This post is about more than kids. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves about our capacity and what has value.
Over the years I’ve had many a question about how I’ve taught my kids to craft. It’s a question that I’ve always meant to answer because I have some thoughts and some theories. And I definitely have some opinions. And the most important of those is that I don’t.
I don’t teach them.
I do enable them - by giving them materials and answering their questions - but I don’t teach. I don’t suggest or help unless asked. And I try as much as possible to not be involved at all, even though I am obviously a crafter who loves craft. Their craft is their craft.
Now this post needs a big caveat!! I’m not saying teaching is bad in any way. Teaching can so often be an act of love and grace. But to “teach” them the way I was taught involves a teacher telling a person how to do a thing. And it involves a dynamic where one person has the knowledge/skill and the other doesn’t. And that knowledge is shared in one direction. And that is not a dynamic I want them to sit in when they are learning to make a thing….. and this post hopefully will explain why.
For this tapestry I simply threaded a needle and handed it to her. She made up the rest.
My kids make stuff all the time. They make soft toys and weapons and clothes and presents, and bookmarks and cushion covers, cubbies, pillowcases and many other random things. They each have a broad range of skills that they have developed project by project, idea by wonderful idea. All of them can knit, sew, drill, carve, weave, sculpt, saw and plan, to various levels based on their individual interest.
They all make sporadically. Often they get obsessed for a few hours/days/weeks before they put it aside and don’t touch it for years. Each of them has a very different way of getting involved in making, based on their different interests and their temperaments and ages. They all have many unfinished projects.
The important thing to note about their craft in this context is not that they make a lot, but rather how little their crafting has to do with me. People think they are crafty because I am crafty and their dad is a maker. And while I think that helps, it only helps in so far as they see people making as part of their everyday. They don’t think making is something that special, talented, crafty, creative people do. They think it is normal. This framing cannot be underestimated in that I feel that this is something we have lost as a society. My kids believe they can figure out how to make the thing their imaginations dream up. And that is fab.
But there is much more to it than that.
We all have stories in our heads. Beliefs, ideas and values about how things work. Some of them are cultural narratives and some of them are personal narratives. Our stories matter because our expectations affect the outcomes we get. Thinking something won’t work increases the likelihood it won’t work. So getting our thinking right matters.
Now because of what I do, I’ve seen the difference our stories make when we are learning how to make. And there is a clear difference between the stories my kids (and people like them) tell themselves as they make, and the stories so many of us - including me - carry around with us. I believe that a big part of this difference comes down to how we were taught to think about making, and to go about the process when we were young. And the many (false?) cultural narratives we now swim in about what it takes to make a thing.
They carved wands a few years back and then decorated the handles a few months ago. The middle kid made this wand case a few days ago to carry the wands.
A REFRAMING - What do we want to become?
Way back in the day, when my oldest was really tiny, I read two fantastic books about parenting that changed the way I thought about what my role as a parent was. The first was a book called Unconditional Parenting.
The introduction of this book had an incredibly helpful framing where the author simply asked what qualities we hoped our kids had in later life? He stated that in workshops people generally said the same things over and over - things like happiness, to be a good person, resilience, self confidence, critical thinking…. All sorts of similar answers to the question “Who do we want our children to become?”
And then, more pointedly, the author asked whether what we were asking of them now was teaching them those qualities and values, or whether it was squashing the very things we were aiming to encourage in the long term.
Damn that’s deep and somewhat horrifying.*
In our everyday what we often ask of our children - what we often demand from them - is obedience or compliance. We need them to get their goddamn shoes on and we need them to do it now. Because it’s twenty minutes since we first asked them, and we are now late. We ask that they think about others and that they fall in line and follow the game plan of the family, or classroom, or the music lesson.
Obedience is often necessary but in asking for obedience on the regular we are getting them to tune into what others want from them and not into their own values. And while following instructions is an essential part of life, so is understanding what you need and following your heart.
We don’t want them, at 15, to be obedient to their mate when their mate is suggesting that they have a couple of beers and then see who can leap furthest out of a tree. They need practice at disobeying others, and thinking for themselves, believing in themselves, trusting themselves - and the younger the better.
While this idea can be an incredibly confusing line to parent around, but I believe it’s incredibly important. For them to learn when to push back, and to care only about what they believe is right. And then sometimes to inhabit a space where that thing - the thing they value - is what they prioritise.
These are things that we all need to learn… and practice as lifelong skills. But learning them young gives us such an advantage and craft is a good place to practice sitting in knowing ourselves and gaining confidence in our capacity to think, problem solve and execute an idea. It teaches us to trust ourselves.
Natural dyeing with oxalis.
So What do I want for them in their craft?
I’ve thought about it in connection with craft a lot – what do I want them to feel like?
What I want for them is the freedom to care only about whether they like what they make – whether it gives them a sense of satisfaction and joy – not whether other people like it.
I want them to be able to make in a space that is free from judgement - whether that be criticism or praise. I want their craft (especially while they are small) to be for them, and only them.
I want them to feel that they have the freedom to try and fail and try again without it meaning anything about them personally.
I want them to know that their capacity in this moment to do something has nothing to do with their value and self worth. The two things are not connected.
And I want them to know that talent isn’t a thing. I want them to understand that they can get better at almost anything with persistence, study, passion and practice.
And so, for me the question is not how do we teach kids how to craft, but rather how do we raise the next generation of crafters to be able to engage in making with confidence and self belief in their own capacity. So they can make with less head stuff and less angst.
We need to reframe the question from “How do you teach your kids to craft” to “How do we enable kids to craft with more agency?” This is a much better question. How do we encourage them to feel that they are capable of making anything they dream up? And then how do we encourage them to believe that the only opinion that matters about their work is their own?
But this is also what I want for all of us. How can we all make with more freedom, less angst, caring only about what we think and not the opinions of others?
As I’ve said before. There is no craft Olympics, especially as most of us reading are making purely for our own pleasure. And so, the only opinion that matters is our own.
So that is Part 1. Part 2 will be coming soon and it’s all about the values/principles I’m trying to grow/promote in my small people and then Part 3 is about how I enable them practically. How do I “help” when they need “help”?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Felicia x
* If you’ve read Unconditional Parenting then please don’t get the idea that I am the kind of superhuman that is able to do this well. I’m not. I fail all the time as we all do. Parenting is often a total mind fuck. But we do our best most days and that is enough.
