Written by Efrim C.
In her book The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, Wendy Mogel tells the story of American researchers Dana Davidson’s and Joseph Tobin’s visit to Komatsudani Hoikuen, a Buddhist preschool in Kyoto, Japan while conducting field research into cross-cultural differences in the socialization of young children. On the day of their visit, they had the opportunity to observe the behavior of 4 year old Hiroki, a child some might call spirited or exuberant, and others might call difficult or challenging depending on the frame of reference, experience, and underlying philosophy informing one’s approach to the care of young children. To convey the scope of Hiroki’s behavior, I will quote at length from the researcher’s description in the resulting study published as Preschool in Three Cultures: Japan, China and the United States:
Hiroki started things off with a flourish by pulling his penis out from under the leg of his shorts and waving it at the class during the morning welcome song. During the workbook session that followed, Hiroki called out the answers to every question the teacher asked and to many she did not ask. When not volunteering answers, Hiroki gave a loud running commentary on his workbook progress: “Now I’m coloring the badger, now the pig.” He alternated his play-by-play announcing with occasional songs, entertaining the class with loud accurate renditions of their favorite cartoon themes, complete with accompanying dancing, gestures, and occasional instrumental flourishes . . . During the course of the day, Hiroki started many fights, stepped on a girl’s hand and disrupted a game by throwing flash cards over the railing to the ground below.
Let’s pause here to consider what our own responses to Hiroki might be. As a teacher, how would you address Hiroki’s behavior if he were a student in your classroom? As a parent of a child who behaved as Hiroki is described, what would you do if you received this report at pick-up time, and how would you have liked his teachers to have responded? As a parent of a child in Hiroki’s class, how would you have hoped Hiroki’s behavior was managed if your child came home and told you about these exploits? Hiroki’s actions are, we know, pretty natural impulses for a 4-year-old, and so these kinds of behaviors are not by any means uncommon in many pre-school environments. At CCB, we have a number of tools that we might use in response to behaviors such as Hiroki’s, (and even if such behaviors were escalated to include things like pulling toys off shelves and dumping them, throwing materials around the room or at each other; climbing and jumping from furniture; running and pushing, or breaking materials, and so on).
As an starting point, we would examine the total environment, including teacher expectations, routine of the day, to ensure it is meeting the child’s needs. Is the room over-or under-stimulating? Does the room arrangement invite the behaviors (large corridors to encourage running, areas too close together an causing crowing)? Are the expectations that teachers are placing on the class as a whole, and the individual child in particular, realistic and age and developmentally appropriate? Are the relationships between the teachers and the child secure and established?
As an initial tactic in the moment, however, we might use the emotionally validating FLIP IT approach (if you did not read my brief introduction to FLIP IT in the March newsletter, you can find it here). If the child’s behavior continued to be unsafe throughout the day regardless of the intervention strategy used, we might call in extra support as a shadow for the child, or to take him from the classroom for a walk outside to “reset” before returning. And if such disruptive and unsafe behaviors continued over time, we might invite guidance from a consultant at the Child Care Council, who would spend time observing and coaching teachers in their approaches.
As our intervention strategies continued, we may develop an individualized behavior plan to support the child while establishing some clear limits for her. Depending on a host of other variables, we might recommend that the child is assessed for developmental delays, sensory issues, or other underlying causes for the behaviors. Or ultimately, in rare situations, parents, teachers, and directors may reach the conclusion that a different learning environment may better meet the child’s needs than CCB can.
Each family’s culture is of course unique, and parents’ responses to behaviors like Hiroki’s will differ from home to home, and even from parent to parent within the home. Nonetheless it is safe to say that a parent will always bring the culmination of their own knowledge, experiences, cultural locations, and the conscious and unconscious so-called ghosts and angels in the nursery to any decision they make regarding a child in Hiroki place. And on the other hand, I have seen reactions from parents of other children in a classroom facing behaviors like Hiroki’s range from a kind of amused neutrality to extreme perturbation and calling for accountability from the other child’s parents or demanding dismissal from the class, and everything in-between.
Whatever you considered your response to be, it seems unlikely that anyone’s response was that they would do . . . well, nothing at all. Yet this is exactly what the teacher in the room at the time did. She neither reprimanded nor re-directed Hiroki; she remained impassive and calm but did not intervene in any of the various conflicts or transgressions that Hiroki initiated.
Discussing the event afterword, the research team described that it was at times difficult for them to remain neutral observers and recorders of the events; their instinctive impulse was to set aside their roles as researchers and instead to insert themselves into the children’s conflicts, as much for Horoki’s safety as that of the other students. An impulse they note, born of entrenched biases about how children should behave and what a preschool classroom should be like, despite being researchers in the field.
When asked about her lack of response in a subsequent interview, the teacher, Fukui-sensi, cited a list of some of the important lessons Hiroki was himself learning, and that behaviors like Hiroki’s (when neither too extreme nor too dangerous) can teach other children. She spoke of the opportunities he offered others to practice new and emerging social skills in response to his play and conflict style. “Rather than seeing Hiroki as a problem,” Mogel writes, the teacher “valued his presence in the classroom because she
believed that Hiroki provided the other children with opportunities to learn . . . how to concentrate when there are distractions, how to defend yourself, and how to manage conflicts without the intervention of a teacher,” or another adult.
The underlying premise of Mogel’s book is that children should be more fully and independently engaged in making decisions regarding their own education based on their own priorities and according their own interests, passions, and curiosities. The chapter cited here specifically addresses conflict and conflict resolution. If we do not allow children the opportunity to manage challenging situations themselves, without engineering outcomes for them, if we do not allow them to fail, or choose badly, and learn from those mistakes, and for children to learn from the direct and immediate feedback from peers, Mogel suggests, we are denying them poignant opportunities to develop the internal skills to do so as they grow.
Returning the books thesis, Mogel notes “Fukui-sensi gave up her own control in order to put control in the hands of her students.” And she follows this by challenging her readers to ask themselves, “are you ready to challenge your child to courageously solve their own problems?”
How would you respond to Mogel’s challenge?
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