Speaker 1: Pushkin, being noisy, both literally and metaphorically, doing lots of weird,
Speaker 1: random stuff right that doesn't seem to make sense, being
Speaker 1: impulsive and curious, and taking risks. All these features of
Speaker 1: what children are like that we might have thought were
Speaker 1: signs that they were irrational or just immature, really are
Speaker 1: exactly the things that make them so good at learning.
Speaker 2: Alison Gopnik is a developmental psychologist. She spent the last
Speaker 2: few decades studying children's brains and how they learn. She
Speaker 2: says they're the best learners we know of in the universe,
Speaker 2: and that if we can just let kids do their
Speaker 2: thing and not overparent them, actually lead to better results.
Speaker 1: And it's not to say that parents aren't important. Parents
Speaker 1: are extremely important, But the things that make parents important
Speaker 1: are in the kind of spontaneous things like the fact
Speaker 1: that they love their children and that they put energy
Speaker 1: into taking care of those children, not that they have
Speaker 1: some kind of special expertise that they read in a
Speaker 1: book or found on a blog that they can use
Speaker 1: to make those children come out better.
Speaker 2: On today's episode, the Creative Genius of Children and what
Speaker 2: they can teach us, I'm Maya Shunker and this is
Speaker 2: a slight change of plans, a show about who we
Speaker 2: are and who we become in the face of a
Speaker 2: big change. Allison is the author of several acclaimed books,
Speaker 2: including The Philosophical Baby and The Scientist and the crit Work.
Speaker 2: She often refers to children as humanity's research and development department,
Speaker 2: because they interact with the world like it's one big
Speaker 2: science experiment. It's pretty different from how we as adults
Speaker 2: engage with the world, and so I started off by
Speaker 2: asking Alison more about this distinction. I'd love to start
Speaker 2: with the basics, Alison. We know that children's brains are
Speaker 2: different from adult brains. But it's easy to think that
Speaker 2: children's brains are just immature versions of our brains. But
Speaker 2: you point out that children are actually just wired differently.
Speaker 2: They're wired to solve a different set of challenges. Right.
Speaker 1: The idea is that there's a difference between exploration and exploitation.
Speaker 1: So exploitation is what we're doing all the time as
Speaker 1: grown ups. We're trying to get resources and find our
Speaker 1: way in the pecking order, and find mates and be
Speaker 1: focused and have plans, all the things that we do
Speaker 1: when we're grown ups. But that's really different from just
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how the world works, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what makes what happen, What are the possibility
Speaker 1: what are the things that I could do, not necessarily
Speaker 1: the things that I need to do right now to
Speaker 1: get some kind of reward, And that's exploration. So the
Speaker 1: idea is that what children are doing is really their
Speaker 1: brains are designed to explore. They're designed to find out
Speaker 1: as much about the world as they can. Not very
Speaker 1: well designed to put on their snowsuits in the morning
Speaker 1: and get to prescull right, but very well designed to
Speaker 1: find out as much as they possibly can about the
Speaker 1: world around them. And if you're thinking about it from
Speaker 1: that perspective, many things that are features from an exploit
Speaker 1: perspective are bugs from an explored perspective, and vice versa. So,
Speaker 1: for example, having very focused attention, that's very good if
Speaker 1: you're a grown up. You want to have focused attention.
Speaker 1: You want to be paying attention to your goals. You
Speaker 1: don't want to be distracted by that little speck of
Speaker 1: dust on the floor. But if what you're trying to
Speaker 1: do is just learn as much as you can, then
Speaker 1: having a much broader focus of attention, paying attention to
Speaker 1: even things that aren't relevant to what you're doing right
Speaker 1: now is going to be a better strategy. Being noisy,
Speaker 1: both literally and metaphorically, doing lots of weird, random stuff
Speaker 1: right that doesn't seem to make sense. That's a real bug.
Speaker 1: If you're trying to be an effective, you know, CEO
Speaker 1: type battle, it's a feature if what you want to
Speaker 1: do is find out as much about what's going on
Speaker 1: around you as possible. Being impulsive and curious and taking risks.
Speaker 1: Those are all things that aren't really a great idea
Speaker 1: if you're just trying to get out of the house,
Speaker 1: but they are really good if you want to learn.
Speaker 1: And all these features of what children are like that
Speaker 1: we might have thought were signs that they were irrational
Speaker 1: or impulsive or just immature, really are exactly the things
Speaker 1: that make them so good at learning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love the reinterpretation of bugs as features in
Speaker 2: this case. And you know, you're talking about the walk
Speaker 2: to preschool, and I'm reflecting now, you know what, I've
Speaker 2: taken walks with my nieces and nephews. It is a
Speaker 2: totally different experience than when I for a walk, right,
Speaker 2: and in the moment, I actually can get quite impatient
Speaker 2: with them. Hey, guys, we just have to go to
Speaker 2: the supermarket because your mom needed us to pick up milk.
Speaker 2: And this is taking twenty five minutes because you're intrigued
Speaker 2: by every little thing that you see. But I actually
Speaker 2: think you're helping make me more patient with a curious
Speaker 2: set of behaviors that the kids engage in because it
Speaker 2: is engineered towards a more exploratory frame of mind, which
Speaker 2: is very very helpful for our species.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, going for a walk to the
Speaker 1: seven eleven with a four year old, you suddenly realize
Speaker 1: that these four blocks that you've done, And I've had
Speaker 1: this experience recently with my three year old grandson. The
Speaker 1: four blocks that I have walked many many, many many times,
Speaker 1: I hadn't didn't see anything. There were all sorts of
Speaker 1: things to see on those few blocks that I just
Speaker 1: wouldn't notice if I were by myself, but that thelo
Speaker 1: who's my grandson immediately notices and sees and thinks are fascinating.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a bit more about there being a trade
Speaker 2: off between exploration and exploitation.
Speaker 1: So the picture that comes from cognitive science is that
Speaker 1: there are many different kinds of cognitive abilities that we have,
Speaker 1: and not only are they different, but they actually trade
Speaker 1: off against each other. So the things that make you
Speaker 1: very good at learning, for example, might really be intention
Speaker 1: with the things that make you really good at acting
Speaker 1: and doing things effectively. So any kind of intelligent system,
Speaker 1: rather than just sort of, you know, dialing up the
Speaker 1: general intelligence knob, is going to have to figure out
Speaker 1: ways of having a kind of division of labor, of
Speaker 1: having trade offs, of figuring out when do you do
Speaker 1: one and when do you do the other, and how
Speaker 1: can you get a system that's capable of doing things
Speaker 1: that are very different and actually intension with each other.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. You do say that childhood is evolution's way
Speaker 2: of solving for the explore exploit trade off. Tell me
Speaker 2: a bit more about that.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we know about biological intelligent
Speaker 1: beings is that there's this really driking relationship between how
Speaker 1: long a period of childhood a species has and how
Speaker 1: large a brain it has, how intelligent it is, how
Speaker 1: much it relies on learning. It's a very very general principle,
Speaker 1: but sort of a mysterious one, right, because having a
Speaker 1: long childhood sort of by definition means you're going to
Speaker 1: have a period when you're not going to be effective
Speaker 1: and you're going to need resources from other animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, greater dependency, exactly right.
Speaker 1: And humans are way out on the end of the distribution,
Speaker 1: as it were, on all of these measures. So we
Speaker 1: have the longest childhood by far. Chimpanzee children are producing
Speaker 1: as much food as they're consuming by the time they're seven.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, and humans, even in forger cultures, aren't doing
Speaker 1: that until they're at least fifteen. So that's very puzzling
Speaker 1: from an evolutionary perspective. Why would you have this very
Speaker 1: long period where you not only are you not producing resources,
Speaker 1: but you're depending on other people to produce resources for you.
Speaker 1: And the argument is that when you're trying to resolve
Speaker 1: this explore exploit trade off, a very good way to
Speaker 1: do it is have an early protected period where all
Speaker 1: you have to do is explore. You don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about exploiting because you have caregivers who take care
Speaker 1: of you, and then you can take all those things
Speaker 1: that you learned when you were three or when you
Speaker 1: were four and put them to use as an adult
Speaker 1: in a new environment.
Speaker 2: You said a really critical word there, which is you
Speaker 2: said protected childhood, and it is really important to emphasize
Speaker 2: that kids are only really getting the gains of this
Speaker 2: period of exploration when they do feel that they are
Speaker 2: in these safe spaces where it's okay to take risks,
Speaker 2: where it's okay to experiment with different solutions.
Speaker 1: Right, that's exactly right. If you feel as if you're
Speaker 1: in a protected context, then that actually enables you to
Speaker 1: go out and explore. And there's quite a bit of
Speaker 1: work recently. We've just written a paper about this that
Speaker 1: suggests that what is sometimes called adverse experiences like not
Speaker 1: be in that situation of caregiving, right, which is unfortunately
Speaker 1: true for many, many, many children, especially in the United States.
Speaker 1: That one of the effects that has is that it
Speaker 1: tamps down that kind of exploration in that sense of possibility.
Speaker 2: Right. And that's so sad because exploration seems critical for
Speaker 2: these kids. And actually, you said that kids are Humanity's
Speaker 2: research and development department. Can you say a bit more
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 1: My basic hypothesis has been the children are like little scientists.
Speaker 1: They're going out in the world, they're doing experiments, they're
Speaker 1: analyzing statistics, and they're doing that in order to figure
Speaker 1: out how the world works. So things that you again
Speaker 1: might think of as bugs of the children, like they're
Speaker 1: just trying things out even when they get a bad outcome,
Speaker 1: actually turn out to be features from this exploration perspective. So,
Speaker 1: especially if the world works in an unexpected way, not
Speaker 1: the obvious way, not the way that you would think
Speaker 1: right away, then being willing to experiment, being curious, trying
Speaker 1: things even if it's going to cost you the short run,
Speaker 1: actually lets you learn about the world. And that seems
Speaker 1: to be what children are really designed to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And actually that reminds me of one of your
Speaker 2: research studies that I think is such a good example
Speaker 2: of this. In the study, you gave kids and adults
Speaker 2: the task of solving a complex logic fuzzle, and the
Speaker 2: kids in the study actually tried out a much wider
Speaker 2: range of possible solutions before committing to a final answer,
Speaker 2: even when trying out more things came at some sort
Speaker 2: of cost or penalty. But adults, on the other hand,
Speaker 2: they stopped trying new solutions as soon as they thought
Speaker 2: they had the right answer, even if they didn't actually
Speaker 2: have it. And you call what adults are doing here
Speaker 2: a learning trap. Can you explain what that is?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Essentially, what happens in a learning trap is that
Speaker 1: you decide that you've figured out how something works, and
Speaker 1: as a result, you don't actually go out and get
Speaker 1: more data. You don't actually go out and get more
Speaker 1: evidence that could prove that you're wrong. And the result
Speaker 1: is that you think that you're doing great. You think
Speaker 1: you've figured out how this thing works, but you've actually
Speaker 1: committed to a much more narrow view of how the
Speaker 1: world works. But often actually finding something new involves a
Speaker 1: measure of risk, right, And what happens is that because
Speaker 1: adults are often sort of overconfident about the fact that
Speaker 1: they've actually understood how something works, they won't take the
Speaker 1: risks that would actually let them learn that something's new. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and let me give you an example of a learning
Speaker 1: trap in real life that we think actually is responsible
Speaker 1: for certain kinds of mental health issues. So, for example,
Speaker 1: suppose I'm getting on an airplane. This is actually autobiographical,
Speaker 1: and I have a terrible experience on the airplane. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, there's awful turbulence site, I get a terrible headache,
Speaker 1: and as a result of that, I just refuse to
Speaker 1: get on an airplane ever. Again, that's what happens in
Speaker 1: phobias or anxiety disorders. Now, the problem is if I
Speaker 1: do that, I'm never going to learn that most of
Speaker 1: the time airplane rides are perfectly fine. And my brain
Speaker 1: isn't going to figure out that most of the time
Speaker 1: airplane rides are perfectly fine. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why when people have anxiety disorders, the solution, which
Speaker 1: seems sort of paradoxical, is actually go out and do
Speaker 1: the thing that you're afraid of and then find out that,
Speaker 1: oh no, actually, you know, the snake is not going
Speaker 1: to the snake is not going to bite you, the
Speaker 1: airplane ride is not going to be terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're talking about how we're encouraged to expose ourself
Speaker 2: to the scary stimulus rather than avoid it.
Speaker 1: Right, And the thought is that childhood is kind of
Speaker 1: lets you get that for free, right. The children are
Speaker 1: the children are trying out new things that could potentially
Speaker 1: be scary all the time, and that helps them to
Speaker 1: escape from these learning traps where you are frightened of
Speaker 1: the outcomes, so you don't try to find out something new,
Speaker 1: which means that you never actually really learn about how
Speaker 1: the world works.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in terms of everyday life as adults, Obviously
Speaker 2: it makes sense for us to carry more of the
Speaker 2: exploit burden. Right. We have responsibilities in everyday life. We
Speaker 2: have to make money for our families, we have to
Speaker 2: feed children, lots lots of tasks, and so I think
Speaker 2: none of us want to go back fully into exploration mode. However,
Speaker 2: there are moments, there are times in our lives where
Speaker 2: we really would benefit from a more exploratory mindset. So,
Speaker 2: for example, during creative processes, it's really helpful for us
Speaker 2: to try to embody a childlike state. Do you have
Speaker 2: some tips for how we might cultivate a mindset that
Speaker 2: more closely approximates that of a child's.
Speaker 1: Well, I think we have some ideas, and one is
Speaker 1: this sense of being safe, of not having anything immediately
Speaker 1: riding on your decisions seems to be something that enables
Speaker 1: you to explore more widely. The idea would be, and
Speaker 1: this is something that people frequently do when their brainstorming,
Speaker 1: is to say, look, you can say something that is
Speaker 1: going to be really dumb, or that isn't going to work,
Speaker 1: or that everyone else is going to think is a
Speaker 1: silly idea, But for now, what we're going to do
Speaker 1: is let everyone say those weird things, think those weird,
Speaker 1: strange things. I think another context that makes you more
Speaker 1: childlike is something like travel. We're simply placing yourself in
Speaker 1: a new environment that you haven't already mastered. Is a
Speaker 1: way of getting that kind of broader focus as a
Speaker 1: way of giving you an incentive to explore and to learn.
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you actually from New Orleans. I'm here
Speaker 1: for the Big AI Conference, and just this morning I
Speaker 1: was thinking, one of the great pleasures in life is
Speaker 1: being what the French call of flaneur. So if flaneur
Speaker 1: is someone who just goes to a strange city and
Speaker 1: wanders around the strange city, and I was thinking this morning,
Speaker 1: why is that so satisfying?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Why is there such pleasure in just being in a
Speaker 1: new place and wandering around the streets and seeing everything
Speaker 1: that's a little different. I think that's something that really
Speaker 1: puts you in this kind of explore mode. You're not
Speaker 1: trying to get to the high points, You're not trying
Speaker 1: to get to the conference center. You're just wandering and
Speaker 1: physically wandering, and wandering in your head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you mentioned going to new cities and
Speaker 2: thinking also about learning new skills. I think all of
Speaker 2: these uncomfortable environments are humbling in a way that's potentially
Speaker 2: very helpful to the adult brain. When we've been placed
Speaker 2: outside of our comfort zone, we have no mastery of
Speaker 2: the skill a hit, or no mastery of how to
Speaker 2: get around the city. It allows us to rely less
Speaker 2: on our priors, less on existing knowledge, and to try.
Speaker 2: And I'm just trying to think about what it's doing
Speaker 2: to the mind, but it just seems like it's forcing
Speaker 2: upon us a kind of creativity that day to day
Speaker 2: life might not.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. I think that's exactly right. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of really nice examples of late life artistic creativity.
Speaker 1: What the artists did is take all the things that
Speaker 1: they were really good at and then set up a
Speaker 1: situation where they can't do that anymore.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a famous example of the well, the painter
Speaker 1: Bryce Martin actually, who was a wonderful painter, actually strapped
Speaker 1: his paint brushes to his hands so that it was
Speaker 1: much harder to actually put the paint on the canvas.
Speaker 1: And that seemed to enable him to do things and
Speaker 1: try things that he hadn't been able to try before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it helps us challenge the routine ways in which
Speaker 2: we're used to accomplishing tasks. What a wonderful exercise to
Speaker 2: intentionally put yourself in situations that require innovation from your
Speaker 2: own mind. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: And of course, in some ways it's making you more
Speaker 1: like a child, because of course, part of what's happening
Speaker 1: with children is that they're not as good at doing
Speaker 1: things in this kind of accomplished expert way.
Speaker 2: Up next, Alison's share is why gardening is a great
Speaker 2: metaphor for how we should raise children. And good news,
Speaker 2: this approach actually requires less effort from parents. So if
Speaker 2: you're a stressed out caregiver looking for some relief, I
Speaker 2: promise we've got you covered. We'll be back in a
Speaker 2: moment with a slight change of plans. So so far, Elison,
Speaker 2: we've talked about the marvelous ways in which children's brains
Speaker 2: are wired and how they learn things, and you say
Speaker 2: that this has implications for how we parent, and you've
Speaker 2: come up with this very helpful analogy that helps reflect
Speaker 2: two distinct models of parenting, the carpenter and the gardener.
Speaker 2: Do you mind talking about the carpenter and the gardener.
Speaker 1: So a very common way, especially nowadays, that people think
Speaker 1: about being a parent is that it's kind of like
Speaker 1: work or school. So I think especially you know, modern
Speaker 1: middle class parents who have spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: working or going to school, have this picture that if
Speaker 1: you just get the rules right, you know, you just
Speaker 1: get the right kind of skills, then you're going to
Speaker 1: get the right outcome. So if you think about being
Speaker 1: a carpenter, you know, you want to make a chair
Speaker 1: that's a particular shape, and you know, here's the wood
Speaker 1: that I need, and here's what I have to do
Speaker 1: to make that come out a particular way. And people
Speaker 1: often especially now have that as the sort of internal
Speaker 1: model of what it is to be a parent. I
Speaker 1: want a child too is going to Harvard and smart
Speaker 1: and competent and happy and successful and whatever you're listening to.
Speaker 1: All the things, have all the things exactly, And if
Speaker 1: I just do the right things, if I just have
Speaker 1: the right techniques and the right tools, I'll be able
Speaker 1: to create this child who has all these properties that
Speaker 1: I want. And the trouble is, that's not how being
Speaker 1: a parent works at all. So if you think back
Speaker 1: to that, relationship between caregiving and exploration. What the caregiver
Speaker 1: can do is to give the child space to try
Speaker 1: lots and less of different things, often things that the
Speaker 1: caregiver couldn't have anticipated. And if you think about a
Speaker 1: garden when you're a gardener, that's really what you're trying
Speaker 1: to do. So a garden is a really complicated ecosystem.
Speaker 1: It can come out in lots of different ways. It
Speaker 1: has to respond to the very particular phenomena of the weather,
Speaker 1: the climate, and the geography.
Speaker 2: That you're in.
Speaker 1: And a good gardener knows you just can't control what's
Speaker 1: going to happen in the garden, But what you want
Speaker 1: to do is to provide enough richness, enough resources so
Speaker 1: that many different kinds of plants can thrive. And it's
Speaker 1: actually a deeper point because what makes say an ecosystem
Speaker 1: like a garden effective is this kind of variability in diversity.
Speaker 1: And we know that that's the thing that makes it robust.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that can make the garden survive even
Speaker 1: though you know one year you have a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of rain, in the next year you have drought, And
Speaker 1: it's having that possibility of diversity of variability of doing
Speaker 1: things that are different, things that are unexpected, things that
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you don't even want as a parent.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that makes the system robust.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why is it better for parents to be more
Speaker 2: gardeners than carpenters.
Speaker 1: Even if you could be the carpenter, even if you
Speaker 1: could fulfill this carpenter agenda, you'd be sort of undermining
Speaker 1: the whole point of childhood by doing it. But the
Speaker 1: truth is you can't really do it. And the result
Speaker 1: is that parents are in this constant state of frustration
Speaker 1: because they feel as if there should be a guidebook,
Speaker 1: there should be a specific outcome, and that they're failing,
Speaker 1: And so they read more books, so they look at
Speaker 1: more parenting blogs, or they try to make judgments about
Speaker 1: what they should be doing and what they shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 1: And that just makes everybody miserable. It makes everybody anxious.
Speaker 1: It makes parents anxious, it makes children anxious. Whatever its
Speaker 1: long term effects on the children are, in the moment,
Speaker 1: it makes being a parent much more stressful and difficult
Speaker 1: than it should be. And it's not to say that
Speaker 1: parents aren't important. Parents are extremely important, But the things
Speaker 1: that make parents important are in the kind of spontaneous
Speaker 1: things like the fact that they love their children and
Speaker 1: that they put energy into taking care of those children,
Speaker 1: not that they have some kind of special expertise that
Speaker 1: they read in a book or found on a blog
Speaker 1: that they can use to make those children come out better.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I mean you have struck a chord with
Speaker 2: so many parents right now or anyone who cares for
Speaker 2: children in capturing the anxiety that people feel around this space.
Speaker 2: I mean, with hundreds of thousands of self help books
Speaker 2: around parenting or guides for parenting, it's really overwhelming. And
Speaker 2: on a personal level, I do see so many of
Speaker 2: my friends with kids getting completely wound up over whether
Speaker 2: they're engaging in the right kind of parenting. Was was
Speaker 2: I mindful? Was I this full? Was I that full?
Speaker 2: I mean we're being fed scripts now around how we
Speaker 2: should be engaging with kids, and I really would love
Speaker 2: to release the pressure valve for them just a little
Speaker 2: bit right in this moment. What are the types of
Speaker 2: things that you see parents stressing about that the empirical
Speaker 2: research shows just don't make a difference when it comes
Speaker 2: to the kids development.
Speaker 1: So there's a kind of paradox because we know a
Speaker 1: lot about how important parents are, because we know that,
Speaker 1: as I say, the large number of children in a
Speaker 1: place like the United States who don't have good caregiving,
Speaker 1: who don't have parents who are able to take care
Speaker 1: of them, because the parents are stressed, because the parents
Speaker 1: aren't there, because the parents are or under other kinds
Speaker 1: of pressure, they do really suffer, and we know that
Speaker 1: they suffer in the long run. But the things that
Speaker 1: typical middle class parents are stressing about, like exactly how
Speaker 1: should you feed your child or exactly what kind of
Speaker 1: sleep pattern should the child have, there's no evidence that
Speaker 1: those kinds of decisions have effects in the long run.
Speaker 1: And in some ways, it's almost like the things that
Speaker 1: you are sitting there and consciously trying to decide about,
Speaker 1: should I do it this way? Do it that way?
Speaker 1: You know, do you have the baby face forward or
Speaker 1: face backwards in their stroller? Do you sleep train or
Speaker 1: do you have the baby sleeping with you? Almost by definition,
Speaker 1: those are not the things that are going to have
Speaker 1: the long term effects. And the things that will have
Speaker 1: long term effects are whether you love the child and
Speaker 1: have resources to take care of the child, and whether
Speaker 1: there are other people who love the child and have
Speaker 1: resources to take care of the child.
Speaker 2: And are you finding that to be true even with
Speaker 2: pedagogical approaches with kids. So the way that we try
Speaker 2: to teach kids certain skills, like what I think, what
Speaker 2: I'm interested in here is when I think about so
Speaker 2: I used to be a violinist, and when I think
Speaker 2: about how I learned the violin, it was exclusively through imitation.
Speaker 2: I do you know how to reachcheat music? I didn't
Speaker 2: know any of the relevant technique. I just watched my
Speaker 2: teacher and I imitated. And at the time it was
Speaker 2: considered blasphemous. This was the way that I'd got about
Speaker 2: learning music. It was so unstructured. So undis that in
Speaker 2: reading your book it allowed me to see my learning
Speaker 2: of music through a different lens, which is actually maybe
Speaker 2: that was a terrific way for me to learn as
Speaker 2: a six year old.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I mean this is another one of these ironies,
Speaker 1: which is that children are learning a tremendous amount just
Speaker 1: by observing what's going on around them, by watching the
Speaker 1: people around them, by doing things like helping mom to cook,
Speaker 1: by watching the things that are most important to the
Speaker 1: grown ups around them, and figuring out how the grown
Speaker 1: ups around them were, and we know for many studies,
Speaker 1: many which I describe in the Gardener and the Carpenter,
Speaker 1: just how amazingly subtle children are and how accomplished they
Speaker 1: are at learning just by looking at other people, listening
Speaker 1: to what other people say. Again, I think, because so
Speaker 1: many parents are coming to being parents after they've spent
Speaker 1: a whole lifetime going to school, very often people think, oh,
Speaker 1: children are learning a lot. That means that we have
Speaker 1: to teach them a lot, the way that we teach
Speaker 1: people in school. And in fact, we don't have to
Speaker 1: make children learn. All we have to do is let
Speaker 1: them learn. They are the best learners that we know
Speaker 1: of in the universe, you know, much better than any
Speaker 1: AI system. And it's not like we have to teach
Speaker 1: them how to do all of these things. They learn
Speaker 1: just in the course of their everyday interaction with the
Speaker 1: people and the world around them.
Speaker 2: Is there evidence to show that the Carpenter model of
Speaker 2: parenting is really taking off or has really taken off?
Speaker 2: I mean, intuitively I feel that's the case, but I'm
Speaker 2: always mindful that I live in a particular bubble and
Speaker 2: that might not be representative of US based trends or
Speaker 2: worldwide trends.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a very interesting paper that just came out
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Pediatrics where they looked at how
Speaker 1: much independence children have had and how constrained they are
Speaker 1: by what parents are doing. And I think the evidence
Speaker 1: was pretty good that historically children had many more opportunities
Speaker 1: for exploring than they do now. So even if you
Speaker 1: just think about, you know, could children walk to school,
Speaker 1: how much of the neighborhood did they know about, I
Speaker 1: think there's actually some pretty good evidence that that has
Speaker 1: really narrowed and become more constrained, both for high income
Speaker 1: and low income children over the past say, twenty or
Speaker 1: thirty years. If you think about when the TV series
Speaker 1: Stranger Things came out, which is all set even just
Speaker 1: not that long ago in the eighties, one of the
Speaker 1: reactions people had is, Gee, those kids are just like
Speaker 1: getting on their bikes and wandering around and you know,
Speaker 1: going through the park and going to these strange places
Speaker 1: in the forest. The kids wouldn't do that now, right,
Speaker 1: That would be a strange thing for kids to do now.
Speaker 1: And I think there is some empirical evidence that that's
Speaker 1: been true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure there's lots of people listening who are thinking, Allison,
Speaker 2: you convinced me intellectually I want to do a little
Speaker 2: bit more of the gardening approach to parenting. But man,
Speaker 2: it is really hard to or resists the pressures of
Speaker 2: being a carpenter parent. When our current system as it
Speaker 2: is designed, tends to reward kids that grow up under
Speaker 2: that model, What do you say to them? Because it's
Speaker 2: so hard, and I mean, I feel the temperature rising.
Speaker 2: Like we both live in the Bay Area, right, it
Speaker 2: just feels a little bit suffocating at times.
Speaker 1: My basic advice is to chill out. That putting more
Speaker 1: energy into integrating children into the daily life that's most
Speaker 1: important to you, and less energy into trying to shape
Speaker 1: them just leads to a happier existence for everybody. What
Speaker 1: I do think is that in the moment, for a
Speaker 1: particular parent and a particular child, you can sort of
Speaker 1: get a sense of what makes us thrive and what
Speaker 1: makes us not thrive. What are the times that are
Speaker 1: the happy, joyful times? And I think we really underplay
Speaker 1: just how much every day joy and happiness there is
Speaker 1: and being with little kids, like you know, rolling around
Speaker 1: on the floor and playing and you know, getting a
Speaker 1: chance to use crayons. I never get a chance to
Speaker 1: use crayons in my everyday life. But I could do
Speaker 1: it if I'm with my grandchildren, getting a chance to
Speaker 1: sing old Broadway show tunes, which is also something I
Speaker 1: don't get a chance to do in my regular.
Speaker 2: Life, or just so. My nephew's nine years old and
Speaker 2: I somebody's just marvel at what he's picking up from
Speaker 2: his environment that we know that he's never been explicitly taught.
Speaker 2: So he came to visit my husband and me, and
Speaker 2: he gets into the car as we're driving, you know,
Speaker 2: to go to an amusement park or something, and he said,
Speaker 2: you know, like Auntie Maya, Uncle Jimmy, I just need
Speaker 2: to tell you that I probably won't get married, okay.
Speaker 2: And I was like, okay, I'm so glad that this
Speaker 2: is a choice for you, Matteo, like it's up to
Speaker 2: you to decide. And he's like, and there's a really
Speaker 2: big reason why. And I was like, okay, you know
Speaker 2: what is it? And he like to have this big
Speaker 2: dramatic pause and he goes heartbreak. I just don't think
Speaker 2: heartbreak is something that I ever want to go through.
Speaker 2: I was like, you're nine, but it was extraordinary to me.
Speaker 2: I was filled with awe, wow, this little kid is
Speaker 2: walking around the world and he somehow absorbed this message right,
Speaker 2: And that was a nice reminder. I was reading your
Speaker 2: book during the same period of time where I was
Speaker 2: interacting with my nephew, and it was a reminder while
Speaker 2: so much of that learning is happening outside of these
Speaker 2: formal systems of education, and that's outside these formalized structures,
Speaker 2: and that's the most powerful, emotionally resonant kind of learning.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things that we can
Speaker 1: do as caregivers in general, maybe even more as grandparents
Speaker 1: because we don't have to worry so much about the
Speaker 1: day to day, is we just get to witness this
Speaker 1: incredible phenomenon of human children learning. I mean, it's one
Speaker 1: of the most striking, amazing things that ever happens in nature,
Speaker 1: is that in this very short space of time, these
Speaker 1: little creatures who were in so many other ways not
Speaker 1: very competent, managed to learn really subtle things like that
Speaker 1: you might have your heart broken if you ever fall
Speaker 1: in love, and not only that, but learning having ideas
Speaker 1: about how the world works, as I said before, that
Speaker 1: are really different from anything that a grown up would
Speaker 1: be thinking.
Speaker 2: About there's also a I guess I want to point
Speaker 2: out that even if you are trying to optimize for
Speaker 2: your kid's success, you point out that given all of
Speaker 2: the technological changes happening around us, the gardener approach is
Speaker 2: cultivating the very skills that might be most useful in
Speaker 2: the future of our society. So things like flexibility, creativity, imagination, innovation.
Speaker 2: These are the sorts of things that are going to
Speaker 2: be more important than ever given AI and all the
Speaker 2: jobs that will become redundant in the face of AI, like,
Speaker 2: it's these skills that we're cultivating in childhood that actually
Speaker 2: might be the differentiators. Is that right? Or am I
Speaker 2: talking about this in the right way?
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly right. And remember the impetus for
Speaker 1: humans to develop this long childhood and these big brains
Speaker 1: in the first place is exactly that we live in
Speaker 1: a much wider variety of environments and environments that change
Speaker 1: more than other creatures do. And that's just accelerated, right.
Speaker 1: You know, we're going to have to deal with environments
Speaker 1: that are really different from the environment that we grew
Speaker 1: up in or that we're living in now, and providing
Speaker 1: children with the kind of sense of possibility, the possibilities
Speaker 1: for exploration is a really good way to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm curious in terms of the practical implications of
Speaker 2: this gardener versus carpenter approach, And I'm wondering has this
Speaker 2: research made you reflect on how your parents did things,
Speaker 2: how you parented your own kids, and what you might
Speaker 2: have done differently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So my parents are kind of an interesting case.
Speaker 1: They had six children within eleven years when they were
Speaker 1: undergraduate students at the University of Pennsylvania, and we never
Speaker 1: had special classes, we never were in enrichment programs. But
Speaker 1: we grew up in this world where there was lots
Speaker 1: of art around, there were lots of books around, there
Speaker 1: was always lots of conversation available, and for what it's worth,
Speaker 1: we all became writers and scientists and people who were
Speaker 1: doing creative work. But it wasn't because our parents were
Speaker 1: ever shaping us. It was that we were in this
Speaker 1: very rich world and we just got to explore that
Speaker 1: rich world. Now, you know, as a parent myself, I
Speaker 1: have to say to this day, I'm almost seventy and
Speaker 1: my children are in their forties. I say to myself,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe would it have been better if I
Speaker 1: hadn't done that when they were five or six. It's very,
Speaker 1: very hard to avoid thinking that way. But I do
Speaker 1: think the things that have been most satisfying for me
Speaker 1: about my children have been the things that they did
Speaker 1: that were completely unexpected. One of my sons actually became
Speaker 1: a carpenter. He isn't too happy about the title of
Speaker 1: my book because he he thinks it's a bit of
Speaker 1: a slur on carpenters.
Speaker 2: Carpenters are great houses, that's right, that the family's then
Speaker 2: live in. So there, Allison's son, I got.
Speaker 1: You another one of my sons. I like this story.
Speaker 1: My grandfather actually was an immigrant from a little Jewish
Speaker 1: settle in Russia, and he became a deli man. He
Speaker 1: opened up a little grocery store, and he had a
Speaker 1: little deli. And then, of course his son, who was
Speaker 1: my father, became an academic, became a professor, His daughter
Speaker 1: me became a professor. And my son is now providing
Speaker 1: smoke meat and poutine and deli meats to the Berkeley
Speaker 1: in the Bay areas. So he became a deli man.
Speaker 1: I would never have anticipated that he would have become
Speaker 1: a deli man and a very successful and happy Deli man.
Speaker 1: And it's those kinds of unexpected trajectories that I actually think,
Speaker 1: in fact are the most satisfying things that you can
Speaker 1: imagine happening with your children.
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks so much for listening. Join me next week
Speaker 2: for my conversation with clinical psychologists doctor Becky Kennedy. She's
Speaker 2: known as the millennial parenting Whisperer, and she offers a
Speaker 2: new approach to parenting that I find refreshing because it's
Speaker 2: useful for all kinds of relationships. See you next week.
Speaker 2: A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive
Speaker 2: produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes
Speaker 2: our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan,
Speaker 2: our producer Trisha Bobita, and our sound engineer Andrew Vastola.
Speaker 2: Louis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith
Speaker 2: helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is
Speaker 2: a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there,
Speaker 2: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 2: You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram
Speaker 2: at doctor Maya Schunker. See you next week.