The first post in this short series - Why I stay out of my kid’s craft! - can be found here - but I also wanted to state again that this post is as much about all of us as it is about kids.
So before I blog as normal I just wanted to say what is happening in our world right now feels so big - so big in fact that words don’t seem to do it justice. And yet, words are all we have at the moment to connect with. So I’ve decided that I’m going to keep sharing thoughts and ideas in this space about making, because both writing and making nurture us and support us. And at this incredibly heavy time - we need them. Thinking of you all. x
This post is about the principles I think about when I am observing my children making - but first I want to talk a little about why it is so important…
I can’t tell you the number of times I have had a conversation with people who tell me they know that they aren’t creative/talented. When I ask how they know?…. I hear some version of the answer that they know because they were told so by their high-school textiles teacher when they were making an apron in Year 9. In my street alone – and it’s a short street - I know of two women who have this story. That because their apron/skirt had dodgy stitching they weren’t “creative” - as so judged and labelled by their teacher.
My answer to this is …“Maybe your teachers was in the middle of a personal crisis and they were not managing their emotions well and so was thoughtless in their comments” OR “Maybe your teacher was just not the best teacher and they didn’t have the skills to teach different people with different learning styles - and you had a different learning style”. And besides that… “Who made your Year 9 textiles teacher an expert in deciding whether someone was creative or not?”
Who knows why they said what they said. What I do know is that it has nothing to do with whether or not you have the capacity to make. And definitely has nothing to do with whether or not you are creative. This tiny interaction with a teacher 30 years ago stung and became part of who we are.
So many of us have these stories - stories that helped to shape who we believed we were and what we believed we were capable of. And what it shows us as parents, is the importance of being really careful about giving feedback and being conscious of the judgements we make. Because judgment sticks.
I see the results of childhood judgement often when we are running workshops with grown ups. I meet people whose perfectionism and fear of judgement play out in classes as people struggle to engage for fear of getting it wrong. So they don’t make the stitch and begin, and therefore never get the practice they need – not just technically but emotionally - to get better. Emotional skills like sitting with uncertainty and being courageous in spite of their fear. These earlier judgements become stories that we hold about ourselves, that while unfounded, stop us from engaging in the world in a way that is aligned with what we care about.
So we left the last post talking about what I wanted for them when they were making; I wanted freedom,
a judgement-free, agency-creating space for them to play around in and learn about themselves…. I wanted a space where they were free to have a project not turn out as they wanted, free to adjust, to pivot, to try other things. I wanted a space where they were figuring out the answers for themselves and because of that learning that they were more capable than they knew.
But how do we do this? What environment do we need to provide? What do we need to think about? And how does our behaviour - the things we say, the faces we pull, the attention we show - impact them?
I try to think about the principles I care about rather than having hard and fast answers to these questions. As the kids age and develop, my answers shift a little based on who they are and what their interests are. What I do know is that by thinking about this over time then I am hopefully also best placed to do my best in each moment. Often I get it wrong, and then myself try again, and pivot, and keep trying. Because as always, we can only do our best with what we know in any moment.
And before we start it’s important to say that obviously every kid is different, and so what works for me will not be appropriate for all humans. But these are the principles I think about often.
She improvised this two tone cowl - picking yarn and creating the idea on the fly.
Principle 1. Grow their Belief In their agency.
A few months ago two of my kids decided to make an oxen cart. Now truthfully I didn’t really understand what they were on about but they seemed totally clear, so I kept quiet and watched from a distance as they got busy….
Initially it involved screwing a branch to a wooden board, and then screwing the wooden board to a skateboard, and then roping another kid to the oxen cart to pull it along.
Huh? But I stayed out of it and watched it happen
Upon their request it involved my partner. They asked him to help them figure out where to drill but neither he nor I “taught” or “suggested”. His help was only engineering-support based on their ideas. He did not suggest how to do it better as that was not their request. Their request was how do we screw this onto here.
Now the oxen cart makes me smile each time I see it. It seems to have a life of it’s own and move about the yard randomly. It also annoys the shit out of me when I find it randomly lying behind the car in the driveway - ripe to be run over.
It is my belief that by staying out of it each of my kids have learned to have confidence in their ability to figure it out, because they have been allowed to figure it out over and over again. By not teaching and not helping (with a few caveats which I will talk about in the next one of these posts) we have sent them the message that we believe in their capacity to figure it out. Much of making something with our hands is about the belief we can make.
So I enable them. I give them access to materials. I let them use all of my tools and machinery including my sewing machine and even the overlocker. I normalise making by making in their presence. I talk to them about things that haven’t worked for me so they don’t think I get everything right. I answer their questions about how to do something BUT I am involved as little as possible. And as I said in the first post I consciously don’t “teach”.
As has been said thoughout the ages - a good teacher instills in someone the belief that they can figure out how to catch a fish. A good teacher is someone who makes themselves redundant; someone who grows the person’s skills in figuring out and makes them feel like they have agency.
Her heater dye experiments were random - sometimes she left them overnight. Other times for three weeks. She would then decide they were done.
Principle 2 – Their Goals Are The Only Goals
Their goals are the only goals.
For any project they begin, the only goal that matters is the goal they have in their minds.
Take my blonde kid’s project at the top of the post. She thought it was finished. I didn’t. I didn’t understand why you would waste the opportunity to keep going when you were already loomed up and having a good time. I could see how much she was enjoying it BUT our goals were not aligned. When she began to just randomly cut it off, I didn’t say a word other than “oh you are finished” and then walked away so my uncertainty didn’t bleed into her experience. Because she was happy and finished. My comment would only diminish her experience.
Sometimes that means that they start a project with no goal in mind - and that is also OK - because their goal is to be goal-less.
Now here is the imporant bit. My goals are irrelevant. My ideas about how a thing should look/feel/work don’t matter at all. In fact, I would go so far as to say that me even having a goal for their project is not good. And sometimes it’s destructive.
Their goals are not our goals. Their idea of finished and beautiful and functional will be different to ours. Because we are all different. And this is true when we are crafting alongside a friend. We are different people, with different visions and so our goals are not aligned.
And so by us having a goal for their project we are creating a judgement ie it “should” go in this direction. This is not good because our craft is a place where the only “should” we should be paying attention to is our own.
When we teach we are (by default) saying that there is a way of doing something. And that comes with judgement on whether you are getting it right or wrong – because when we say “this is how you do it” then there is by default a way not to do it. This puts us on high alert. We can’t help but try to get it right – because we humans want to belong and being right makes us feel like we are one of the team. And in craft there really isn’t a right way. Unless we are trying to win a prize for our craft in a particular category, then the only person we need to please with our craft is ourselves. Craft is personal. It is a place where we get to decide what we like.
Now generally small people want to make a thing. And fast.
They love a quick win and although some of them have awesome attentions spans, some of them are understandably more flighty. They care less about detail and want to get stuck in.
As they grow older, some of them ask more questions about how to fix things and how to make it tidier. They get better at the thing they enjoy doing by doing it.
For example when my youngest was six and had been knitting for three years, she came to me and asked me how to not get holes in her knitting. I then explained. But this was based on her goals not mine. And it was only after her having made many many things with many holes that she decided she didn’t like them anymore and wanted to fix them.
Some people will never care about holes. But some people obviously will. But what is important is that we recognise what our goals are - because then we can be better at seeing them sneak into how we are parenting.
For example, my goals as a grown-up-recovering-perfectionist-crafter are to make the thing as technically perfect and beautiful as I can. This is my go-to. This is my focus, my true north. I head this way without thinking - and it takes effort for me to do anything differently. If I am not careful then I find myself encouraging others to have my goal as their goal. And so I take care to ask - what are you trying to achieve? And how do you want it to look? And are you happy with how it is going?
Because my goals…. well they have no place in someone else’s craft. And so I must be careful to make sure that I am as careful as I can be to not allow my kids to see my goals - because we humans want to get stuff right, to belong, to please others. If my kids can see my goals they might decide that my goals matter. And that means they aren’t following their true north.
A quick note: I have taught enough little people to craft in schools to see that some small people really care about getting it “perfect”. Nature or nurture, who knows? But I’ve also watched how the idea of perfect squashes the joy for so many of them, especially when they are starting, when their ability isn’t at the level they would like it to be at. They are often the kids that give up rather than try – which means they are not able to do enough practice to get good at it in the first place.
And so why is it? If they care about perfect why do they think it matters? Has someone told them that there is a standard to be met or a goal to be achieved in order to consider their work good? Or is it simply their personality? Either way, how can we encourage them to shift their focus onto the joy – as joy will make them want to engage with the activity - because it is only through engaging with doing can they come closer to the result they are trying to achieve.
But for most kids, they don’t care about perfect because who is to say what perfect is? I’m hoping that they don’t know what perfect is because noone has suggested there is a perfect!
Kids mostly care about doing…. and sometimes about getting it done.
Many times they get started, have a ball for a few hours of doing, and then walk away. Done is not necessarily even that important. Their goals as little people is generally to have fun and sometimes actually make the thing!
Principle 3 – No Unsolicited Feedback
I believe a big part of why my kids like craft so much, is because their crafting lives are free. Free from external judgement. Free from pressure. Free from expectation. Free from right or wrong. When my kids craft the only person they are trying to please is themselves.
This principle - no unsolicited feedback - is the most important of all and a big part of how I try to parent around their making practice. It takes a shittonne of practice, and much (daily) failure, but can really change a kid’s willingness to engage.
I got the words “no unsolicited feedback” from the drama teacher at my kids’ school - an engaging and incredibly thoughtful teacher and one of those people who will hopefully win an award sometime for being a champion human. Anyway, he has created rules for the drama department to set the culture. The first rule is “unending positive regard” and the second (which I adore) is that there is to be “no unsolicited feedback”.
Feedback tells the kid that they have done something right, or wrong. It tells them something that there was a right and wrong in the first place…. which there isn’t. This idea is part of why I try my hardest not to “teach”. Because teaching is giving feedback before they have even tried to do a thing. Teaching is, by default, saying that there is a goal.
There is no right way to do a tapestry for my then 3 year old. The tapestry should look exactly as she feels it should look. To teach her how to do it – when she wasn’t asking for my help or advice – would be to tell her there was a way to get it “right”. At three she probably wasn’t capable of doing that tapestry and she doesn’t actually care about right because her goals are not to “get it right” but instead to “do stitching”.
To give feedback after she is finished can only change the way she feels about it, because it means she is thinking about my judgement of it rather than her own. All that matters is that she was totally thrilled with her tapestry. My feedback about it is not needed nor helpful because I don’t want them to think that my opinion about their craft matters OR even that I have an opinion about it.
Principle 4: Judge Less
Principle 4 seems a lot like Principle 3 but it goes much further and needs it’s own lane - because judgement kills trying. And we need to practice judging less, especially about things that aren’t ours to judge.
We all judge - based on our values, principles and the stories we hold about what is important. But often times we formed those values, principles and stories long ago and if we had a good look at them we may find they don’t stand up. It’s worth taking a look at what they are because so much of our judgement is automatic, goes un-examined, and can be toxic to us and others, if it is not illuminated here and there with a bit of internal examination, and a dash of emotional intelligence.
In order to make decisions we need to be able to judge events, ideas, experiences, objects. So judgement is important. But often we judge things that aren’t ours to judge - like other people’s making. Unless they are in a competition and we are the judge then really it isn’t ours to comment on. I’ve heard horror stories of people arriving at knitting groups with their new sweater, only to have a random person and sometimes even a friend, point out the mistakes. I have had this happen to me in my own life, where someone has seen something I have made and pointed out the flaws…. and as we are all human and flawed, maybe at some stage I’ve done it to someone else.
Sometimes we do this unthinkingly because the thing about judgement is that while we do it in our heads, it seeps out into how we are around others. Most of our communication with others is non verbal - people can tell how we feel even if we aren’t saying it. And so we need to get conscious about what we are doing and try our damnedest not to do it if the event or object isn’t actually ours to judge.
So I would go one step even further than Principle 3 - No Unsolicited Feedback and suggest that as much as possible you give no feedback, especially to kids. Have a smile on your face, be engaged, be interested but don’t judge.
When they say “look what I made” rather than saying “It’s beautiful”, then turn it around and say “Look at what you did” or even “Are you happy with it?”. By asking a question you can shift the focus from your opinion to their opinion. Get them to reflect on their own feelings about the work.
Some of you might now be thinking “well what is the problem with saying something is beautiful. It’s a compliment” - which it is. But when we are dealing with small people, and they are looking for approval, by telling them something is beautiful it can lead to them thinking that that is the right way to do a thing and producing a bunch more of that thing just to get the glow of praise. It’s a tricky balance - and it’s a line I walk by acknowledging their work, being interested but turning the question around if I can.
Judgment kills creativity, as it tells us that there is a right way and a wrong way to make our art. And there isn’t, especially when we are children.
She just started cutting it off the loom one day deeming it finished. I tried not to judge….
In order to make, we need to grow confident in our capacity to solve problems. We need to learn to trust ourselves and learn to play with our ideas. We need to learn to fail and struggle and move through it. We need to learn to care more about our own judgement than we do about the people around us. We need to believe in ourselves. So much of this comes from our childhood experiences and it requires that we are open and vulnerable.
What is tricky is that so many of us learnt when we are children that we are wrong or not enough. People making snap judgements or comments or criticisms that we can hear in our heads 40 years later. Our judgements, of ourselves and others, can impact how someone sees themselves - limiting how they move through life unless they are examined and deconstructed with intention, or dismantled through practice. Our stories can be very loud.
We humans desperately want to belong – we want to be part of the group. To feel that we are enough. Having our efforts judged as not good enough is often enough to stop us from even having a go. And if we aren’t having a go, we don’t have the chance to do the thing we want to do, to become the person we want to be.
Our goals can be all sorts of shapes and sizes. Maybe we care about functional over creative. Or maybe we care about practical over beautiful. Subjective goals mean that our definition of success is different which is something we need to be conscious of as we are around others who make. Getting really cautious about judging other people’s work is an act of generosity and true connection; connecting by checking in on whether their work met their own goals. As always this is something I too am practicing in my everyday - judging less, connecting more….
I want them to feel that I have total faith in their capacity – so that they learn to trust themselves - and to do that I need to stay out of the process. So they believe in their own capacity to figure it out. So they feel like makers.
OK. So that’s principles. In the final post from this series I’m going to share with you how I practically engage and enable - what does that look like in reality…. what are the tricks.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Felicia x
