and control at a level that they’re developmentally and physiologically ready for, but instead of overpowering them with our demands and our expectations and our curriculums.

Might be a way of looking at it, if that makes sense. Topic two, let’s get into that. Let me click here so we know what it is.

The five principles of counting. So this is, ah look, I didn’t do this right last time. I think I made it work this time.

This is a handout I put together a few years back, I think it’s like two years old, on the principles of counting. So five important principles of counting. The first one is the one-to-one principle.

Then there’s the stable order principle. Then there’s the cardinal principle. Then there’s the abstraction principle.

Then there’s the order irrelevance principle. And this is all with information put together by a couple of psychologists. They’re credited there at the bottom of the handout.

It’s basically a little one-page pdf, you can check it out. If you want to get into all the details, there is a link in the episode notes, if you want to check that out. But I just wanted to share that with you as a resource.

It really is a quick way of encapsulating those strategies. And those are all things kids kind of learn in their, and again, that self-directed play and exploration that I’m always always going on about here. Something to check out if you are so inclined.

Next up, topic three, is trusting kids to organize dramatic play. This is a way of giving them that power that I was talking about a couple minutes ago. So let’s go look at there.

This is an article I put together, trusting kids to organize dramatic play, link in the episode notes. So first off, humans are wired to organize. Dr. Alison Gopnik, who’s a developmental psychologist, she researches infants and toddlers.

And in her book, I think it’s The Scientist in the Crib, she talks about young children as little scientists. And that’s really what science is. It’s about organizing, categorizing, and understanding.

So children are naturally wired to sort, categorize, and structure their world from infancy on. And there’s plenty of research that indicates this starts pretty early. And so the basic planning for dramatic play, I’ll skip down here and give you something else.

So this is another handout I put together, the three P’s of dramatic play, planning, preparing, and playing. Planning is creating the world they’re going to play in. Organizing or preparing is organizing that world.

And then playing is the process of engaging in the play, delving into that world. And kids are pretty much always cycling through these three P’s in their dramatic play and their small world play. But what happens in a lot of early learning settings is that adults pre-plan and pre-prepare.

They go in and they set up dramatic play space like a farmer’s market or like a Target store or like a bakery. And then the kids get to play in that environment. And the problem is when adults do that pre-planning, it steals a lot of the early learning from those kids because there’s a lot of learning going on in that planning stage, a lot of learning going on in the preparing stage.

And going in and doing it for them really, I mean, it steals a large portion of the potential learning that happens in dramatic play. And so one of the things we can do is we can empower kids to be the organizers and the preparers. Because what they’re doing when they’re planning is they’re defining roles and they’re sequencing the flow of play.

First, people are going to shop and they’re going to pay. Then they take their groceries home, for example, if they’re playing store. It’s also a chance to determine the needs, what equipment they’re going to need, what materials they’re going to need, and for setting the social expectations for that play.

And then moving on, the preparing, they need to gather the props and materials and they need to sort and categorize everything like we would organize things in the real world. If they’re organizing a grocery store, they need to decide where the frozen food is going to be and where the vegetables are going to be and those kind of things. Then they need to completely arrange the play space and get that environment set.

And again, if you did that the night before or you spent your weekend doing it when you could have been spending time doing other things, you’re really taking that opportunity from the kids. And look, it ends up being more work for you when you do all the preparing and planning and takes away from the learning. So there’s really no upside to it.

It takes away their problem-solving opportunities, it reduces ownership of the engagement, and it limits the adaptability and flexibility of the space. Because look, if you set up the dramatic play area as a farmer’s market and they’re wanting to play veterinarian time machine, the space really might not be equipped to make the transition to what they would really prefer to be playing. So the article you can check out.

There’s a link also to the handout if you want to get that over there. There it is. Those are there as resources for you if and you want them.

So what we got to wrap up this episode, share your power. Share your power. Let the kids be the boss of organizing and planning and preparing the dramatic play.

Let them have more power and control when you can. And look, this is a couple episodes ago we talked about caregiver burnout. And what I’ve observed over 25 plus years in this field is a lot of times when caregivers themselves are feeling burnt out, they cling on to the power they have in their classrooms.

Because they’re feeling powerless in other parts of their lives maybe. And things become more restrictive and more controlled in the classroom. And if you’re able to let go of that, you might be doing yourself and the kids a favor.

So create an environment where you can create these large blocks of time for child-led play and exploration. Where kids are the choosers and the deciders as much as they are physically and cognitively cognitively ready for. And you’re really doing a lot to support them.

And it might also free you up to become a better observer and do some of the other things you need to do around that classroom. Amazon Idea for this month is also about empowering kids. It’s the book Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy.

I think I got that right. Great book. I mean, it’s what it sounds like.

It’s about free range kids. It’s about giving kids power and control. And it’s a good resource if you want to check it out.

And again, that Amazon link I share in the episode notes is there for you if you want it. You’ve shopped that link. And a small percentage of what you spend goes to help support the Playvolution HQ website and this here podcast.

And share those things if you like them. If you like the articles on the HQ site, you like the podcast, share them with somebody who might dig them. Next week, navigating change.

I wonder what that’s going to be all about. Finally, dad joke of the week. I kind of like this one.

What do you call fake spaghetti? An impasta. This has been the Playvolution HQ podcast. Thanks for tuning in.

Back next Monday with another episode. Bye-bye.

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