I completely agree. I didn’t know why, but I felt at four, my youngest was ready to go outside and play by himself if he wanted to. We live rurally, on 9 acres. He was allowed to go a certain distance from the house that encompassed about 3 acres of mown grass, tall brush, and woods. At 5 he’d proved himself and was also allowed to play around the 1/2 acre pond. I also oversaw knife work in the kitchen from age 2, but allowed a pocket knife at age 4 for both my boys. Now, at age 9 & 12, I see them as more confident and capable with far deeper understanding of their environment than most of their peers who have been extremely held back in these ways.
Peter- how do I do this in a suburb of a large city. I often let my 4 year old be outside alone in the backyard. We have a nice walking path in our backyard and people always comment- you have to watch your kids so closely with the path in the backyard. I’m not worried about my kids at all. I’m worried about the adults that will report me.
I also created an art room in our utility room in the basement so she could go down there and create by herself- to feel some independence. She loves it. I’m trying! 😬😃
Through experience and reflexive practice, children learn to be responsible. The Sami culture of Finland, Norway, & Sweden adopted the "ieš dieđát," [you know it yourself] mentality--allowing children to experience the world largely in their own way without parental over-lording, helping them to also become resilient. As a nation, we continue to promote fragility and dependence through control on many levels! (Jon Haidt)
This is exactly the case for my 4-year-old. Learned to ride a bike right about his 4th birthday, made a best friend in our neighborhood with whom he plays for hours on end unsupervised and in the street (we live in the city but on a relatively quiet road without sidewalks), and just received privileges to bike around the corner, about a quarter-mile away, with the goal of learning to walk half a mile to his grandparents house alone this summer when he turns 5. But waking to the 7-11 a couple blocks away still feels taboo in our modern times so that might have to wait until age 7 or so (even though I did this as a kid in the 90s and no one blinked an eye). He loves this independence and is generally very good about being alert for cars. I worry more about drivers speeding by while on their cell phones than I do about his ability to cross a street safely. It’s been wonderful to see his friendships blossoming this past year. He does a lot of self-talk and verbal processing when alone, so what you say here about the theory of mind and the capacity to think verbally makes a lot of sense as well.
What hope these comments bring! I guess only parents who somewhat agree are reading this post, but still, all the children written about here, and their parents, sound incredible.
If only we could begin a program in our cities, similar to blue zones…a program that gets hired by a local government to go into the town and develop this philosophy (like the organization Let Grow), with resources and education for parents and community members, about how to encourage these actions for children in their neighborhood.
Maybe this explains why, at 4 1/2yrs old, I decided to take my 3 1/2yr old brother and 2yr old sister on a walk around the block while Mom was doing laundry! (1961)
As usual, a stimulating article on child development, thank you Peter.
Two points of special interest to me in your article:
The first:
“I think the children are safe precisely because they are trusted, so they take responsibility for themselves and one another.”
Trust. To learn to trust in the world and in the Self is, as I impute it was to Erik Erikson as the first of his eight stages of lifespan development, the first and most important foundational learning if fortunate enough to be enabled by the secure attachment to our mother/primary caregiver.
“To trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves; and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” John Holt
The second:
“I suspect (though I don’t know of any research on it) that development of theory of mind is intimately linked to internalization of language.”
I consider Julian Jaynes’ book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and those carrying on his work add much understanding to the development of the individual Self/Mind from birth through childhood.
See:
Consciousness in Children: Infancy and its Relationship to Julian Jaynes’ Theory | Bill Rowe. March 26, 2021 3:27
The Other Origin of Consciousness: Infancy and its Relationship to Julian Jaynes’s Theory by Bill Rowe, Invited address at The Julian Jaynes Society Conference on Consciousness and Bicameral Studies, Charleston, WV, June 2013.
Abstract: There are two origins of consciousness, one in antiquity and one in infancy. In the last decades of the twentieth century research in child development highlighted capacities of the human infant-caregiver relationship uniquely relevant to Julian Jaynes’s theory. One of these is a species specific capacity, present in the first year of life, which enables a close temporal coupling between human infants and their caregivers. The other is the ability of the children, beginning around 3 years of age, to conceptualize other people in terms of mental states. This talk will look at what is shared between children and their caregivers over the period of birth to about 7 years of age. These are, in developmental order, affect, subjective states, social scripts, and mental states. These shared features are highly variable and allow for a wide range of cultural emphasis. From a developmental-theoretic perspective this variability fits Julian Jaynes’s constructivist view of consciousness; it must be learned through other people, it can change over time, and can be different from culture to culture. These capacities can serve as additional constraints in speculations on the nature of consciousness in ancient times. Perhaps, looking at Julian Jaynes’s theory through the lens of child development can help make it feel less distant and more familiar to more people.
I didn’t even need to read more than a few words at the beginning and then scrolled thru to the end before u got excited to become a paid subscriber!
With a “late talking” 4 1/2 year old grandson, I’ve advocated for more play and less focus on academics from the get go. Can’t wait to join in the group chats 🥰
Thanks for doing the work you do Gary. I think these articles & the research about this topic is very challenging for a lot of people. I don't have children of my own nor do I wish to, having said that I've noticed almost a contempt for "the kids these days" expressed by people who have children & even grandchildren of their own.
I know that older generations complaining about younger generations have been a thing since Aristotle, but does that negative attitude have a correlation to how we raise children? eg: less respect for children, leading to less trust, therefore affects how the children are raised? If we trust children less then we foster less independence... Has that been seen in any research?
A very timely piece—and one that resonates deeply with what I see happening more and more, particularly here in Denmark. Though from a slightly different perspective. In many parenting forums, I’m struck by how often harmful or even violent or sexual behavior from young children (4-, 5-, 6-year-olds) is downplayed or excused. The pattern is familiar: A child causes real harm, and the response is, "They’re just kids—they don’t understand right from wrong yet.” But isn’t that precisely the point? That this is the age when they begin to understand?
Just today, I read a post from a mother who had received a message from her child’s kindergarten: three boys had jumped on her 5-year-old’s back and thrown hard objects at his face—even as he screamed in pain and asked them to stop. She wondered if she was overreacting. The comment section was filled with variations of “boys will be boys,” and “kids don’t know what they’re doing.”
What struck me most was not the event itself, but the lack of recognition of what it means to be in this formative zone— and a complete disregard of when and where children begin to internalize norms, empathy, responsibility. Seems to me that there is a believe that children are blank slates..ignoring completely that they are constantly learning how to be from their peers, their environments, and yes—adults who either intervene or look away.
That being said I completely agree. My 3yo will turn 4 soon, and I can already now see a change in her behavior and independance..recently she learned to bike, and plays unsupervised with herself as well with her sister and our neighbors kids (6) in a communal shared garden space ..
I agree. By four, kids are capable of behaving responsibly and should be held to it. At the Sudbury Valley School, four-year-olds must follow the rules and, experience shows, they can. Of course, there, the rules are made democratically, so each student and staff member has a vote on them, and they are enforced democratically. That makes a difference. Even four-year-olds must put things away that they take out, and even four-year-olds must not liter, and certainly must not deliberately hurt another person. They can and do (mostly) follow such rules.
The more I think about child development as I raise my own toddlers the more I realize suburban living is so limiting to children's independence. There is no where for them to go! They are stuck in a small yard, in a subdivision with no where to go. There is no store to walk to, no reasonable dangers to explore, etc. In urban environments you can learn to navigate people and transportation, and go to a store to complete a task. Rural environments have expansive nature and usually a small main street of sorts to walk to. I just moved to the suburbs from a city a few months ago and immediately want to leave due to lack of opportunity to do much... of anything.
You make a good point. In the suburbs, essentially everyone drives, nobody walks anywhere. I think that's why lpeople living in cities, ironically, seem to be mor physically fit than those in suburbs. Look for potential friends for you child in your neighborhood, neet the parents, and see if you can arrange some together adventures for them.
4 years of age, huh? Isn't 4 years also the spacing our hunter/gatherer ancestors had between children, so the first could walk independently when the newborn had to be carried? Maybe folklore? My kids are 4 years are 4 years apart and I know this idea resonated with my wife and I. That would, if true, put responsibility on the 4 year old to walk like the olders.
It is true that hunter-gatherer kids tend to be spaced about 4 years apart. This, apparently, is because moms nurse their child until 3 to 4 years old, and the heavy nursing, with the lean body of a typical hunter-gather woman, inhibits ovulation--a natural birth control mechanism.
My son was just shy of 4 when my second child was born - she just turned one - and my son has naturally taken on the role of protective big brother. He notices when she puts things in her mouth that she shouldn’t when they are playing outside and has even once opened her mouth, reached in and taken a rock out of her mouth before I could get to her. She trusts him implicitly.
I’m sold, Peter. Got two rowdy five-year-old boys and a little girl. Cruised through Free to Learn, nodding along the whole time. My partner, who grew up riding motorcycles in the desert and exploring the mountains behind our house, is more cautious. Our biggest concern is wild animals. In Arizona, we live near a pack of coyotes. We’re on their radar. Had a close call. In Montana, we’re surrounded by national forest and at least one big black bear lives nearby and mountain lions. Something ate our neighbor’s 40-lb dog. We have all this beautiful, interesting outdoor space and feel like we can’t let em go out exploring alone.
I wish there was a course on this that I could have attended before having my own. I guess there once was as you alluded to - it was called society. That is, society as it existed before it lost touch with all the lessons of our past. Instead society now just injects suspicion and mistrust in the minds of our children, driving humanity in the opposite direction from where it needs to go (or be).
This makes a lot of sense. I remember wanting to walk to school in Kindergarten. My mom let me, but I think she followed me (in fairness, there were signs around the school warning of a predator). I remember riding my bike to school on some busy multi-lane roads in 4th grade. When my older son was four, I remember him and his preschool friends wanting play dates for the first time. When they were three, we moms would arrange to get together and the kids would mostly parallel play. At four, we would drop them off at their friend’s house. There definitely seems to be a shift at age four.
I completely agree. I didn’t know why, but I felt at four, my youngest was ready to go outside and play by himself if he wanted to. We live rurally, on 9 acres. He was allowed to go a certain distance from the house that encompassed about 3 acres of mown grass, tall brush, and woods. At 5 he’d proved himself and was also allowed to play around the 1/2 acre pond. I also oversaw knife work in the kitchen from age 2, but allowed a pocket knife at age 4 for both my boys. Now, at age 9 & 12, I see them as more confident and capable with far deeper understanding of their environment than most of their peers who have been extremely held back in these ways.
Peter- how do I do this in a suburb of a large city. I often let my 4 year old be outside alone in the backyard. We have a nice walking path in our backyard and people always comment- you have to watch your kids so closely with the path in the backyard. I’m not worried about my kids at all. I’m worried about the adults that will report me.
I also created an art room in our utility room in the basement so she could go down there and create by herself- to feel some independence. She loves it. I’m trying! 😬😃
This is a problem, which we will discuss on the May Zoom meeting for paid subscribers. Also, for some thoughts, see https://petergray.substack.com/p/46-thirteen-ways-to-enable-free-play
Through experience and reflexive practice, children learn to be responsible. The Sami culture of Finland, Norway, & Sweden adopted the "ieš dieđát," [you know it yourself] mentality--allowing children to experience the world largely in their own way without parental over-lording, helping them to also become resilient. As a nation, we continue to promote fragility and dependence through control on many levels! (Jon Haidt)
This is exactly the case for my 4-year-old. Learned to ride a bike right about his 4th birthday, made a best friend in our neighborhood with whom he plays for hours on end unsupervised and in the street (we live in the city but on a relatively quiet road without sidewalks), and just received privileges to bike around the corner, about a quarter-mile away, with the goal of learning to walk half a mile to his grandparents house alone this summer when he turns 5. But waking to the 7-11 a couple blocks away still feels taboo in our modern times so that might have to wait until age 7 or so (even though I did this as a kid in the 90s and no one blinked an eye). He loves this independence and is generally very good about being alert for cars. I worry more about drivers speeding by while on their cell phones than I do about his ability to cross a street safely. It’s been wonderful to see his friendships blossoming this past year. He does a lot of self-talk and verbal processing when alone, so what you say here about the theory of mind and the capacity to think verbally makes a lot of sense as well.
Absolutamente awesome.
What hope these comments bring! I guess only parents who somewhat agree are reading this post, but still, all the children written about here, and their parents, sound incredible.
If only we could begin a program in our cities, similar to blue zones…a program that gets hired by a local government to go into the town and develop this philosophy (like the organization Let Grow), with resources and education for parents and community members, about how to encourage these actions for children in their neighborhood.
I'm involved in two programs trying to do that.
Please send more information about that. As an elementary school teacher, parent, and a psychotherapist, I’d love to learn more.
Maybe this explains why, at 4 1/2yrs old, I decided to take my 3 1/2yr old brother and 2yr old sister on a walk around the block while Mom was doing laundry! (1961)
As usual, a stimulating article on child development, thank you Peter.
Two points of special interest to me in your article:
The first:
“I think the children are safe precisely because they are trusted, so they take responsibility for themselves and one another.”
Trust. To learn to trust in the world and in the Self is, as I impute it was to Erik Erikson as the first of his eight stages of lifespan development, the first and most important foundational learning if fortunate enough to be enabled by the secure attachment to our mother/primary caregiver.
“To trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves; and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” John Holt
The second:
“I suspect (though I don’t know of any research on it) that development of theory of mind is intimately linked to internalization of language.”
I consider Julian Jaynes’ book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and those carrying on his work add much understanding to the development of the individual Self/Mind from birth through childhood.
See:
Consciousness in Children: Infancy and its Relationship to Julian Jaynes’ Theory | Bill Rowe. March 26, 2021 3:27
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3QlLFWlKKg
The Other Origin of Consciousness: Infancy and its Relationship to Julian Jaynes’s Theory by Bill Rowe, Invited address at The Julian Jaynes Society Conference on Consciousness and Bicameral Studies, Charleston, WV, June 2013.
Abstract: There are two origins of consciousness, one in antiquity and one in infancy. In the last decades of the twentieth century research in child development highlighted capacities of the human infant-caregiver relationship uniquely relevant to Julian Jaynes’s theory. One of these is a species specific capacity, present in the first year of life, which enables a close temporal coupling between human infants and their caregivers. The other is the ability of the children, beginning around 3 years of age, to conceptualize other people in terms of mental states. This talk will look at what is shared between children and their caregivers over the period of birth to about 7 years of age. These are, in developmental order, affect, subjective states, social scripts, and mental states. These shared features are highly variable and allow for a wide range of cultural emphasis. From a developmental-theoretic perspective this variability fits Julian Jaynes’s constructivist view of consciousness; it must be learned through other people, it can change over time, and can be different from culture to culture. These capacities can serve as additional constraints in speculations on the nature of consciousness in ancient times. Perhaps, looking at Julian Jaynes’s theory through the lens of child development can help make it feel less distant and more familiar to more people.
https://www.julianjaynes.org/resources/articles/the-other-origin-of-consciousness-infancy-and-its-relationship-to-julian-jaynes-theory/
Get free, stay free.
I didn’t even need to read more than a few words at the beginning and then scrolled thru to the end before u got excited to become a paid subscriber!
With a “late talking” 4 1/2 year old grandson, I’ve advocated for more play and less focus on academics from the get go. Can’t wait to join in the group chats 🥰
Thanks for doing the work you do Gary. I think these articles & the research about this topic is very challenging for a lot of people. I don't have children of my own nor do I wish to, having said that I've noticed almost a contempt for "the kids these days" expressed by people who have children & even grandchildren of their own.
I know that older generations complaining about younger generations have been a thing since Aristotle, but does that negative attitude have a correlation to how we raise children? eg: less respect for children, leading to less trust, therefore affects how the children are raised? If we trust children less then we foster less independence... Has that been seen in any research?
Yes, much research shows this.
A very timely piece—and one that resonates deeply with what I see happening more and more, particularly here in Denmark. Though from a slightly different perspective. In many parenting forums, I’m struck by how often harmful or even violent or sexual behavior from young children (4-, 5-, 6-year-olds) is downplayed or excused. The pattern is familiar: A child causes real harm, and the response is, "They’re just kids—they don’t understand right from wrong yet.” But isn’t that precisely the point? That this is the age when they begin to understand?
Just today, I read a post from a mother who had received a message from her child’s kindergarten: three boys had jumped on her 5-year-old’s back and thrown hard objects at his face—even as he screamed in pain and asked them to stop. She wondered if she was overreacting. The comment section was filled with variations of “boys will be boys,” and “kids don’t know what they’re doing.”
What struck me most was not the event itself, but the lack of recognition of what it means to be in this formative zone— and a complete disregard of when and where children begin to internalize norms, empathy, responsibility. Seems to me that there is a believe that children are blank slates..ignoring completely that they are constantly learning how to be from their peers, their environments, and yes—adults who either intervene or look away.
That being said I completely agree. My 3yo will turn 4 soon, and I can already now see a change in her behavior and independance..recently she learned to bike, and plays unsupervised with herself as well with her sister and our neighbors kids (6) in a communal shared garden space ..
I agree. By four, kids are capable of behaving responsibly and should be held to it. At the Sudbury Valley School, four-year-olds must follow the rules and, experience shows, they can. Of course, there, the rules are made democratically, so each student and staff member has a vote on them, and they are enforced democratically. That makes a difference. Even four-year-olds must put things away that they take out, and even four-year-olds must not liter, and certainly must not deliberately hurt another person. They can and do (mostly) follow such rules.
The more I think about child development as I raise my own toddlers the more I realize suburban living is so limiting to children's independence. There is no where for them to go! They are stuck in a small yard, in a subdivision with no where to go. There is no store to walk to, no reasonable dangers to explore, etc. In urban environments you can learn to navigate people and transportation, and go to a store to complete a task. Rural environments have expansive nature and usually a small main street of sorts to walk to. I just moved to the suburbs from a city a few months ago and immediately want to leave due to lack of opportunity to do much... of anything.
You make a good point. In the suburbs, essentially everyone drives, nobody walks anywhere. I think that's why lpeople living in cities, ironically, seem to be mor physically fit than those in suburbs. Look for potential friends for you child in your neighborhood, neet the parents, and see if you can arrange some together adventures for them.
Mental health diagnoses would plummet…
4 years of age, huh? Isn't 4 years also the spacing our hunter/gatherer ancestors had between children, so the first could walk independently when the newborn had to be carried? Maybe folklore? My kids are 4 years are 4 years apart and I know this idea resonated with my wife and I. That would, if true, put responsibility on the 4 year old to walk like the olders.
It is true that hunter-gatherer kids tend to be spaced about 4 years apart. This, apparently, is because moms nurse their child until 3 to 4 years old, and the heavy nursing, with the lean body of a typical hunter-gather woman, inhibits ovulation--a natural birth control mechanism.
My son was just shy of 4 when my second child was born - she just turned one - and my son has naturally taken on the role of protective big brother. He notices when she puts things in her mouth that she shouldn’t when they are playing outside and has even once opened her mouth, reached in and taken a rock out of her mouth before I could get to her. She trusts him implicitly.
I’m sold, Peter. Got two rowdy five-year-old boys and a little girl. Cruised through Free to Learn, nodding along the whole time. My partner, who grew up riding motorcycles in the desert and exploring the mountains behind our house, is more cautious. Our biggest concern is wild animals. In Arizona, we live near a pack of coyotes. We’re on their radar. Had a close call. In Montana, we’re surrounded by national forest and at least one big black bear lives nearby and mountain lions. Something ate our neighbor’s 40-lb dog. We have all this beautiful, interesting outdoor space and feel like we can’t let em go out exploring alone.
I wish there was a course on this that I could have attended before having my own. I guess there once was as you alluded to - it was called society. That is, society as it existed before it lost touch with all the lessons of our past. Instead society now just injects suspicion and mistrust in the minds of our children, driving humanity in the opposite direction from where it needs to go (or be).
This makes a lot of sense. I remember wanting to walk to school in Kindergarten. My mom let me, but I think she followed me (in fairness, there were signs around the school warning of a predator). I remember riding my bike to school on some busy multi-lane roads in 4th grade. When my older son was four, I remember him and his preschool friends wanting play dates for the first time. When they were three, we moms would arrange to get together and the kids would mostly parallel play. At four, we would drop them off at their friend’s house. There definitely seems to be a shift at age four.