A Note from Alicia: Learning to See Through Walls

Dear Families, 

Learning to See Through Walls

Altruism

What if we got outside ourselves and there
really was an outside out there, not just
our insides turned inside out? What if there
really were a you beyond me, not just
the waves off my own fire, like those waves off
the backyard grill you can see the next yard through,
though not well—just enough to know that off
to the right belongs to someone else, not you.
What if, when we said I love you, there were
a you to love as there is a yard beyond
to walk past the grill and get to? To endure
the endless walk through the self, knowing through a bond
that has no basis (for ourselves are all we know)
is altruism: not giving, but coming to know
someone is there through the wavy vision
of the self’s heat, love become a decision.

~Molly Peacock

When I’m asked to describe the goals of early childhood education, I always start with the idea of widening circles. We come into the world able to see just far enough to make out the face of the person caring for us, while resting in their arms. Gradually, we develop the ability to see those caring people even when they aren’t holding us, and then to understand that those people continue to exist even when we cannot see them. Slowly, we come to know and trust people outside of those most immediate relationships. When children come to school, they connect with their teachers, then their classmates, then others in their school community. And with each step their circle widens so that they are able to sustain meaningful relationships with an increasingly extended and diverse range of people and ideas. 

Ultimately, the bigger picture goal of education across a lifetime is for children to become so adept at extending their understanding that they are able to approach new concepts and tasks with openness, to unpack and grapple with perspectives very different from their own with curiosity, and to think deeply about places, people, and ideas that are outside their direct experience with depth and nuance. The goal is to become increasingly capable of understanding the abstract.     

A significant challenge of the isolation we are experiencing right now is the extent to which it has rapidly closed our circles. Our experience of others has been contracted, as though a cord were quickly drawn, cinching our communities back into their smallest, tightest most nuclear clusters. 

One of our most important jobs, as teachers and parents, is to open our arms, our hearts, and our minds to others and to help children do the same, so that they can learn to invite an increasingly expansive and complex web of perspectives and ideas into their relationships and into their understandings. At a Reggio Emilia workshop I attended long ago, the presenter said, “Learning is coming into complexity.” And yet every aspect of our growing appreciation for complexity is harder when we can’t lay our eyes and our hands on the world and on one another. 

We need contact. We evolved for it. Those infants, who can only see 8”-10,” away prefer looking at faces to looking at objects. We are driven to look at one another, and we know from an array of research that empathy is harder when we cannot see and be seen. Whether posting online or sitting behind the wheel of a car, it is easier to be impatient and mean when we can’t see each other. Yet we are now unable to engage in the communal activities that most readily facilitate our connection to and understanding of one another. 

This is surely why so many of our coping mechanisms involve reminding ourselves that other people are in fact still out there beyond our walls. Whether it is the mantra that we are “in this together,” the rainbow and teddy bear hunts children have created to locate each other through windows, the compilations of musicians and dancers performing “together” from their own homes, the need for the “grid view” in video calls that allows us to see everyone’s faces at once, or the nightly ritual of cheering and applauding from our windows, which is as much a tangible reminder that we are not alone as it is a gesture of support for workers. We need these visceral reminders of connection with a new intensity, because they are the moments that pull our isolated circles back open and remind us of one another. These moments of connection feel like oxygen. 

As the duration of this experience has extended, we’ve gotten more skilled at using these new forms of connection. But I’ve also noticed that it seems to be getting harder. We need more. It’s not enough to surface above the water for a moment and take in the air. We are getting tired, because we need to fill our lungs without working quite so hard to break through the waves. Sustaining our sense of connection and patience is taking more emotional effort over time. 

We are going to need to build new muscles that enable us to sustain our patience and kindness, even when we can’t see each other and even when our own individual stresses may cloud the limited view that we do have beyond our walls. Our mistakes, and those made by others in our lives, feel magnified. These muscles need to stretch in ways they never have before, so we can all keep each other afloat. 

In our art session today, the teachers shared the book, Beautiful Oops by Barney Salzberg, about seeing the value in our mistakes and making something new out of them. We are all going to have many “oops” moments as we figure out how to take care of ourselves, our children, our jobs, and our communities. It is even easier than usual to feel swallowed by these experiences anytime something goes awry or a ball is dropped, because our lives have been so strangely narrowed, making it hard to see beyond the moment. But reminding ourselves to shift our perspective when this happens, whether that means purposefully looking from another person's vantage point or trying to see something different in our own efforts, is the exercise that will make us more capable of creating something beautiful and new out of the mess; we can slowly become more creative, better caretakers and learners, better at seeing each other, and better citizens—all core values of our school community—if we are able to practice and model this changing lens. These moments of seeing something new in something broken and looking for the good intention in an apparent failure will help us to build our endurance, as we practice forgiving our own mistakes, empathizing with our loved ones and those we cannot see, and striving to look at everything with an eye toward what is possible instead of what has fallen apart. 

We are all understandably worried about the lack of social connection our children are experiencing right now. I worry about this too. But I also find myself imagining how profoundly our children may be able to change the world for the better someday, if they glean from this experience a deep seeded ability to empathize with others, even when they cannot see them, and turn mistakes into beautiful opportunities. Those are the core skills we are building in ourselves and our children right now, though it may not always feel that way in the moment. Imagine if our children take these skills with them beyond this experience. Imagine if we do. We might just be raising the most resilient, compassionate, creative generation. 

Shabbat shalom,
Alicia

Books about Creativity & Compassion

Beautiful Oops by Barney Salzberg
The Book of Mistakes by Corinna Luyken
The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds
Ish by Peter H. Reynolds
Scribble by Deborah Freedman
Blue Chicken by Deborah Freedman
The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires
Perfect Square by Michael Hall
Maybe Something Beautiful by F. Isabel Campoy
The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld
What If by Samantha Bergeraa
The Curious Garden by Peter Brown
Something from Nothing by Phoebe Gilman

A Note from Alicia: You Are Enough

Dear Nursery Families, 

You Are Enough

What Children Say

I can’t reach my cup, my water bottle,
the snack up on the shelf. I can’t do
it. I won’t do it. I would never do it
in a million years. You need to help
me. Help me faster. Do it the way
I asked you to. I don’t like pizza or
watermelon. I don’t like anything I
liked before. I do not want it. I do
not need it. I will never move up off
this floor. Do not help me. Do not
hold me. Do not sit down beside my
bed. I’m not sleeping. I’m not tired.
I’m too scared to fall asleep. You must
hold me. You must rock me. Do not
leave me all alone. I am thirsty. I am
hungry. I am too tired to put my toys
away. Do not be angry. Do not start
singing. Where is the butterfly I drew?
I’m still hungry. I’m still playing. Will
you leave me? Will you stay?

~Kate Baer

As the world has largely shifted into a realty defined by sheltering in place, and as the likelihood that this may be a longer term situation than we dared predict has begun to crystalize, I’ve been seeing the energy and adrenaline that fueled the early days of building a new reality for ourselves and our children start to morph into a space that feels more palpably exhausted and worried. The early articles filled with lists of activities and online resources have started to transition into articles speculating on the potential long term impact. And parents have begun to ask bigger questions about the mark that this experience might leave on children. 

Much of the difficulty in answering these questions lies in the significant uncertainty inherent in this situation, and that uncertainty is also a key feature in our own exhaustion. We are both grieving for our loss of stability and experiencing what psychologists refer to as “anticipatory grief,” mourning additional losses that we expect but can’t yet know. For parents, all of this is compounded by the apparent instability we may be observing in our children, leading us to worry about how this upheaval is impacting them. 

My son, who is eight and has been handling much of the transition in apparent stride, had a complete meltdown this week over a drawing that was not turning out the way he wanted it to. After he’d angrily crumpled the paper and thrown it in the garbage, we sat down together and were quiet for a little bit. Then I told him a story about a time when my dad and I were in a car accident together when I was a kid. I explained that when it happened, I didn’t think that it had really scared me much, because we were both okay. Other drivers stopped quickly to help us. One mom even pulled over and insisted that we pile into her car with her children to keep warm while we waited for the police in the cold winter afternoon. Neither of us had so much as a bruise or a broken bone. Later that evening, though, I realized that I couldn’t find my glasses. At the time, I didn’t connect this to the car accident at all. I’d forgotten that I had even been wearing my glasses and assumed I must have misplaced them; but I was hysterically upset nonetheless. I explained to my son that looking back, I think I wasn’t really upset about my lost glasses. He nodded. I said that I think I was really upset about the car accident and my body needed to feel that and let that feeling out, so I got upset about my glasses instead. We talked about how much is happening in life that feels different and confusing right now. Sometimes it’s so confusing that it’s hard to really know what we are feeling, but our body still needs to get those feelings out. I wondered aloud if maybe that’s why he had felt so upset about his drawing. He nodded again and we sat for a few more minutes before deciding what we would do next. He went off to pick out a game for us to play together.

One of the most disconcerting aspects of parenting through traumatic events is the unpredictable nature of children’s reactions. Children, particularly young children, have big feelings, which they express in big ways, and their feelings often seem to swing radically from one extreme to another in a very short time span. Even more complicated is the fact that children often express their feelings in seemingly disconnected, behavioral ways. When they can’t pin point or understand their feelings, they act out or regress. We may note that these behaviors and regressions are “normal” and “to be expected.” But in fact, they are not only normal, they are necessary and adaptive. Children act out and regress in order to gain greater attention and proximity from us, and this is actually a good thing in destabilizing times, though it may not feel that way in the moment. Children are hardwired, in the deepest parts of their brain, to be experts at getting our attention and care when they feel unsafe, and we are hardwired in the deepest parts of our own brain to respond. The very strong impulse of their attachment instinct is ultimately what protects children most in scary and uncertain times. 

It is awful to grapple with the fact that we can’t always protect our children from frightening events in the world, and it is easy in these moments, particularly when we are constantly flooded with advice about how we should be scheduling or enriching their time at home, to presume that their tantrums and regressions are indicators of our failure to adequately protect or support them. But this is not true. Their tantrums and regressive behaviors are necessary coping mechanisms. They are actually signals to us that our children are healthy and that they know intuitively how to get what they need to feel safe---how to bring us close and how to relocate the boundaries that connote security. Even more reassuring, they don’t actually need very much from us in order to feel this sense of safety. They just need to be able to check in, to make contact, and to feel our presence. They need us to let them know that we see them and we see their feelings, and that we love them through those feelings.   

When experts advise that children need structure right now, they are not referring to complicated daily schedules or long lists of tasks. They are referring only to the touch points of routine that let children know you are still there to care for them and there is still some level of predictability in their day and in their relationships. 

When my son was littler, we had an agreement that no matter how our evening went, I could never take away his bedtime song. We made this agreement because once I did take it away. We’d had a particularly rough evening with lots of resistance to the things he needed to do to get ready for bed, and he’d already burned through the time that would usually be spent reading books. When I pointed this out and said, out of my own exasperation, that we might not have time for the song if he didn’t brush his teeth, he collapsed in tears. A few minutes later, with the tears still glistening on his cheeks, he said, “Mommy, you can’t take away train song. It’s too special.” We decided together that this one part of our nightly ritual was inviolable. 

What are the inviolable touch points in your day? The moments of connection that re-balance you and your child and allow you to move forward? These moments are the structure and routine children need to feel safe and secure, even if every other item on your list gets moved or changed or slips through the cracks, as we find our footing in this new reality. Secure relationships are the most powerful long term balm we have.                

Though we don’t have research on the impact of the specific circumstances we are experiencing, we do have a lot of research that tells us of the deep and lasting power of our relationships with our children. We know, for example, that children who were relocated out of London during the Blitz experienced more negative psychological impact in the long term than children who remained with their families, even though the children who remained experienced more of the direct trauma of the bombings. As parents, we need to absorb the power of that fact. Experiencing bombings was less traumatic for children than being separated from their parents. It is not our ability to protect children from the world that offers them the best assurance of long term wellbeing, it is simply our presence with them that is most protective. 

We don’t have to be perfect parents. Even under the best of circumstances that isn’t possible anyway. We just have to be present with our children. We have to love them. And we have to allow their feelings to bubble up and be given names. 

Jonathan Silin writes: 

"In the face of uncertainty, it is our willingness to approach the unimaginable and our commitment to bear witness that we can offer students of all ages. This is our most effective antidote to troubling histories and the difficult present. We cannot offer certainties nor can we promise to fix the world. But surely, surviving and bearing witness are reciprocal acts and we can say to our students, ‘Yes, this is how it is.’ And we can affirm: ‘Yes, we are here beside you. We can testify to your experience and to ours. Most importantly, we can teach you the skills and offer you the resources for telling your own stories...’ " (Early Childhood, Aging and the Lifecycle, p.111)

As this season reminds us to think about what is “enough,” we can take solace in knowing that time and again, across many profound human challenges, we have seen that a secure and loving relationship is truly enough for a child. Having someone to be a loving witness and to help children express their reality is enough. You are enough for your child.

Shabbat shalom,
Alicia

A Note from Alicia: Wishing You Stillness in Worried Times

Dear Nursery Families,

Wishing You Stillness in Worried Times

"Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple."
~Mary Oliver

Among the many other challenges and worries parents are facing right now, balancing work obligations and childcare is high on many families’ list of stresses. This is compounded by being suddenly thrust into, not only caring for children all day, but also feeling the pressures of homeschooling them. I can attest that, even for older children, distance learning requires a significant amount of adult support. We are keeping each of these balls in the air, all while we grapple with the anxiety of financial security in a highly fragile economy and fear for our health and the health of our loved ones. These are profound and layered concerns and there is no way for us not to feel the impact in every cell in our being. We all need stillness in our days, adults and children, and that is especially hard to find right now, when we are flooded with so many questions and competing tasks.

Stemming from the sudden closure of schools, many emails and articles are circulating (including some we have sent you ourselves!) offering lists of activities and projects to keep our children busy and engaged while they are home. These can certainly be helpful, particularly as everyone is feeling increasingly cooped up and stretched thin, and we’ve likely already cycled through our own list of rainy day activities several times over. But they can also add to the feeling that we are drowning in a sea of “to-do’s,” and they can at times contribute to rather than alleviate our parenting stress, as we may feel guilty for each activity we’re not able to squeeze in, among the many demands on our time.  

However, all of these lists and links are also indicative of a cultural shift in our larger understanding of childhood, a shift that is now triggering an abrupt head-to-head collision with the realities of having our children home with us all day.    

Many parents, over the past several decades, have come to see their function in their child’s life as one that researcher, Annette Lareau, terms “concerted cultivation.” We place a great deal of emphasis on our responsibility to directly foster and facilitate our children’s learning and development, by planning and guiding their activities and heavily scaffolding their every interaction and effort. This view of parenting has not always been prevalent and continues to vary significantly across cultures.

Surely adult engagement in children's learning has clear benefits, and on the best of days, one of the gifts of the current situation may be the opportunity it presents for families to be together and to play together. But there are also important benefits to independent or “solo” play, and our ordinary 21st century lives do not present many chances for children to practice entertaining themselves. Children are understandably at a loss when we ask them to wait while we finish a work phone call or make dinner, because they are so rarely alone with their own thoughts and ideas.        

Yet, as parenting author, Olivia Briggs, says:

“Numerous studies have shown that solo play can increase confidence, independence, and creativity, and children who play alone are more patient. Solo play is also great for the imagination, enhancing problem-solving abilities, and for preparation for school.”

The good news is that it is possible for children to build these skills. It won’t happen overnight. They will likely need us to help them start their play schemes at the beginning, and it will take time for them to build up from short periods of independence to longer periods. But as children become more comfortable and confident playing on their own, they actually learn to find great pleasure in having the space and the time to follow their own ideas and create their own unencumbered worlds. Once they get the hang of it, it can be hard to pull children away from their play, as they start to realize the full scope of their imagination and of the materials around them.   

It is important to keep in mind that children may be feeling especially emotionally insecure right now, as so much in their lives has changed for reasons that feel confusing and frightening. This is not a time to stretch their need for our comfort and reassurance in the interest of building independence. But the situation does present an opportunity to help children discover their own minds and their own potential as explorers, which will be beneficial to their growth and will also allow us at least a few more minutes each day to take care of our adult obligations. Additionally, play is the central way in which young children process their own worry. So there is also a crucial therapeutic value to providing lots of opportunities for play, while we all navigate this experience together.

Psychologist, Dr. Vanessa Lapointe, suggests that when our children tell us they are bored, we should respond enthusiastically, “I love bored!” She says: 

“Children need to sit in their own boredom for the world to become quiet enough that they can hear themselves. It is only when we are surrounded by nothing that something comes alive on the inside. The constant stimulation of today's reality makes arriving at that place of stillness really challenging for a lot of kids...Children need to sit in the nothingness of boredom in order to arrive at an understanding of who they are. And just as important, children need to sit in the nothingness of boredom to awaken their own internal drive to be.”

Tonight, instead of a list of links and recipes, we are sharing some words of wisdom from Jean Schreiber on how to manageably encourage your child’s independent play skills, along with a list of suggested materials from our Atelierisita, Sari Anchipolovsky, that lend themselves well to imaginative solo play.

As we come to the end of two very overwhelming weeks, I wish us all a few minutes of stillness and boredom. For your child and for you. 

Shabbat shalom,
Alicia

A Note from Alicia: How Much Love There Can Be

Dear Nursery Families, 

How Much Love There Can Be

“Please watch out for each other and love and forgive everybody.”
~Jim Henson

It has been a dizzying week for all of us. The ground feels like it is shifting in so many ways, and it is difficult to adjust our balance as new changes and challenges seem to arrive daily. The word “unprecedented” has been used a lot in recent days, and certainly it feels as though we are in the midst of something none of us has ever experienced before. The level of uncertainty in multiple areas of our lives is perhaps the most daunting aspect of what we are all going through. But even though this particular experience may be unprecedented, our ability to rise in moments of crisis is not. As families, as a community, and as a city, we have met unprecedented challenges in the past, and we have managed to rise to them with extraordinary compassion, with deepened commitment to community, and with care for one another and for the world. As scary as life feels right now, I am confident that we will look back on this time as one filled with examples of profound kindness and grace. I am confident of this, because we have done it before in other moments that felt similarly unknowable. And I am confident because I am witnessing so many examples of this commitment to community and to care each day, as we all care for each other and for those who are especially vulnerable.

I think often about the words of Andrew Solomon, who researched families negotiating the experience of parenting children with many kinds of profound difference. When asked about how he managed to find the hope necessary to have his own children, “in the midst of studying everything that can go wrong,” he said. “I'm not studying everything that can go wrong. What I'm studying is how much love there can be, even when everything appears to be going wrong." And, indeed, the most profound love is always found in the moments that feel the most daunting and frightening.

As we are asked to distance and shelter ourselves physically, let’s continue to take good care of one another and to look out for those who are most vulnerable. We may not be able to solve the biggest things, but we can always stretch to soothe a need that is within our reach, and doing so not only repairs a small corner of the broken world, it mends our own hearts and calms our own fears a little bit in the process. Check on those you know might be feeling most worried. Play with your children. Be patient and kind with each other, as we are all stretched thin and our imperfections are closer the the surface than usual. Each of these small things puts a few stitches back into the whole cloth. 

If you are looking for something a little bigger and a little more concrete to do, we have been told by multiple members of our parent community, who are also on the front lines as physicians, that the hospitals are already in significant need of masks. If you happen to have bought boxes of masks when it was still possible to do so, and you feel comfortable donating them to those who are putting themselves at risk each day to keep us safe, please reach out to me directly. I can provide you with information on how to go about donating masks to two local hospitals in need. 

Perhaps the most beautiful feature of childhood is the ability to believe in things we cannot see or know. Let’s all try to find that faith within ourselves and remember that there is love and beauty everywhere if we are determined to see it. 

Last week we began our Shabbat with Paul’s beautiful prayers. This week I wish you hope and comfort in this lullaby. 

From our living room to yours, with gratitude and love.
Shabbat shalom,
Alicia

A Note from Alicia: Holding Each Other from Afar

Dear Nursery Families, 

Holding Each Other from Afar

I began this school year at Parent Orientation by speaking about the idea that “grit” might actually have more to do with empathy, care, and community than with individual toughness. The moment that we are all living through right now has made this idea of finding strength in community, rather than in our individual resources, feel even more true and necessary. We have all been faced with an enormous challenge on every level—both physical and emotional, individual and collective. And yet, in every facet of life, I have been so inspired by the overwhelming spirit of community and goodwill that has emerged. From the team here at the JCC, including our incredible Nursery staff, to our parents, to the network of educators far and wide all rowing together to create new modes of learning, it has been a deeply moving and hopeful week, despite all that we are faced with. A collective spirit of care has emerged through an experience that could easily make us all feel overwhelmed and alone. Ironically, as we’ve been forced to isolate ourselves physically, we have come together with even greater commitment to our shared needs and our relationships. 

The journalist Jill Suttie wrote powerfully this week of research showing that in times of crisis, when we might expect people to become more self focused, they are in fact likely to act in highly empathetic and altruistic ways. She says: 

"Reports on the aftermath of natural disasters show that strangers will stick out their necks for each other to help. While it’s true that sometimes disasters can lead to a minority taking advantage of the situation—for example, stealing people’s possessions when they have to leave their house—this is not a common response, much as it grabs headlines. Instead, when we face a common enemy, like an epidemic, we are more likely to pull together for the benefit of everyone."

She goes on to explain that appealing to altruism is, according to the research, a stronger motivator than appealing to self-interest. I have experienced this in every aspect of my work with our community this week. This is why it was so moving to watch nearly 100 families join our online Shabbat Sing this morning and find joy in gathering together virtually when we couldn’t be together physically. Paul says: 

Dear JCC Family - 

This morning was the first gig I've been nervous for in years! With the weight of everything that happened yesterday in particular, I felt like I had to deliver something special.  As a father of two boys who sort of understand what's going on but also are still very innocent, I remembered back to the days of having toddlers and everything became perfectly clear to me - Just Have Fun.  

As soon as I saw families logging in early, I felt right at ease like I do in the common space.  So I want to thank all of you (kids, parents, caregivers, and of course, teachers) for joining and making this morning what it was - magical and inspiring.  We are planning to do this again, so think of more requests!

Thank you all once more.  I look forward to seeing you again soon.

Sincerely,
Paul

As the medical advice increasingly urges us to distance ourselves and limit our points of physical contact as much as possible, we hope that these online touch points will help everyone feel less alone and will make it easier to do all we can to protect both neighbors and strangers alike from increased exposure. To that end, while we know that the strong bonds in our school community make it tempting to arrange group gatherings and play-dates, we want to emphasize that the medical experts we are communicating with are increasingly clear about the need to reduce these in person interactions. We know this poses both emotional and logistical challenges, as we all struggle to navigate our families’ needs under a great deal of strain, and in particular that childcare is a concern for many. To the extent possible, we encourage you to try to limit these in person get togethers to those that are essential in meeting the practical requirements of your family, and allow us to help you facilitate a feeling of social connection, when physical contact is not essential to your day. We are in the process of gathering more advice and resources for families on both the medical guidelines and how to manage all of this for your family, which we will share next week. 

There is much that is uncertain in the days to come, but one thing I am sure of is that we will continue to get better and better and holding each other from afar. As we head into next week, we will be in touch with an increasing variety of opportunities for connection, learning, and community support. For now, I wish you a peaceful shabbat. 

We began our day singing together, and I invite you to end your day singing with us as well.  

Shabbat shalom,
Alicia