Let Children Know

Learning from the wisdom of children; why we must, and how we can help them listen and learn from themselves

I’m in awe as I witness old ways of knowing continue to release themselves. Vocabulary loosening its hold. Architecture of language pushing against itself, magnifying its poles, building inertia to collapse what no longer serves us. Corners, angles, squares dissolving into the opening of circles.

It is here where we will reimagine how we live. And although we are already here and have all we need, most adults continue to try to patch old foundation, hold things up, explain and re-explain what should be, carve deeper lines of cause-effect and if-then, all while things get messier and uglier and continue to collapse.

We could do something else. We could step into the circles with those who see them, those who know how to play and rejoice in what’s growing anew, those who know how to access wisdom beyond what our crumbling infrastructures once held.

Children know how to do this. They are here for this growing anew. They know how to play and rejoice, how to create from layered, light-full intuition. Children know how to know. We must let them.

Children show us what they know all the time—when they give their attention to something small or fleeting, during their play rich with beautiful strangeness and connections we could never imagine, in their reaction to something/someone new, how they tell a story and name exactly what matters, when their eyes humble us in their truth, the way they delight in any moment, how they ask for what they need. Children know love and light and life—the wholeness of it all.

We usually only see children’s knowing in glimpses. Often because we’re busy telling children what we think they “need” to know.

More than ever before, we must step out of the way of children. They are our guides. We must listen and play alongside them. We must allow them space to access and explore what they know. We must take care not to impose our old infrastructures (of thought and language) onto them. We must recognize that what children are trying to express to us now (even what we don’t like or understand) is wisdom. And given all that’s at stake as we work to reimagine a more beautiful world, we’d be wise to listen to the wisdom of children.

How do we let children know and express what they know?

Trust.

Children know things we don’t know (or have forgotten). With beginner’s mind and immersed in gratitude, we must listen, be curious, allow surprise, and let ourselves learn from children. In each interaction with a child, we might ask: “What does this child know that I can’t yet see?” Or, in a moment when listening feels like an impossible feat, we might surrender and say: “Please allow me to be present with the wisdom of this child.”

Notice our words.

We must be careful what we say. We must notice for, and limit, our “helpful” words, our words of “fixing” or making things “better,” our words of how things “are” and “should” be, our well-intentioned “explanations” that impose old ways of knowing onto children. We need to reflect on the meanings held in our language and notice for what we might be trying to hide or avoid in ourselves. We might ask ourselves: How much of what I say to children is for myself? How much of what I say is because I’ve always said/heard it? Where am I projecting my own fear/guilt/shame onto children? What might I release from my old stories/understandings? In addition to attention to our own thought-patterns, when we are with children we can: 1) say less and allow more silence, 2) ask open-ended questions (and resist the urge to facilitate “answers”), 3) repeat/mirror back to children what they say (so they can learn from their own wisdom), and 4) be open to learning something new.

Allow space for access.

Children need space to access what they know. Too often, adults fill space for children. One of the most important things we can do to support children to stay connected with their knowing, is to adamantly create open space for children to BE with themselves. Each day, children need to be able to wonder in far-reaching ways, daydream, talk to themselves, notice creatures, listen to guidance, muck around in soil and with earth, connect with intuitions, allow sensations and feelings, meander and move as they wish, and find places of stillness inside themselves. How do we create for this? We do less. We schedule less. We direct less. We explain less. We allow more.

• Arrange easy access to materials for self-guided, open-ended play (e.g., wooden blocks, simple building sets, twigs, stones, leaves, buttons, fabric, mud, cardboard).

• Go outside without a plan. Maybe delight in games or specific adventures or focused pathways, and also allow for moments of nothingness so children get an opportunity to grow new connections with nature as nature (for more ideas, see: “We Are Nature”).

• Create spaces of silence. Children need silence (we all do). Notice for places where you can turn off background noise (TV, music, devices) to allow the natural noises of the world to dance into the “silence.” Notice for places in the day where you might curate stretches of silence for the family (setting table/before dinner; getting ready for bed; transition between getting home and doing homework; first thing in the morning). Grow spaces of silence for yourself, too, and your child’s embrace of silence will expand.

Invite expressions beyond words.

Children are connected to knowing beyond the understandings we’ve framed inside our words. Their knowing exists outside of words. Thus, we must afford them ample play space outside of current constructs of vocabulary so they can invent and grow new languages and understandings that they delight to express.

• Body exploration. Children hold much of their knowing in their bodies. Most “behaviors” that adults find “problematic” are things children need to explore and express. If we turn to words to help children “explain” and “manage” what’s underneath behaviors too soon, we miss opportunities for them to learn from and with their bodies. We need to let children move their bodies as a way to listen to themselves. Much more than “blowing off steam” or “getting your wiggles out,” body exploration is an enormous landscape for playful invention and expression, if we frame it that way. We can start by shifting how we talk about body movement and the questions we ask children about it. We might prompt an experience: Let’s move and listen to what our bodies have to tell us. Afterwards, we might ask: What did your body teach you? How did your body surprise you? What question/s did you ask your body? Did anything shift for you when you listened to your body?

• Visual exploration. Writing is a kind of visual exploratory movement, and children’s writing is much more expansive than writing words alone. Color, shape, texture, light, and line are playgrounds for children to invent, shift, remix, tumble, twist, layer, unfold with new understandings and expressions. A visual exploration might start with a feeling, an interesting object, or a wish. If we (adults) don’t interrupt, asked closed questions, or require a finished product, children have space to play in ways that allow their visualizations to reveal their aliveness and show children how to find and express more of their own knowing. Open questions that help children connect what’s on the page to what they know can be helpful: What are those lines saying? How did your feelings help you with this drawing? What do you know of that blue?

• Sound exploration. Expressions of sound—vocalizations, hums, screams, tonal shifts, play with volume, echo, rhythm, pattern—are also a playground for children. Think of children’s play with sound like you’d think of their play with wooden blocks or paint. They need a blank canvas and an open invitation. We can encourage children to learn from their inner soundscapes through a prompt such as: Close your eyes. Put your hand on your belly. Open your mouth a bit. Listen deeply inside yourself. Allow whatever sound/s might emerge. Notice them. Let them move and change and play. Let yourself be guided by the sounds. We can also encourage children’s attention to sound through playing with it more often in open-ended ways: notice different kinds of sounds, draw sounds, dance sounds, invent sound patterns, make things we might call songs, imagine sounds, listen to the smallest and faintest of sounds, and wonder what sounds might be trying to tell us.

These three areas of exploration rarely show up separately; they mix and overlap with ease. The essence of these three areas is their movement. Their explorations invite movement of understandings, feelings, and expressions. This allows things to be less fixed, less hierarchical, less dichotomized, not held as “known.” It allows space for new ways of being in the world. This is the landscape of playing in circles. We don’t have to understand it. Children do. We only need to allow them to play in these ways and learn from them.

Children are born with expansive knowing.

They lose connection with this knowing only when conditions make it unsafe for them to see, listen to, explore, and express their knowing. Our job is to listen to children, learn from them, and help them continue to listen to themselves. Imagine a world full of humans who have access to expansive knowing and are able to confidently and joyfully express this in the world. This is a world I want to live in. This is a world our children deserve. And this is a world children know how to create. We must let them.

Love + Light, Melissa

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