Asking Questions, Compliance Versus Engagement, and other Fantastic Beasts

OR Reading as Play

Recently, my husband was in the hospital. While we waited in a thousand different waiting rooms (ok, maybe there were only about 7), I looked around the room many times to see families sitting together, each one of them with a device in hand. What were we doing? Well, I was on my iPad… reading a book? Nope! Even though I have about 12 on there at any given time. Writing a blog post? Nope! I even had my handy Bluetooth keyboard. Working on the online course I’m taking about holistic teaching for indigenous learners? Nope! And that one is really interesting! I was playing plants vs zombies and my husband was looking up random facts/background on his phone about things we were seeing on the news on the waiting area TV.

There were, however, a couple of waiting room anomalies I noticed… A few kids who would reach up and poke mom or dad and ask a question. Unfortunately, those little ones were quickly shushed and pointed back to a device. Why? Because they’re bad parents? No, because of what we value as a people, and because the mommy shaming in our society has become so prevalent that we would rather have compliant zombie kids than be seen as the parent with the noisy, difficult to control child.

The problem (or really not a problem) is that kids are rarely quiet or still. It’s not really the way they’re built.

In our busy, run from one activity/appointment/errand/engagement/recital to the next, we spend an inordinate amount of time sitting and waiting. Waiting during the drive to the next thing, on the bus ride home, … waiting for mother, brother, sister, friend to be finished gymnastics/piano/grocery shopping/karate… the list is endless. The challenge for kids is that developmentally, they should be using many of these hours for play.

How can we get over the social stigma of having kids who question the world? How can we give our kids a chance to play when our lives and activities often don’t give them the physical chance to?

Children aren’t meant or built to sit all day. They are built to move their bodies and use their brains. That’s how they learn. That’s actually how we all learn best. Through experimentation, experiences, questions and play. Unfortunately, since the industrial revolution, we’ve built technology of increasing sophistication meant to keep kids in chairs for long enough for us to make them learn.

From the school desks of the early 1900’s to wiggle cushions to iPads

what we ask kids to do with most of their day illustrates what we value. We SAY we want curious kids who take initiative and solve problems in creative ways, who think and question and someday will change the world. In order for this to manifest, kids need time… time to sing, read, ask questions, make mistakes, explore, discover… time to play. HOWEVER, as parents, there is an ever-increasing amount of pressure and judgement to raise compliant kids that sit still and don’t make too much noise.

NOW, kids CAN absolutely and SHOULD absolutely be expected to sit still and be quiet in some situations. They have to. We all have to. There’s a reason there are mums and bubs movie times. There’s a reason people still speak quietly in libraries. There’s a reason people shush others at a funeral. There’s a reason we don’t should out and run around when there’s a guest speaker. There are basic social conventions that have to be followed. They just can’t (and shouldn’t) be expected to do this for 5 hours in school (up to 9 if they’re in before and after-school care) and 3 hours in the evening between waiting around times and suppertime. There’s no wonder we have to put them into a trance with devices!

The shift from compliance to engagement

I had a grade two three class once. They were some of the loveliest kids I’ve taught, but after a few months I found myself getting frustrated with them. Why? Behaviour problems? No, I could have stayed home sick and forgotten to get a sub and they would have done exactly what they were supposed to on time and with all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted! What they wouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t think they shouldn’t do was think. They were so wrapped up in a safe routine, doing exactly what the teacher said and following the rules that they had a very difficult time even answering open ended questions like, “What do you think?” They drove me nuts! So I went on a quest for the rest of the year to support them in going beyond learning the curriculum, by learning how to be learners.

So, how do we encourage our kids to be thinkers, questioners and willing to engage in the “hard fun” that is true down and dirty learning? How do we show them that we value their questions, their thinking outside the box, their challenging the status quo? How do we encourage them to look at the world as a puzzle? How do we do this without being glared at by others in the doctor’s office waiting room? We teach them how to experience the world through books and we teach them how to think while they’re doing this.

Reading as play

This little bunny (photo graciously shared by my wonderful friend Chantelle) is engaging in reading as play. She’s doing what millions of kids her age have done with toy kitchens, with dad’s razor, with mom’s high heels, with a toy tool set. She’s playing. She’s acting out what she sees her older brothers, her mom and her dad doing. She’s practicing. She knows she’s going to be a reader when she grows up and she’s as proud as punch about it.

We have to remember that reading is also a form of play. It’s a form of escape, experiential learning, of getting to a remote corner of the globe that might not be accessible any other way. Reading can be social, fun, engaging. Reading allows us to think, to challenge the status quo, to open our minds to new ideas and most of all… to question.

We can all envision the 3 year old who has just learned the word why. There have been a thousand TV sitcom skits with a toddler following around an exasperated parent (usually a not so involved dad) asking why? And then asking why to the answer. And so on and so forth. One of the challenges we face as a society is preserving this curiosity rather than beating it out of kids before they even get to the place where they’re supposed to learn how to learn. And one of the best ways to do this is through reading, and talking about reading, and playing through reading.

Asking questions is such an important process that we undergo millions of times a day as adults and don’t even realize. Have you ever been reading and catch yourself looking up to the right? Your brain has probably stopped reading (only for a few seconds) to ask a a question and then ponder the answer. You’re not asking a factual question, like which street corner Toby the tow truck was called to (an actual question on a reading assessment widely used in schools all over the world), but pondering why a character would say such a thing, or where the army would advance to next, or why the author used oregano instead of rosemary. Asking questions is what good readers do to trigger a process in the brain.

1. Ask a question
2. Infer the answer (from one’s own experiences, background knowledge, reading between the lines)
3. Search for the answer in the text
4. Synthesize the new information and solidify it in the brain (OR go ask an expert OR look elsewhere OR discard it completely)

When we use this process over and over again when we’re really young, we myelinate (make a deep pathway in the brain) the process and it becomes easier and easier to access and use. When children are allowed and encouraged to verbalize thinking processes, they are able to actively share their learning. This is what gets noticed in school! I’ve always told my young readers that I can’t actually cut open their skulls to look in and see what’s happening in their brains because their parents would be really angry with them! (I love the laughs I get from that one!) And that I also wouldn’t be able to see what they’re thinking about. The only way that I, as a teacher can see what they’re thinking is if they tell me. When kids have had tons of experience telling about their thinking because it’s an ongoing part of the reading conversation, they’ve got a HUGE leg up in school! They get noticed early, they get more praise, they get tons more teacher and adult conversation time, and they are much more comfortable engaging in the social act of reading and reading as play. All of these things contribute to that upward spiral of reading and learning again.

Simply using the sentence starter: “I wonder…” you can make huge changes in your child’s drive to read, purpose for reading, ability to ask questions (they don’t all know how to do it!), and wonder about the world. This cycle of thinking goes beyond abc and 2+2, and beyond learning about the capital of Tanzania. It goes through to upper level academia, business, commerce, travel… it contributes to a person who is inquisitive and curious… a true learner.