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THIS text to audio PART THRE IS FROM Joseph Chilton Pearce's paper ENTITLED Magical Parent Magical Child The Optimum Learning Relationship. THE TEXT TO AUDIO CAN BE READ AT AUDIO MP3 BOOKS DOT COM.
The Biology of Transcendence
Magical Parent - Magical Child
Personal Interview Michael Murphy Founder, Eselan Institute, Author, In the Zone, Future of the Body
This larger context is overshadowed by the contest culture. For the vast majority the promise of optimum development is broken very early. Few ever experience the Zone. A recent headline in USA Today, “Tiger Woods Wins the War,” tells the story, not of personal transformation, but of the lessons most young players learn in organized athletic programs: conflict, comparison, win-lose, less for you means more for me. Many have heard the famous phrase, “On the playing fields of Eton Britain’s battles were won.” Eton is the premiere private school of Great Britain. On its playing fields Britain’s elite young men were trained in rugby and football. The character formed by this experience was given credit for victories in battles waged for the Queen, principally Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. Myths aside, athletics teaches young people how to compete. I played Little League baseball, high school football, college crew, amateur ski racing. I competed as a university person and never knew there was anything else. The whole world seemed that way. When I looked at the wildlife programs on National Geographic, and they said baby lions were playing in order to become predators, I said, “Yeah, that makes sense.”
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Somewhere after World War II, society suddenly had no room for children, our quiet childhood streets, filled with speeding autos; yards were status symbols, and children’s play was relegated to playgrounds with professional playground supervisors. Supervised play replaced child play. Adult rules, regulations, and decisions began to replace our passionately defended personal criteria and judgments... Gone were the choosing up of sides, the striving for fairness, arguing the rules and infringements, the heated hammering out of decisions. Everything was managed by adults; they created the teams and provided the uniforms, which of course soon carried advertisements of “sponsors.” Children stood, grim-faced and serious while parents on the sidelines shouted invectives for victory at all costs. This new child carried the team, sponsor, parents, and social image on his or her shoulders into every victory or defeat. Evolution’s End
The Optimum Learning Relationship
Had I not played with wolves and cheetahs, I would never have understood that animals know another kind of play. They know contest, but there’s another dimension that I call original play that most of us never see. It’s invisible in a contest culture. We have been programmed for so long, not only as Americans, but as human beings, to believe that fight/flight, survival of the fittest, and competition is the only way to be. When you experience that love and belonging are the most important things, not just as an idea, not just to be nice, but in a very tangible way, the question becomes, how do I live that way, moment by moment? That experience changes everything. Once you’re safe and not dissipating your energy in self-defense, then it’s much easier to communicate, to love, to be kind and do all those things that we’d really rather do than hurt and defend. This is what original play is all about. The most important thing I’ve experienced through play, over the past twenty-five years, is that I “belong” to the universe. It is that sense of belonging that I’ve learned. And that has allowed me to learn the essence of all the things that we think of as separate, like the essence of a lion, or a child, or a Zulu person, or a flower, all of that. By learning that we all belong, I’m no longer afraid of the differences. Differences are there for me to learn how to be fully human and to share that with every other form on earth. That’s very powerful and it literally places me in the midst of the universe. Personal Interview O. Fred Donaldson, Ph.D. Author, Playing by Heart
When asked why children should participate in athletic programs, adults often say that sports is a metaphor for life, that it teaches children how to be team players and how to win and lose gracefully. Many believe that competition builds character. Contrary to popular belief, amateur athletics does not often lead to optimum learning or performance. A Lewis Harris poll showed that 50 percent of American kids experience their first major failure in life in sports. Some kids can climb the ropes. Some kids can’t. Climbing the rope is a public event and if you can’t, there’s a humiliation factor, which can affect a child for the rest of his or her life. Some kids get what I call the Wednesday morning disease where they just don’t want to go
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Schore describes how each prohibiting NO! or shaming look brings a shock of threat, interrupts the will to explore and learn, and produces a cascade of negative hormonal-neural reactions in the child. Schore describes the infant-toddler’s depressive state brought about through these episodes of “shame-stress.” The confusion and depression in the child comes from two powerful encoded directives: First, maintain the bond with the caretaker at all costs. Second: explore the world and build a knowledge of it, also at all costs. Throughout history the caretaker was the major support, mentor and guide in the toddler’s world-body exploration and learning. When the child, driven by nature’s imperative to explore his or her world, is threatened if he does so by the care giver - with whom he is equally driven to maintain the bond - the contradiction is profound. The resulting ambiguity sets up the first major wedge in that toddler mind, a wedge that finally becomes a gaping chasm.
to gym class. I used to think they all had dental appointments. In reality, they were scared to death of coming to that class. Personal Interview John Douillard Author, Body, Mind & Sport
I played sports as a kid. I had coaches humiliate me in front of my teammates and reinforce my feelings of inadequacy. That did not help me access and express giftedness. I don’t think I was nearly as good as I could have been if someone would have been more supportive of me and less critical. That would have been wonderful. Personal Interview Bowen White, M.D. Author, Educator, Clown
People get uptight because they are afraid of failing. They’re afraid of what folks are going to say, of being criticized. My dad was a perfectionist. He was very critical. If I could do anything over again I would have him be more supportive so I’d feel like it was okay to go out and make a mistake. I didn’t want to come home from a basketball game and hear how I didn’t do this or didn’t do that. It’d be more fun to be able to play and not worry about being criticized when you got home. I always liked other kids who would go out and just play freely with no fear of making a mistake and I’d say man, I wish I could play like that. It wasn’t until the last three or four years that I really started to overcome what it took all those years to build up. It’s a tough barrier to overcome. Personal Interview Tom Lehman, PGA Winner, British Open Intrinsic (Inside) vs. Extrinsic (Outside) Motivation It is not the activity, but the motivation (why we do what we do) that determines the meaning of an experience. Swinging a bat to see how far a ball can fly and swinging to “beat” another person or group are very different motivations, very different states of relationship. Motivation affects the state, which alters the meaning of the experience. Motivation shapes content; it shapes what we see and learn and how we relate. When adults transform child’s play into contests they alter the reason children participate in the activity. They change the meaning of the experience. 92
Bonding is a nonverbal form of psychological communication, an intuitive rapport that operates outside of or beyond ordinary rational, linear ways of thinking and perceiving. Bonding involves what I call primary processing, a biological function of enormous practical value, yet largely lost to technological man. Magical Child
The Optimum Learning Relationship
The vast majority of learning occurs naturally each time we interact with the environment. We do not interact to learn. The interaction is the learning. Eating and breathing are part of our nature. So is learning. The motivation for this natural (primary) learning is intrinsic. It comes from within. There is another motivation for learning: Extrinsic motivation is that which comes from outside. Winning parental approval or the approval of others is an external reason to learn or behave in a certain way. Being popular is an external motivation for wearing designer jeans. Getting straight A’s in math, if we hate math, is externally motivated. Getting straight A’s in math because we love the challenge of solving problems is intrinsically motivated. If we love an activity we do it because we love doing it, not because we are going to get good grade. It is not the behavior or the activity that matters; it is why we do what we do that counts. The motivation that leads to optimum learning and performance always comes from within. We excel because we love to do what we do. We love the learning that is the activity. Optimum learning is optimum performance. Optimum performance is optimum learning. Performance and learning are two ways of describing the same action. Here are some other reasons parents believe competitive sports are good for their children (beyond sports simply being a metaphor for life). Note if the motivation is intrinsic or extrinsic and who benefits the most from the list. • To keep them occupied, off the street, and away from drugs. (External/Fear/Control) • Because it is safe. I know what they are doing. (External/Fear/Control) • Athletic programs are supervised by adults. (External/Fear/Control) • Socialization; children learn how to be part of a team. (External/Comparison/Competition) • So he/she can make it in life, be successful. (External/Fear/ Competition) • I loved sports as a child; he/she will too. (External/Comparison/Control) • He/she needs to develop their natural talent; starting early is better. (External/Comparison/Control) • Being a winner means being popular. 93
Evolution’s intent for us lies far beyond exercises of “mind over matter,” though we need to know of such capacities. Our job on earth is not to mutilate our earth matrix, but to nurture and maintain her as she nurtures and maintains us. We need to develop the intelligences needed to go beyond this matrix before we are buried under it. The sage changes nothing but hearts and minds. A truly mature society would leave few traces of itself. On reaching such a maturity that we could willfully change our “ontological constructs” (miracles in the classical sense), we would have no inclination to perform them, as there are far greater themes in evolution’s score.
(External/Comparison/ Competition) • It is better than television and video games. (Fear/Control) • Kids need exerciseit gets them outside. (Fear/Control) • Everyone else is doing ithe/she will be left out. (External/Comparison/Control/ Competition) • His/her older brother/sister was a great player. (External/Comparison/Control) • Kids are lazythey need discipline. (External/Control) • Kids need strong male role models (the coach). (External/Control) • It teaches them how to follow rules. (External/Control) • Look at all the money and attention athletes get. (External/Comparison) • It builds self-esteem. (External/Comparison)
Each item draws attention to a concern parents have about their children. As we discovered with rewards and punishments, these motivators are deceptive. By talking about the child, we lose track of the simple fact that these are adult issues. The list would look very different had we asked children to share what they think. When intrinsically motivated, love of the experience and learning are their own rewards. Attention is so complete and “in the moment” that there is no energy left over to create an image of self, good or bad. When externally motivated, which implies being judged, we fail to achieve this complete entrained attention. The judgmentthe scoredemands its own attention. It is the attention given to the score that creates the image. Good self-images and poor self-images are equally defensive. We tend to believe that good self-images are desirable, like rewards. Rewards imply punishments. A good self-image is as defensive as a bad one. Maintaining any image, good or bad, demands energy, and it is this attention that separates the truly great performers from the rest of us. Great performers meet the moment with complete attention. The greater the en94
Bonding is a psychologicalbiological state, a vital physical link that coordinates and unifies the entire biological system. Bonding seals a primary knowing that is the basis for rational thought. We never are conscious of being bonded; we are conscious only of our acute disease when we are not bonded, or when we are bonded to compulsion and material things. (Linus with is security blanket, in the comic strip “Peanuts” is the tragicomic symbol of this.) The unbonded person (and bonding to objects is to be very much unbonded in a functional sense) will spend his/her life in a search for what bonding was designed to give; the matrix. The intelligence can never unfold as designed because it never gets beyond this primal need. All intellectual activity, no matter how developed, will be used in a search for that matrix, which will take on such guises as authenticity, making it in this world, getting somewhere. Magical Child
The Optimum Learning Relationship
ergy with which we meet the challenge, the better the score. Defending a self-image, good or bad, is a waste of energy. If adults are preoccupied justifying and defending their self-images, that is what children will do. If adults are externally motivated, children will be externally motivated. If adults are experiencing and expressing joy in the moment, so will children. That’s just about as complicated as it gets.
Following the Leader Children are compelled by nature to follow the model set for them by adults and the adult culture. A theme that we will return to again and again, especially in section two, is the need for adults to share optimum learning states with children. Optimum learning and performance have three primary characteristics: intrinsic-self motivation, love of the experience, and learning. None of these qualities are “modeled” when parents enroll their children in Little League. Kids always wanted to play, they always got togetherin sandlotsand formed groups and worked our their own rules. Now we’ve intervened as adults by saying, “No, no, no, we’ll work out the rules for you.” As a result you don’t have to go to very many Little League games to see parents out in the middle of the diamond beating each other up or wanting to kill the ump because of a bad call. Parents are out there in the middle of the playing field screaming at each other, screaming at the kids, “Why didn’t you win?” as if the child didn’t want to win. Personal Interview Chuck Hogan Performance Specialist
When we moved in on that play period, the sandlot baseball and football, and organized the activity for children, we upset the entire process and destroyed the purpose. If allowed, children will spontaneously get together, form sides, create their own rules and regulations, and compete. Only by forming rules can they have a game. Working out their own rules and calling their own fouls are the critical factors. When adults step in, as we have for the past fifty years with Little League enforce our adult rules and regulations, and set up teams, we steal from children the experience of creating self-regulated social organizations.
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Carl Jung spoke of the child living in the unconscious of the parent. The parent’s implicit beliefs and expectations are decisive factors in the formation of the child’s world-self views, even when not spoken or expressed (by the parent) in any way. Little League Little League has not given us happy, well-adjusted children. We have all seen parents and coaches at Little League games, shouting at sevenand eight-year-olds who stand heads down as the coach calls them imbeciles and urges them to get out there and really put their all into it. The faces of the little children describe their confusion, guilt, and shame. And the parents are there, lining up on the side of the coach. The children have failed to measure up to the expectations and standards of their parents and coach, who are condemning them publicly. And the children do not even know what for. This is a strange form of modeling, very far indeed from what we know of optimum states of learning and performance. Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins, and thousands of other concerned adults see Little League for what it truly is: another adult agenda, not at all child’s play. In her column, Let the Little Kids PlayWithout The League, Sally describes how the Little League World Series was turned upside down recently when it was discovered that the star pitcher was fourteen years old, not twelve. The original idea of Little League was merely to help the players do that thing children haven’t yet learned to do, organize, and through organization, learn a few simple skills and values. “Character, Courage, Loyalty,” says the Little League motto. But let’s review the events of the most recent Little League World Series and the values displayed. The Rolando Paulino All-Stars, nicknamed the Baby Bombers, became a sensation when Almonte threw the first perfect game in the tournament in 44 years and led his team to a 4-1 record and third place. But jealous parents began talking of rumored violations, and two suspicious adult coaches for New York area teams even hired private investigators — private investigators! — to look into Almonte and the Bombers. Next, acting on the rumors, Sports Illustrated — Sports Illustrated! — sent a reporter to the Dominican Republic and uncovered a document suggesting Almonte was really 14. Finally, Dominican officials yesterday determined that Almonte was playing under a false birth certificate obtained by his father, Felipe, who, it seems, is also here with his son illegally, since their visas have expired. Further investigation by the New York Daily News showed Danny was not enrolled in any school in New York. Nor was another player on the team, catcher Francisco Pena,
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Insidiously, Little League targeted younger and younger children, until even little tots were dutifully marching out in full advertising array to do battle with the enemy. Whatever might have been left of play after television was killed by Little League and other organized sports leagues, substituting deadly serious adult forms of win-or-lose competition for what had been true play. Gone are the invaluable social learnings, self-restraint, and the ability to decide. Evolution’s End
The Optimum Learning Relationship
son of former major leaguer Tony Pena. Which makes it look like the swell little Bronx fairy tale team was more like a nifty little shuttle service from the Dominican Republic for future major leaguers… What’s more twisted? That an ambitious father doctored documents in the hope his son could pitch his way off the island and be noticed by major league scouts, or that adults hired private investigators to check birth certificates?… Little League should be abolished for the simple reason that children and adults should stay out of each other’s circumferences when it comes to games. There should be a decent interval between the crib and the grim business of high school sports, at least one form of play in this world that is not managed by grownups to the point of corruption. What happens when adults manage the games of children is that they manage them the way they manage the rest of their lives—with strife and greed. Washington Post, September 1, 2001
Optimum Learning Relationships unfold spontaneously when we feel safe, when we love what we are doing and learn from the experience (all intrinsic motivators). The moment an outside authority steps in and judges the experience, as is the case with all adult-organized athletic programs for children, the instant we introduce rewards and offer praise, approval, or disapproval, the Zone disappears. Learning occurs as it always will, but the lessons learned are not the Character, Courage, and Loyalty advertised by the promoters of the event. Children learn what it takes to win in a contest culture. Winning & Losing Authentic play and competition are very different states. One involves a score: the other does not. A score is just a score, a measurement, neither good nor bad. Confusion occurs when we identify with the score, build an image upon it. It is the image that interferes with learning and performance, not the score. We hear over the loudspeaker Saturday morning: “Will the preschool league please meet on the midget field and the kindergarteners meet over on field number two.” We’ve taken that original playtime and organized it into zero-sum games with winners and losers.
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Our emotional brain is the seat of all relationship. We learn by relating something unknown to something we know. Equally, the emotional brain is the seat of, or at least involved in, memory, recalling what we know. Even the abstract capacity for associative thinking, whether scientific, mathematical, philosophical, logical, whatever, though dependent on our third brain, has its foundation in the feeling state of this old-mammalian brain. (Antonio Damasio explored this in his book, Descartes’ Error.)
The culture’s so focused on the winning and losing. There’s this great sucking sound, competition you know, that’s going to help kids get a head start. So we teach kids how to compete. They know how to cooperate but they have to be taught how to compete, and guess what they forget to do? They forget about the cooperation. Personal Interview Bowen White, MD Author, Educator, Clown
Right and wrong, win or lose is not part of nature’s scheme. Taking a highly stylized, rigid form of action, in which victory is everything and censure plays a heavy role, in which error dogs the child at every breath, and expecting that activity to make the child part of a social team is ridiculous. Competition is inappropriate during early stages of development. Children will never play in that fashion on their own. Competition is not play. Organized competition crops up around age eleven as a prepubescent form of activity. Before that age, children will participate in group activity, but it won’t be competitive. Competitive activity is an integral part of natural selection that begins to express through sexuality. At this age children can not be kept from grouping together in some form of competitive activity, nor should they. Playing in a contest culture ceases to be play. Attention shifts from the joy of learning to short-term results. Results are the consequences of learning, not the goal. When we place results before learning, learning becomes defensive, narrowly focused. We do only what is necessary to win approval, to pass the grade, to win the game. Winning is the highest form of security in a contest culture. Focusing on the score is aggressive. My high school football practices were more violent than our games because we were killing each other to make the starting lineupwiping each other out. Wait a minute, isn’t this supposed to be a team? We’re only a team when there’s an opposing team. A team of Little League players is a team only vis-a-vis another team. If that other team is not present, what you’ve got is interteam contest and that is as aggressive and hurtful emotionally and physically as the game against another team. There was an article in the Times about the women’s Olympic crew. They do fine against another crew. Take that away and they
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Failure to develop our highest brain lies most often with failure to develop its foundation, the two animal brains. This leads to a circular breakdown of the mirroring dynamics. We can modulate the lower instinctual reactions of our survival-system through our high brain. But our high brain can be developed only on the firm foundations of a well developed survival brain. If we fail to develop the lower, primary brains sufficiently, the higher brain is compromised and can’t develop fully. Then the higher can’t integrate the lower into its service and so modulate the behaviors of the lower. And when those ancient survival behaviors act without the modification, modulating, or tempering by the higher, trouble brews for that individual, as well as his or her society, and larger body of the living earth. The Biology of Transcendence
The Optimum Learning Relationship
beat each other up. We don’t really know what it is to feel real togetherness… The contest culture is designed to keep you on edge, always wondering whether you’re in or out. The moment you’re on edge your whole physiological system and entire immune system are not working at their highest levels. The whole thing is designed to work against itself. Personal Interview O. Fred Donaldson, Ph.D. Author: Playing by Heart
The system is designed to create winners. That’s what competition does. But competition results in many more losers than it does winners. Figure it out mathematically. How many people can get on an NBA team, or an NFL team? All those who don’t make it are losers. Listen to football players. Nothing makes any difference unless they win the Super Bowl. A lot of people drop out because it’s so aggressive. Personal Interview George Leonard Former Editor, Look Magazine Author: Mastery, Education & Ecstasy
Magical Parents – Magical Athletes Concern over the score begins with adults, not with children. The pressure to perform in school is an adult concern, not the child’s. Are parents to blame for being concerned over their children’s future success? Children need boundaries. The world is dangerous. Children do need discipline. Most adults assume that the pressure they place on their children to conform, to knuckle under and “do it right” is “for their own good.” Head Start, the name for our nation’s early literacy program, describes the race we are all running. What is a head start? It’s getting a jump on the competition. Do the seventeen “no’s” to each “yes” have the desired effect? Does intimidation and control transform the average child into an elite athlete or prima ballerina? How were those who did manage to make it to the top parented, coached, and mentored? What can we learn from the parents and players who did succeed despite all the pressures to remain mediocre? Yes, most people are driven to be ordinary. Culture strives for that which is common, average. It thrives on ordinary. Our top Olympic distance runners are mediocre compared to the Tarahumara Indians who run 75 to 150 99
Without that safe place to stand, no energy can be utilized to explore possibility, intent cannot move into content and know fulfillment, the stress of the unknownunpredictable becomes a chronic threat. We then spend our lives trying to avoid this threat.
miles a day kicking a little ball all the way. Extraordinary depends on what a culture considers normal. Our goal is to take the lid off learning and performance so we and our children can become the miracles nature intended, in all aspects of our lives. We talked to over thirty world-class golfers and asked them how this could be done. Here is what some had to say. I had tremendous self-esteem because of my father. It was always “Champ, nice going, champ.” If I hit it bad, “Let’s see what you can do on the next one.” He was never dwelling on the negative. It was always, always dwelling on the positive. Always positive. I had a very secure childhood. I knew he loved me and accepted me. He instilled in me that there’s no affirmation stronger than a father’s affirmation that you’re going to succeed. Personal Interview Johnny Miller PGA Hall of Fame
My dad played golf and I learned to find a peace on the golf course at a young age and I think that’s what has helped me to do as well as I have because I don’t let things bother me out there. My dad always said it’s only a game and you want to enjoy it. Personal Interview Nancy Lopez LPGA Hall of Fame
My dad was great at teaching me to learn from my mistakes and pick the good out of any round, no matter what it was. If I was ten years old and shot 95, he’d say, “but on #4 you hit two beautiful shots and on #16 you hit two beautiful shots, and if we can just get you to do that a couple more times a round...” All the way up to when I was winning tournaments he would say, “All right, you were two or three swings away that day from playing about as good as anybody can play the game.” He was always positive. He would ferret out the positive, show it to me, and then show me how to fix what didn’t work. Personal Interview Davis Love III PGA Champion
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The character, nature and quality of the model environment determines, to an indeterminable degree, the character, nature and quality of the intelligence unfolding in the child. That a Frenchspeaking mamma has a French-speaking child holds with all intelligences. Kittens brought up in an artificial environment of vertical stripes can’t perceive horizontal forms later, nor can they learn to. They will stumble into any horizontal object. We humans are more flexible than kittens but still subject to the same model-imperative; the same structural coupling between mind and environment takes place. Our universe will be as big as the stimulus universe provided us initially, our range of participation as wide as our awareness of the dynamics involved. Evolution’s End
The Optimum Learning Relationship
My dad had a refreshingly simple way of looking at the game. The object is to get the ball in the hole. If the ball isn’t going in the hole, you’re either aiming at the wrong spot or you are mis-hitting the ball. So as I started to play the game, I became immensely curious about how to play it better and how to take strokes off my game. How can I do it better? Nothing related to score, competition, who I was beating, whether I could win a junior trophy or a college scholarship, the PGA tour event, none of that had anything to do with my love for the game. It was all driven by curiosity. Personal Interview Mike Reid PGA Tour Professional
Slip into the Zone and championship performance flows naturally. Extraordinary just happens in optimum “states,” like breathing: without effort or control. If we assume that performance or results are somehow separate from our “state,” right here, right now, we miss the most important factor, which is the quality of our relationship to the challenge before us. Performance is a movement of relationship. That is the basic idea. Look again at the “quality of relationship” described by our world-class athletes. Feeling Safe, Unconditionally Accepted and Loved... I knew he loved me and accepted me. He instilled in me that there’s no affirmation stronger than a father’s affirmation that you’re going to succeed. It was always “champ, nice going champ.” I found peace on the golf course at a young age. They let me play when I wanted to play. Nothing was related to the score. Play as Learning… Driven by curiosity. Refreshingly simple, the object is to get the ball in the hole. I learned how to pick the good out of any round, no matter what it was. Love of the Experience, Intrinsic Motivation… It’s only a game and you want to enjoy it. That gave me my own self-pride, my own self-discipline.
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The successful parent is one whose child matures to walk away without a backward glance. Backward glances, either of obsessive love or hatred, show incomplete development, looking back to pick up some missing peaces, to try and patch a broken system. Bond of Power
For years Bruce Lipton and other enlightened biologists have observed that environment influences genetic coding every bit as much as conventionally recognized hereditary factors. Lipton found that from the simplest cell on up, a new life unfolds in one of two ways: it can either defend itself against a hostile environment, or open, expand and embrace its world. It can’t do both, and environment is the final determinant in the decision made. Watching with Wonder Formulas and rules may serve as a guide, but no more than that. We respond to our children and the world the best we can, and then we watch with wonder. We watch and learn from our gesture, be it the fly of a ball or a look on our child’s face. The looking is the learning. Each moment becomes a learning moment. How the world responds to our behavior is feedback. Did the ball go in the hole? If not, we adapt; learn and hit the ball again. If you think playing championship golf or soccer is challenging, try being a parent. Children are infinitely more intelligent and unpredictable than balls. Imagine how parenting would change if we “played parenting” as carefully as some “play golf.” Consider how we observe the fly of the ball, its position on the green, the slope, and distance from the cup. We select just the right club (which is a whole different matter); we ponder and approach the ball with such care. We take a practice swing or two and position ourselves just so. How many people give this quality of attention to their children, to their partners, and to nature? What if the ball had a mind of its own? What if it moved when it wanted, had likes and dislikes, preferred this green to that and communicated these preferences by laughing or crying? If you think golf or tennis is tough, try being a parent. We asked Chuck Hogan, considered to be a coach’s coach, how instruction would change if we were play-based, rather than focusing on the score. If we can’t have fun, children aren’t going to have fun. If we’re bored, they’ll be bored. If we’ve got to win to prove we’re having fun, they’ll have to win to prove they’re having fun. The question isn’t “what do the kids need to do?” “What do we need to do?— that’s the real question.” Is it fun or do we have to win to have fun? On the average we get a whole lot of “no, no, no, no,” about 17 to 1 on the no-to-yes ratio. Let’s reverse that.What if we simply affirmed the positive and let the negative feedback take care of itself? It would sound something like this: “All right, you do your stance, Yippy-Skippy, yes, you did it! Way to go! You did it!” “I did?” “YES, you did!” Very quickly the brain gets the idea, Wow! This is kind of fun. This takes a lot of heat off. This is a pretty safe place to be.
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Interaction (relationship) is play, but action and reactions are work. The biological plan is aborted when we invert this genetic plan for learning. That is, to approach learning consciously, we think we or the child must do the work of learning, but that is a biological impossibility. The greatest learning that ever takes place in the human mind, a learning of such vastness, such reach, such complexity that it overshadows all other learning, takes place in the first three years of life without the child ever being aware of learning at all. Magical Child
The Optimum Learning Relationship
Now it’s time to take a swing at the ball. They swing and miss. Hey, that’s okay. That’s just fine. It was a perfect example of swinging right over the top of the ball. No problem there. Let’s take another swing and see if we can adjust that experience. Now the ball gets hit. Way to go. That’s great. That’s wonderful. Huh?? Yes, that’s wonderful. Well aren’t you going to show me what I’m doing wrong? Why would I show you what you’re doing wrong? Whatever you offer the brain is what you’re going to get out of the brain. Let’s pay attention to what you’re doing right, not only at a cerebral, analytical level, but emotionally. Why don’t we just go Wahoo!!, until you find out that it’s okay to feel that way. Pretty soon you’ll get up in the morning and your brain will automatically say Yippy-Skippy. Let’s go throw the ball, kick the ball, hit the ball. I can’t come in for dinner mom I’m having too much fun. That’s the way we would do it. It’s got to be fun. Personal Interview Chuck Hogan Performance Specialist
The Coach Parenting, like childhood, is a process. It unfolds. It develops. Parenting is relationship. Relationship is learning. Learning is play. Intelligent parenting is playful parenting. The same is true of our coaches. Coaches are role models. Are they controlling children through rewards and punishments or are they evoking and eliciting optimum learning and performance from the inside out? Great coaches love to coach. They love to interact. They love to play and they don’t ever want to stop playing. Good parents can still play but their means of play might have been in business or being a mom. But the key is not to lose that fun, that light, that happiness, that joy of your life in whatever the activity is. To be an example, it first has to be in our lives. And then a good coach, a good parent, fuses that experience, that joy into every aspect of their child’s life. Personal Interview John Douillard Author, Body, Mind and Sport
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That our children become who we are, more or less, rather than what we tell them to be, is a fact that can enrage us. But the Model Imperative is not a cultural invention subject to culture’s modifications, it just functions, like gravity. We have ignored for half a century or more the studies that show some 95% of all a child’s learning, or “structures of knowledge,” form automatically, in direct response to interactions with the environment, while only about 5% form as a result of our verbal “teaching” or intellectual instruction.
Keep out of the way, that’s the best thing a coach or instructor can dojust allow the learner to do what he or she is going to do. And once in a while - you’re there. Some of the greatest lessons I’ve ever seen were when a word or two made huge changes. We have computers that read out milliseconds of weight transfers. Give a person a different thought, you’ll see them change immediately, but start to get into mechanical data and it won’t change the person at all. Personal Interview Randy Henry Founder, Henry-Griffith Golf Clubs
The real challenge for a coach, which is no different from the challenge we have in education or in business, is to help young people, adults, and parents see through the invented meanings that have been attributed to winning and losing. And then to create with the individual a meaning that makes more sense, a meaning that will still allow them to benefit from the activity without getting involved in the great false hopes and false failures. Those who do this not only stand to enjoy their job much more, but will bring a dignity to the profession that doesn’t exist. Personal Interview Tim Gallwey Author, The Inner Game
Expanding Our Boundaries The potential connections and information exchanges pulsing between the neurons in our brain and body are immeasurable. Most human beings barely scratch the surface. Something is holding us back. There is a great weight, a powerful field called “belief” holding us hostage, compelling us to behave in predetermined patterns. For years it was thought that human beings could not run a mile in less that four minutes. Roger Bannister broke the myth. Optimum Learning Relationships do for parenting and for education what Bannister did for runners. It expands the boundaries, opens the door to new patterns and possibilities. Sports and athletics is one environment which offers a view of supreme examples of the human system in the “zone” and also examples of evolution on a compressed, accelerating and observ
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Relationship is the key ... The infant in the womb has a symbiotic relationship with the mother’s body, but this is a limited relationship. Only through separation from this matrix can a larger matrix be explored… Nature provides that each division, separation, and addition in child development takes place in proper sequence. If nature is violated, overall maturation must fail. For instance, should the child be separated from egocentricity too soon by enforced premature autonomy, or a premature academic schooling, maturation will falter and the child will remain largely in a sensory–motor stage of development (where the bulk of our populace remains)… If individuation ends in isolation, instead of autonomy there is anxiety; instead of creativity a clinging to matter as matrix; a fear of change and inability for creative abstract thought. Bond of Power
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able stage for everyone to witness. Bannister’s mile, thought to be so stunning and abnormal at the time is now mundane. Breaking records is not exceptional, it is expected. Professional golfers shoot 59, dunking a basketball is ho-hum and 960 on a snowboard is done regularly (if you don’t know what a 960 is then you simply are not paying attention).Today’s X-games make the Roger Bannister or Wilma Rudolf records look rather pale. We all have the greatness of the athlete built into every cell of our body. What is very, very interesting is that all of these record-breaking athletes will tell you that their best and most supreme performance was “easy”. The challenge was in the preparation. The actually doing “in the zone” required but very little energy from the brain. This is documented by EEG and MRI readings of brain wave activity and topography. In the most literal sense, child’s play is where the best happens. John Jerome concludes his book Sweet Spot In Time (Sweet Spot being his name for the ‘zone’) by saying: “About the only thing that can be concluded from all the scientific study of extraordinary performance is that the harder we push the cell the more it will respond. There seems to be no end.” Personal Interview Chuck Hogan Performance Specialist
Enculturation; parenting, education, the myths, rituals, beliefs, ideologies, customs and their associated behaviors, create our boundaries. The weight of tradition and today the pull of mass-media marketing prevent all but a very few from reaching beyond tightly prescribed limits. The web is both intensifying and narrowing. A long-term German study has shown that overall sensitivity to environmental signals has dropped one-percent each year. Thirty years represents a thirty percent decrease in environmental signals reaching our awareness. Subtle impressions simply do not make the cut. The intensity of environmental stimulation is going up while our capacity to experience subtle sensations is going down. Our experience is being homogenized, controlled, shunted into predetermined grooves, and we can not even see it happening. Everything looks so normal. So intense. At home, in the movies and at school. The U. S. Congress recently approved sweeping educational reforms clearing the way for “high stakes” uniform testing at all grade levels. The
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Phenomena have appeared over the past fifty years that have no historical precedent, for which our genetic system can’t compensate, and that have so altered our mental makeup that we are blinded to the obvious relation between cause and effect… hospital childbirth, day care, television, and the erosion of child play. Schooling contributes its share and will continue to do so since vested interests view the shambles only as economic or political opportunity. No national “solution” yet forthcoming has moved beyond a politically motivated or “financially viable” position. The massive thrust for computerized education, capturing the public fancy by design, is a case in point. A computer on every desk, software for the millions and billions for the investor, will be the final straw in damaging children beyond all educability.
ideal is to standardize the national education system under a “master plan.” The goal is to ensure that each child, in each classroom, is turning the same page in his or her book on the same day throughout the land. Why? So we can compete in the so-called global economy. Or so they say.
Transforming Ourselves First, Then Culture
Our Brave New Industrial Mind The greater the rate of change the more intense our pressure to predict and control. Today everything is heating up, the planet, the stress we feel, the number of decisions we face every day, the conflicts, and the violence. It took thousands of years dreaming of flight before the Wright Brothers succeed at Kitty Hawk. Less than seventy years later we landed on the moon. In 1900 the majority of people, 97 percent, lived in rural communities, supported by extended families. Our great-grandparents grew their own food and participated in local, bio-regional, economies. In recent decades the family has been blown apart. Fifty-percent of marriages end in divorce. When asked to draw carrots, New York City preschoolers drew tiny orange squares. American children can recognize only a few plants but easily identify over one hundred corporate logos. “Corporate time,” sponsored commercial media, has replaced family time and the bedtime story. Stay-at-home mothering is disappearing as fast as many endangered species. Huge assumptions are driving the rapidly changing world we live in, assumptions that translate directly into parenting and education. Behind the unprecedented changes lurks what ecologist David Orr calls the industrial mind. Much of the current debate about educational standards and reforms is driven by the belief that we must prepare the young only to compete effectively in the global economy… The kind of discipline-centric education that enabled us to industrialize the earth will not necessarily help heal the damage caused by industrialization. Ultimately the ecological crisis (and the crisis facing childhood) concerns how we think and the institutions that purport to shape and refine the capacity to think… More of the same kind of education will only compound our problems… Today we will lose 116 square miles of rain forests, about an acre a second… By year’s end the total loss of rain forest will equal an
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Why, with a history so rich in noble ideals and lofty philosophies, do we exhibit such abominable behaviors? Our violence toward ourselves and planet is an issue that overshadows and makes a mockery of all our high aspirations… Why, after thousands of years of meditation, has human nature not changed one iota?… Why, after two thousand years of Bible quoting, proselytizing, praying, hymn singing, cathedral building, witch burning, missionaries and canon, has Western civilization but grown more violent and grisly efficient in mass murder? In exploring the issue of transcendence, we explore the issue of our violence by default. The two are intertwined. The Biology of Transcendence
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area the size of Washington state; expanding deserts will equal the size of West Virginia; population will have risen by more than 90,000,000. By the year 2000 perhaps 20 percent of the life forms existent on the planet in the year 1900 will be extinct. The impact of our industrial mind on the environment is also being reflected in our families, our neighborhoods, and our schools. Child abuse and neglect doubled in America between 1983 and 1996. The number of seriously injured children quadrupled. One million children run away each year. Eighteen million children spend more time in day-care than with their parents. Mothers are the fastest growing segment of the work force. This year over twenty-million prescriptions for highly addictive stimulants will be offered to children to control their behavior, beginning in preschool. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for American children, resulting in a teen attempting suicide every seventy-eight seconds. David Orr continues: This is not the work of ignorant people. Rather it is the result of people with BA’s, B.S.’s, M.B.A.’s and Ph.Ds. Education, in other words, can be a dangerous thing…It’s not education, but education of a certain kind that will save us… Educators must become students of the ecologically proficient mind and of the things that must be done to foster such minds. In time this will mean nothing less than the redesign of education itself. David W. Orr, Ph.D. Chair of Environmental Studies, Oberlin College Selected quotes from Earth in Mind, On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect
Optimum Learning Relationships open the door to this complete redesign of education and what we call parenting. The shift of state is the factor that will reveal new definitions for both. Each of us and our economic, social, and educational institutions have been shaped by the “industrial mind.” We are inside it. As water is transparent to fish, the assumptions and values implicit in our industrial mind are transparent to us. We rarely catch a glimpse of the limitations and deep conditioning that defines our world view. What we do see is the impact our minds have on our families, our children, and the environment. Bohm, Einstein and others have pointed out that the problems created by the industrial mind can not be solved by that mind. We can not solve a problem at the level of the problem, for the mind that created the problem
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For the culturally fragmented person, any move toward wholeness is interpreted as a threat, a final fragmentation, a loss of coherence. When the instrument of the bodybrain becomes selfgenerative, anything not available to its weak energy must be interpreted as destructive. Thus our personal concepts become inverted, we see things backward, and turn heaven into hell. We have only to let, to allow, and stop gripping. Not because of some divine decree or moral imperative, but simply because of the mechanics of energy and the nature of our mind and brain.
is the problem. So it is with our current approch to parenting and education. Adults need a new mind, a fresh mind, an original and authentic mind to see beyond the limitations causing so many conflicts in ourselves, our children and the world. Exploring Optimum Learning Relationships opens the door and invites this new mind to meet and respond to the world. And what it reveals will be a revelation to our industrial mind. Our great challenge, according to Bohm, is to find ways of reaching beyond the pressures and limits imposed by our conditioning. To do this we must discover new states and unfold new capacities that are not confined to our predetermined patterns. Every time we “think” we have arrived, we must return to the optimum state of authentic play and invite the perception of new patterns and possibilities. Rest too long on this belief or that conclusion and we lose the living vitality and intelligence of our true nature. Optimum Learning Relationships expand the current model of parenting and education by incorporating states of being and relationship as fundamental and increasingly critical components of learning, wellness, and performances at any age, in any field. Is it practical? Will it achieve the results we are now trying to achieve with our control strategies, our punishments and rewards? A few educators have been experimenting with Optimum Learning Relationships in their classrooms. They found that optimum states: • Reduced violence, social isolation, and defensive aggression implicit in the contest behaviors of children and adults. • Increased e mpathy, cooperation, and perception of community by reducing conflicts normally associated with categories, judgments, and differences. • Self-esteem, communication skills, and true creativity increased by reducing fears and stress found in most learning environments. • Increased recognition that touch and movement are essential elements in normal learning and healthy development. • Students became more complete learners. They became more focused as they felt safer. They learned from the world around them and not just from their teachers. They became more sensitive to observation and change.
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Many potentials are missed through failure of response from parents, who were in turn not developed in those potentials by their parents, and so on in infinite regress. Every capacity conceivable to imagination is inborn in us, since ours is an open-ended mind/brain, but any specific capacity must be brought forth and developed. Bond of Power
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OLR/Play shows us that it is possible to connect with people and other forms of life, both cross-cultural and cross-species.
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OLR/Play continually opens new possibilities.
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There are the positive effects of moving your body through space, learning to read body language, learning about causeand-effect relationships, learning nonverbal communication skills, learning to pay attention, to focus; to be present in a situation.
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While playing with autistic children, eye contact increased, touch increased, verbalizations increased, social interactions increased, violence decreased, giggling increased. Following play, students were more focused and more willing to attend to other tasks.
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OLR/Play provides a greater opportunity for social skill development. Many of the children that we play with are withdrawn, quiet, and very timid. Play helps to bring children “out of their shell.” By reducing conflicts Optimum Learning Relationships reduce violence and increase safety: • Students become less violent and are able to work out differences more readily. They are more sensitive to each other and staff. • They develop strong bonds and feel comfortable throwing an arm around one another without fear of being teased for demonstrating affection. • They are safer knowing what safe touch is. They know what it feels like to be touched in a positive way so when someone touches them in anger or sexually they readily read the signals. • They develop an innate sense of “belonging” to the bigger picture. • Peer pressure is reduced. They don’t need to find their sense of “belonging” in their peers or with drugs. • Play provides a safe space to be who you are and grow (experiential learning). Children learn that “acting out” is
Teilhard de Chardin projects his longing onto a great OmegaPoint “out there.” But even there we would find some super shell, and we would itch to find its crack. In a peculiarly prophetic vision a century and a half ago, Walt Whitman asked, looking up at the vast universe of stars: “When we have encompassed all those orbs, and know the joys and pleasures of them, will we be satisfied then?” No, he realized, “We but level that lift to rise and go beyond.” …It is time to see man in his true perspective, as Whitman did when he wrote; “… in the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name.” Crack in the Cosmic Egg
unnecessary in an atmosphere of safety, trust and love.
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Play provides an environment, role modeling, and a definitive design where gentleness is the norm rather than the exception.
And this is just the beginning. We really don’t know the limits of human perception, learning, performance. We have never grown up in environments that optimize these potentials. That is, until now.
We are finally confronting the mirror of our true selves, we are that fate. We are in our own hands. Crack in the Cosmic Egg
Part Two Principles for Optimum Learning & Peak Performance
Introduction If play is the optimum state for learning, performance, and well-being, the essence of education, coaching, and parenting, if we expect optimum results, we adults should play—or at least be playful. But alas, playful parenting and education are hardly the norm. Adults have agendas. Is the infant’s or child’s behavior matching the spoken or nonverbal expectations hidden in the adult agenda? If the child’s behavior matches or conforms to the adult’s ideal, the child is usually praised or rewarded. If the child’s behavior does not match the adult agenda, the child is made aware of his or her breach of conduct, which usually involves some form of punishment, be it a look, a gesture, a harsh No! Optimum learning is play. What we usually think of as learning, education, coaching, and parenting is most often behavior modification, which is never optimal. How do we move individuals and culture from one paradigm to the other, from conditioning to optimum? This question set the stage for a rich dialogue between Michael Mendizza and Joseph Chilton Pearce one foggy October morning in San Francisco.
M: Is there some way to revolutionize the parent-child relationship? Can we take the lid off the limitations we now—even with the best of intentions—impose on children? J: Model it. Give them the model of whatever it is. We must become the change we wish to see in others. M: The assumption is that the joy of the experience while in relationship will carry over and the child will want to develop the activity on his or her own, because it’s so much fun. But that doesn’t always happen. J: I remember my son John with his bicycle. There was the sidewalk on Faculty Road. He got his bicycle at age five and took it right out that morning. He didn’t ask for any help, and it was one of the bloodiest experiences in a kid’s life. He fell repeatedly. He bloodied his knees and his hands, and he would be out there, tears streaming down his face. And he’d get back up on that bicycle. He kept doing it. By the end of the day, he was riding that bicycle. Now, he had seen lots of people riding their bicycles and he damned well was going to ride his bicycle too. Nothing we could ever do would drive a child like that. Not even if their tears were from our beating them to learn.
Open intelligence and flexible logic combine so that the more we learn through personal experience, the more we can learn; the more phenomena and events with which we interact, the greater our ability for more complex interactions.
We had a neighbor who also had a five-year-old. The father had bought him a bicycle, and we heard the two of them outside. It was so horrible that I almost called the authorities. That poor child had to suffer his father’s berating him, calling him stupid, too dumb to come in out of the rain. “Whatsa matter; I’ve told you a dozen times. Here’s what you do!” He went on and on, and the boy never did learn to ride a bike. The activity has to be meaningful to children, for they act out of principle. That’s the boy on the American farm. That boy was out there at five in the morning protecting the plants against frost. There was never any question about it. They would starve and the child knew it. The whole family was there. No one was exempt. Children took part automatically. To sit on the sideline would literally be outside of the family bond. They sensed the urgency. Piaget speaks of unquestioned acceptance. I’m convinced that the child senses our ambiguity and hesitancy today and acts accordingly. M: On the farm, there was no doubt; there was never any question. J: Unquestioned acceptance of the given, and the given is the model imperative. The model is who we are and how we relate to the challenge of the moment. The minute there is doubt—“Are we doing the right thing?”—that instantly radiates throughout the whole environment. We are fragmented. The child picks it up, and you’ve got mayhem in your classroom. M: There’s memorization, conditioning, practice, and they’re very important. But it is limited to a predetermined pattern. What kind of environment or circumstance must we create to allow, nurture, and challenge that child into discovering and expanding his or her vast potential? Do you see the difference? One is fixed. We can reward or punish them to conform to a pattern. But that is not enough to optimize development. J: Parents in the sixties resented all authority. They weren’t going to have any authority or structure. Nature’s going to take care of this—total free expression. Many progressive educational systems, Waldorf for example, had trouble with this. They have free expression but within carefully designed boundaries. Again, there are two extremes, the lockstep approach and the hippie approach. Maria Montessori was insistent
Neither our violence nor our transcendence is a moral-ethical matter of religion, but an issue of biology. We contain a built-in predisposition and ability to rise above restriction, incapacity, or limitation, a vital adaptive spirit that we have not yet utilized. Our longing for transcendence arises from our intuitive sensing of this adaptive potential, and our violence arises from our failure to develop it. The Biology of Transcendence
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that children need order and discipline. The three-year-old is compelled to organize everything into neat symmetry. If the chairs in the room are orderly one morning and the next morning they’re disorderly, the first thing the child does is put things in order. M: What do you mean by discipline? J: I’m using the term discipline in the common sense, which means coercive action to modify behavior. The real meaning of the word discipline is disciple, which meant originally a joyful follower. The disciple joyfully followed the teacher. It’s far from that today, but to my way of thinking, that would be ideal. M: A joyful follower is the essence of your model imperative. J: Sure. If the model matches what children are ready for at that time, they’ll go for it with everything they’ve got. Learning is the way of transcending their current limitations. This is the essence of the modeling imperative. If the model matches their needs that moment, there’s never coercion. They will follow joyfully because it transcends their frustrations at that particular time. M: On the farm there was no ambiguity. No choice was involved. When we talk about today’s children, it’s really hard to find anything that compelling. The “real” world is very foreign. Their food supply comes from the refrigerator or it’s a “happy meal” at McDonald’s. They don’t have anything “real.” At best our demands appear inconvenient. Doing homework may interrupt a TV program. The meaning of life for many people, including children, is very abstract. It was my idea that John-Michael “should” learn to play the piano, for his own good. We had a close friend whose life was playing the piano. We asked him to play with John-Michael. They had a blast playing together. When the friend left, John-Michael rarely returned to the keys. I, of course, “lowered the boom,” as my father used to say. “Get up there and practice, make something of yourself.” That was my agenda, not his. I honestly believed it was a disservice not to “make” him practice. Bonnie said no. If the experience itself is not compelling enough, maybe he just doesn’t want to play the piano. Maybe piano isn’t part of who he’s going to end up being. What about picking up his
Firm boundaries give strength to the bond and clarity to those areas, which are open for exploration. The child clearly registers the parent’s power of decision and their confidence in their decision. S/he feels bonded to strength. S/he accepts their boundaries and restrictions without frustration or hesitancy because s/he is geared to take cues from them, and their decisions are in keeping with his/her intent.
room, I argued. Maybe not picking up his room—or running into the street—is the boy’s true nature. He’ll poke his eye out or cut himself if we let him play with sharp knives. It is my job to protect him from his true nature, or so I thought. Living in environments that lack “real” compelling reasons changes radically a young person’s desire to do anything. J: Hans Gefirst said that the child reads early because he senses that it will win the approval of the parent. It will win acclaim. And where do you get that kind of thing? In a highly illiterate household. M: Are we saying that spontaneous learning takes place to affirm the bond? J: Any activity, if it is meaningful to a child, will be learned spontaneously. How do we know what is meaningful to that child? The most important thing is to match the model to the developmental period. If there is a match, the child’s innate intelligence will respond to it. The key factor is the adult responding to the environment and to the child in ways that match the developmental needs of the child. M: For a parent or teacher or coach to recognize what’s meaningful to a child, they must become skilled observers. J: Observation means sight and intuition is a form of “in-sight.” M: The act of true observation is an act of intuition. J: I am aware of my surroundings sometimes and other times I’m not. If I have an agenda, I find that I am often rehearsing my agenda as I walk in the door. The agenda is the only thing I am aware of. My agenda acts like a filter that changes everything to meet the needs of that agenda. I’m likely to override anything that’s actually happening. I often don’t even notice what is actually going on around me, because I’m so involved with “my” agenda. Adults are full of agendas, especially parents, teachers and coaches. M: Having an agenda often means that we are not really seeing the child clearly. J: Our agendas act like the blinders we might use on a horse. M: Agendas often take the form of concentration. Our focus be
When the capacity for abstract creativity and pure thought does not develop properly, the solution is not to try to force earlier and earlier abstract thinking, as we now try to do (with reading readiness). Rather, we must provide for full dimensional interactions with the living earth, without allowing abstract ideas to intercede or obscure, so that a sufficient concrete structure may be built from which abstractions can arise. Evolution’s End
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comes narrow, which can be very appropriate at times. But to be that focused on our agenda most of the time is much too narrow. With blinders on most of the time we become myopic. We need to let go of that concentration or that agenda and allow another state of awareness to emerge and use concentration as a tool only when needed. With children it seems we are drilling them all the time. J: It’s a matter of focus. Children, especially early children, are global. Up until seven or eight, and maybe even after that, the early child learns in whole blocks. Their learning is instantaneous, as a block, whole, of the model. The crawler suddenly registers the upright stance. He doesn’t see it as a series of moves, but as a finished product. M: Cellular biologist Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., recently shared some very interesting research on brain waves and how they change as a child’s brain develops. You mentioned earlier Montessori’s description of the “absorbent mind” of the early child and Jean Piaget’s observation that early childhood is defined by an “unquestioned acceptance of the given.” Recent studies of developmental brainwave activity reveal that before birth and through the first five years of life, the infant/child’s brain is generating primarily delta and theta states of awareness similar to a hypnotic trance (Laibow, 1999). Delta (0.5-4 Hz) is associated with an unconscious, sleep-like state. This accounts for the absorbent nature of the early child’s brain and also his or her unquestioned acceptance of the adult model environment. Between two and six years of age, the child begins to express higher levels of activity characterized as theta (4-8 Hz). Theta activity is the state we often experience in the morning, when half asleep and half awake. Around age six the child begins to express higher alpha levels (812 Hz), a state associated with calm consciousness. Beta (12-35 Hz), associated with active or focused concentration and attention, doesn’t make its full appearance until age ten or twelve. My adult agenda of John-Michael’s needing to practice the piano, for his own good, is a very abstract ideal being imposed on the dream- or trance-like brain of a five-year-old. The adult and the child are living in completely different realities. Unless the adult recognizes and adapts his or her behavior so as to provide the model environment to match the
Every learning unfolds in the three stages that constitute the cycle of competence. First, the child goes through a period of roughing in some new ability or knowledge… Second, a period of filling in the details follows the rough grasp achieved… Third, there is a period of practice and variation, during which the new ability is repeated over and over again.
developmental needs of the child, there is going to be trouble, frustration, conflict and despair. The adult agenda must first be to relate to the child on a frequency that the child can understand, and then to “play” in that reality, communicate on that frequency. The child is incapable of meeting the adult mind. The parent or teacher or coach must enter into and embody the child’s mind, which is the gift and the learning for the adult, rediscovering the childlike mind. J: We usually don’t see what the child needs. We only make demands on the child to meet our adult agenda. M: Let’s assume that this is the rule rather than the exception. What would be the alternative, a more appropriate response? J: The shift is from the adult’s own agenda, the focus on a predetermined result, to where the child is now, and what the child needs, moment by moment, and responding according to the actual needs of the situation. The situation is not just the child. The situation involves the child and the parent, each with their agenda, which may be legitimate. The child has needs. So does the adult. Both sets of needs are legitimate. The challenge always is to find the bridge between those two needs. That’s where insight comes in. M: The child needs to explore all of the wonderful things in the supermarket. And mom’s got a party in 45 minutes. Conflict is inevitable. Somebody is going to end up crying. The challenge is to hold each set of needs with equal value. Can we meet the child’s need for exploration and the mom’s needs too? J: Does the child exist for the parent or the parent for the child? The parent must exist for the child. If the child is not there, the parent survives. If the parent is not there, the child doesn’t. Only the adult has the capacity to embody simultaneously the adult world and that of the child. To meet the child only on adult terms is ridiculous. The adult who stretches beyond the blinders of his or her agenda is transcendent. And stretching to meet the adult world is transcendent for the child. The adult-child relationship, when approached in this way, is a spiritual practice for both.
The child is driven to acquire a complete nonspecific or unconditional knowledge of the world. S/he is designed and equipped to acquire information and experience free of value, meaning, purpose, or utility. Adults tend to value all experience and knowledge according to the cultural ideas about utility or worth. An intelligence cued to look for the worth or utility of information or experience immediately closes or screens out possibilities, looking for what can be utilized. An open intelligence and flexible logic cannot be built in this way, although a facile cleverness that can pass for brilliance, given our culture’s anxiety-ridden body of knowledge, might develop. Magical Child
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M: This brings up a very important question. Why do we have children in the first place? J: Very few children are born into the world as a result of conscious conception, because the parents really want this child. M: We hear about parents going to extraordinary lengths to have a child. Why this burning desire to have a child? Is the child there for the parent or the parent there for the child? J: For a lot of parents, having a child represents a form of selffulfillment. The parent has a need for the child, obviously, and the child has a need for the parent. But is it reciprocal? M: I have the child to fulfill my need, which translates into my “agenda.” My agenda is a bias that shapes the relationship even prior to conception. The reason for having the child is my agenda. Wanting the child to be civilized and to learn what I want him or her to learn is my agenda. If I were actually there to serve the needs of the child, taking my cues from the child, and playfully, creatively moving with that, my response would be fundamentally different, and so too would be the fundamental nature of the relationship. My agenda often prevents me from actually seeing the child. J: This translates into a sense of responsibility. It is not my responsibility to take my signals from that child. I’m responsible for the child, which again is my agenda. To be truly responsible for that child’s wellbeing we must understand and respond to the needs of the child. Their greatest need is for us to be truly responsible to them, but what does that entail? We think it’s our agenda. M: Alice Miller wrote the book For Your Own Good, which describes the violence that takes place any time our agenda blinds us to what is actually taking place, either in us or in the child. We have kids because we have an agenda. We want to be fulfilled. That is our agenda. If we continue with that, for their own good, we force them into playing the piano, which is an extension of our agenda. And we’re saying that to be truly responsible means that we adults must shift, or have a radically different agenda, or better yet, no agenda. The tranformative power of “bonding” suddenly enters the picture. You start off fulfilling your own needs, but your overwhelming affection for this new human being tran
Plato said that if he could determine the music young people listened to, he could determine the shape of society. Harvard’s Carol Gilligan spoke of our young girls as “confident at eleven, confused at sixteen.” She observed a clarity, purity of mind and strong self-image in the eleven-year-old that was smashed in those intervening years. Millions of dollars are made from this destruction, and the destroyed child becomes the destroying but consuming adult.
scends this. Suddenly your greatest need is to serve the child’s needs. The actuality of this new human being suddenly transforms the parent’s agenda, and we call this bonding. With the bond comes transformation. If no bond takes place, we are left with only our agenda, with its implicit violence. Or am I way off base? J: No, it’s quite solid. M: Mom has a need to do her shopping and the baby has his or her needs to learn, which expresses as pure play. If we give up connection to our needs and meet only the needs of the other, we lose balance. We lose integrity. Bonding implies a quality of relationship where the needs of both matter equally. J: David Albert, Ph.D., in his book And The Skylark Sings With Me describes his relationship with an incredibly precocious daughter. Albert decides that he will take on the task of keeping up with her, to keep up with her because her needs are so intense, so far-reaching, so extraordinary. He drops all of his other activities. And he discovers that she is constantly stretching him beyond all his limits. Then it dawns on him that this is a reciprocal engagement. She is stretching him in all directions when all he wanted to do was coast on his agenda. He found it to be the biggest challenge of his life. They were in a race, but not against each other. His challenge was to stay just ahead of her. Anything less would be to fail the relationship. Yet, to stay ahead of her required the greatest effort of his life. He said, “You know, getting a Ph.D. was simple compared to staying ahead of a really brilliant child.” And the child needs that so desperately. They’re constantly sending out this message: Here’s what I need. Can you meet it? And in order to meet it we have to drop our agenda and really grow. It’s an extraordinary adventure, and it’s absolutely reciprocal. M: The child doesn’t have to be brilliant or precocious. Children are inviting us in to grow with them, all the time. J: Many people would say this doesn’t apply to them. But it does. The challenge is always to tune our antenna and take our signals from the child. Moment to moment. You talk about a joyful experience! M: If we were to describe an Optimum Learning Relationship, this would come close.
To say that every child is a potential genius may sound ridiculous and even cruel, but to take the current statistical norms as the standard or natural for the child is far more ridiculous and surely more cruel. Magical Child
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J: It’s reciprocal, where each is bringing the best out of the other. In Magical Child I said that the child would bring out the best in the parent and being a parent was our most profound education. The fruition of human life comes in teaching the next generation. The goal for the child is our taking-off place. Each stage is preparing us for fifteen years down the line and, at the same time, it perfects this stage right now. As we’re going through each stage with the child, each stage is preparing us for our next move. M: One of the first things I wrote defining Touch the Future was that the birth of each new human being is a precious opportunity for growth and fulfillment, for the child and for adults as well. One of Bonnie’s great joys was this deep sense of connection. She got to look through the child’s eyes and in that glance saw all things new again, this time as an adult. J: She had to drop her agenda and truly be in the moment. M: You have to be in the moment to rediscover a caterpillar for the first time, again—what it looks and feels like. Sharing in the child’s wonder and curiosity opens our wonder and curiosity. For most adults, wonder and curiosity were replaced by an adult agenda long ago. The bond of affection creates a profound shift. The shift is seeing the child as he or she actually is rather than looking through our agenda. Like the Bible says, unless we become as a little child, we can’t enter the kingdom. Participating in the baby’s innocence and wonder invites us into the kingdom. J: In Magical Child and Magical Child Matures, I said that for the child this moment may be the first stage, but for us it is graduate school II. We experience the very same act, but now from a totally different standpoint. In effect, we are God to the child. We are the father who gives good and perfect gifts, and here is the son or daughter. And through that, we begin to catch a glimpse of what our next stage is about. This is transcendence. Each stage overcomes the limitations of the previous. Now as parents we become the mentor, the guide, the mediator and the model. Parenting should bring us to a higher level of the growth process the child is going through. And with that we really come into our own. It is truly transformative.
Everything is preparatory for something else that is in formation, as day must fade into night and night into day… The progression of matrix shifts is from concreteness towards abstraction, or from purely physical world of the womb, mother, earth, and body to the purely mental world of thought itself. The cycle unfolds according to a genetic time-table that is roughly the same in al cultures.
M: You’ve often said that the birth of a baby opens up whole new intelligences, certainly within the mother, and if the relationship with the father is sound, it will resonate in him. A baby triggers new sets of possibilities that wouldn’t have existed had the baby not been there. J: This is the critical issue. I’m interested in the spiritual development of the human being, and parenting is, or can be, a spiritual process. Tithing and going to church isn’t it. Discovering the next stage in my development, by serving the child, is a tremendous thing. M: If I’m going to approach this thing called parenting or mentoring or being a teacher with a more intelligent and adaptive agenda, where do I begin? J: The need, of course, is to approach human development as an infinitely open-ended process. The approach to the infinite is through boundaried stages. The boundary grows greater and greater at each stage, moving toward what? Infinite openness. If one approaches infinite openness too soon, without the boundaried stages, we’ll get lost. So the ideal is to approach our infinite nature, our godliness, through very carefully boundaried stages. This is how we achieve the highest levels of human development, which can never be known ahead of time. The needs of the child for a boundaried approach can be known. Where that approach leads can never be known. That must unfold by actually navigating through the stages of life. M: There are many techniques to arrive at particular behaviors. We can condition and modify, and get people to swing a bat, dance, or sing. We can force people into narrow tracks. J: We can boundary them. M: We can get them to perform in certain predictable ways through rewards and punishment, but that maintains the cultural lid we have placed on our development. J: With our current approach the boundary never expands. It can’t expand beyond the culture, and our culture is in a mess. M: If we continue what we’re doing, we will keep the lid on human development. Acting as we do literally prevents us from accessing and developing our limitless potential because we keep imposing, as parents
The body manages, somehow and at all costs, to respond to the conceptual framework induced by the hypnotists. Somehow the materials are found to make real, to realize, the mind’s notions. A conceptual demand brings about a change in the ordinary mechanisms of life. The same process can be seen in the firewalker, who reverses or nullifies or bypasses the most extreme cause-effect to be found in life. Crack In The Cosmic Egg
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and as a culture, very strict limitations on ourselves and on our children, and always with the best of intentions. J: The boundaries we usually place on children are not boundaries, but a straitjacket, and they never expand because the culture itself can’t allow the expansion of those boundaries. Our culture is bound within certain ways of thinking that can’t transcend its problems. Evolution is a means by which nature creates new ways of thinking and being to overcome the limitations of the present set of narrow boundaries. Evolution’s response is to create wider boundaries. We honor that by recognizing the boundaries and by recognizing that we’re caught in the certain structure that results in enormous violence, and our children act out that violence. And that violence is about to destroy us. We can’t move beyond the place in which we have been stuck for so long without pointing a finger at our cultural conditioning, in which we are all caught up. M: Using the metaphor of evolution, we might say we’re trying to evolve new structures, a new set of boundaries, a wider set that reaches beyond the current parental-teacher model. That’s what we’re suggesting. Without this truly new approach, we are stuck. We’re stagnant. We’re in an evolutionary cul-de-sac. J: Which is not going to go anywhere. M: Our goal is to see if we can articulate the next jump, or expansion in the boundaries we impose, to evolve another, wider set, a more appropriate set. J: To move beyond the constraints of this culture at this time, a culture turned so murderous and violent, we must begin by realizing the parents’ agenda has been created by the culture, by what we think might work for the child. Our purpose is to shift parents from their presupposed agenda, which simply perpetuates the violence, by actually focusing on the child, to discover and co-create a new agenda that might better meet their needs. We must begin by not knowing. M: We can’t know. J: We can’t know ahead of time. M: True adaptive parenting begins by not knowing what to do. You
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