Inner Wildness
My Q&A with Chris Mercogliano went up on Babble.com on the 9th, and I missed it. It's short and sound-bitey, but fun.
I was reminded in a conversation yesterday that while I'm very much in support of people like Chris who are trying to prevent the real harm done to kids when they are never allowed to take risks in order to become self-determined because we've become a society obsessed with "safety" of a very particular and limited sort, that it's really, really hard to talk about facts like "the number of stranger sexual assaults is a lot smaller than you think it is" without seeming to be dismissive of the real and very bad things that do happen. As Chris said in some part of the unedited interview, as a parent, if you even hear about, let alone know closely, one of those cases, it might as well be 50,000 cases. So hard.
For those who are interested, the questions and answers that didn't make Babble's cut:
What are the top warning signs that a child's inner wildness is being domesticated?
I learned a long time ago, it doesn't pay to generalize too much about children. Kids are do different, families are so different. But it's a good question. I think on the whole, kids who've been overparented, kids who are overattached to their parents, kids who have been managed a lot, are generally less likely to want to take original initiatives; they're generally not as explorational, generally more conservative and more careful.
What does a domesticated childhood do to young adults?
When they reach that cusp of adulthood, they tend to be lacking in that ability to break down an unknown situation on their own terms. When they look inside for how to deal with an unknown situation, like deep trouble in a relationship or difficulty finding the kind of job they want, they just kind of draw a blank. They haven't exercised that muscle. They've had other people do it for them, either directly or indirectly. Psychologists are finding a huge percentage of people in their 20s are not up to the task. They're getting stuck, they're getting lost.
What have people said about the book so far?
I've gotten some good reviews. I got a great review in Library Journal, except that the reviewer didn't like my questioning the schools. Education is such a sacred cow in this country. Everything else I questioned was fine. I said a lot of strong things about all sorts of things, and the reviewer said "Right on! Listen to what this guy's saying." But as soon as I questioned the education system, my "bias" was "annoying."
You list the loss of children's paid work as one of the less obvious domesticating factors. Why is that a problem?
Harking back to my childhood, I always worked. I didn't have to work. I wasn't in an 1890s textile mill. But I got to go and cut my neighbor's lawn or weed my neighbor's flower bed, shovel my neighbor's walk. That kind of work has almost entirely disappeared. Kids are being held tightly close to home or they don't want to go outside.
My working experience as a kid wasn't just about making the money, though that was a big piece. Having my money; I earned it. But it was also dealing with people, using my body, learning skills, everything that goes along with doing purposeful work out in the world. I think that whole spectrum of nuances is really important to children's inner development.
You decry sex and violence on TV and advocate making kids do chores, but you also promote a very radical-seeming level of freedom for kids. Are you trying to make us question our political boxes?
There's no clear lines, which is good. I loved finding these two guys at the University of Rochester [Edward Deci and Richard Ryan] who have published a totally mainstream psychology theory that shows how essential self-determination is.
They're just regular American guys, no fancy alternative philosophy. Just these two research psychologists who at a fairly young age decided to take a whole other look at how children develop. They found that there are three basic human needs and one of them is autonomy.
I was reminded in a conversation yesterday that while I'm very much in support of people like Chris who are trying to prevent the real harm done to kids when they are never allowed to take risks in order to become self-determined because we've become a society obsessed with "safety" of a very particular and limited sort, that it's really, really hard to talk about facts like "the number of stranger sexual assaults is a lot smaller than you think it is" without seeming to be dismissive of the real and very bad things that do happen. As Chris said in some part of the unedited interview, as a parent, if you even hear about, let alone know closely, one of those cases, it might as well be 50,000 cases. So hard.
For those who are interested, the questions and answers that didn't make Babble's cut:
What are the top warning signs that a child's inner wildness is being domesticated?
I learned a long time ago, it doesn't pay to generalize too much about children. Kids are do different, families are so different. But it's a good question. I think on the whole, kids who've been overparented, kids who are overattached to their parents, kids who have been managed a lot, are generally less likely to want to take original initiatives; they're generally not as explorational, generally more conservative and more careful.
What does a domesticated childhood do to young adults?
When they reach that cusp of adulthood, they tend to be lacking in that ability to break down an unknown situation on their own terms. When they look inside for how to deal with an unknown situation, like deep trouble in a relationship or difficulty finding the kind of job they want, they just kind of draw a blank. They haven't exercised that muscle. They've had other people do it for them, either directly or indirectly. Psychologists are finding a huge percentage of people in their 20s are not up to the task. They're getting stuck, they're getting lost.
What have people said about the book so far?
I've gotten some good reviews. I got a great review in Library Journal, except that the reviewer didn't like my questioning the schools. Education is such a sacred cow in this country. Everything else I questioned was fine. I said a lot of strong things about all sorts of things, and the reviewer said "Right on! Listen to what this guy's saying." But as soon as I questioned the education system, my "bias" was "annoying."
You list the loss of children's paid work as one of the less obvious domesticating factors. Why is that a problem?
Harking back to my childhood, I always worked. I didn't have to work. I wasn't in an 1890s textile mill. But I got to go and cut my neighbor's lawn or weed my neighbor's flower bed, shovel my neighbor's walk. That kind of work has almost entirely disappeared. Kids are being held tightly close to home or they don't want to go outside.
My working experience as a kid wasn't just about making the money, though that was a big piece. Having my money; I earned it. But it was also dealing with people, using my body, learning skills, everything that goes along with doing purposeful work out in the world. I think that whole spectrum of nuances is really important to children's inner development.
You decry sex and violence on TV and advocate making kids do chores, but you also promote a very radical-seeming level of freedom for kids. Are you trying to make us question our political boxes?
There's no clear lines, which is good. I loved finding these two guys at the University of Rochester [Edward Deci and Richard Ryan] who have published a totally mainstream psychology theory that shows how essential self-determination is.
They're just regular American guys, no fancy alternative philosophy. Just these two research psychologists who at a fairly young age decided to take a whole other look at how children develop. They found that there are three basic human needs and one of them is autonomy.