Society begs us to question impulses as they arise. To ask, is it possible or not? Is it helpful/harmful? What’s the purpose? Will it succeed? This can be useful: it can be difficult to embark on explorations of impulses without understanding their limitations and impacts. And yet, it can also create stasis, preventing exploration of an impulse that your brain, the universe, wherever you believe the ideas come from, has proffered you.

The younger one is, the less conditioning one has to doubt these ideas. It was true in my own childhood: when someone questioned an impulse I experienced (which was often, thank goddess for improv club because High School would’ve been hell without it), I would too. I stopped seeing my idea to become a better singer as something possible whenever people told me about how hard it is to MAKE IT. In fact, I just stopped seeing my idea at all. Doubt is usually just the many-faced fears of failure and it can lead us to shut down impulses entirely. 

This is one foundational aspect of the argument that adults know better than kids and why they believe kids can’t direct their own learning: because they can’t think through or “control their impulses.” Come on, people, that’s thinking very little and dangerously generally of kids; I’ve seen kids stop themselves while trying to punch someone. Maybe some kids struggle with it (as do some adults/people in general), but how will they learn without practice? This argument isn’t just about kids controlling impulses, it’s about adults feeling so much pressure to regulate their own that they take that out on kids. That’s unethical because it prevents the kids from meeting their own needs.

Recently in a meeting with a kid, their parents, and a few facilitators in a self-directed learning community, I had an opportunity to follow the impulse of someone younger than me. We were talking about friendships the kid had in the learning center. I brought up a situation where that kid was playing in a seemingly fun and conflict-free way with another kid. I asked what the kid felt had worked about that interaction, they said they were able to set a boundary with the other kid. I asked what might have happened if they hadn’t set that boundary or if the other kid hadn’t respected it and the kid said, “I don’t know.”

I asked if the kid wanted 2 of us to roleplay the situation and if the kid would help us organize it. The kid excitedly gave us characters and backstory. They did so in a way that didn’t fit with my intention in offering the roleplay. However, I knew that if I wanted to redirect the scenario, I would be acting like a hypocrite! It would be like saying, “remember how I said you could do that? Well you didn’t do it right so now I’m taking over.” That would be disrespectful. Plus, I was curious to see where they’d take it; so I went along and did the roleplay. Afterward the kid was excited and they even seemed to enjoy the meeting a bit more. Though I think the real value was showing the kid we trusted them to organize the meeting too by sharing the ability to direct it in a very obviously empowering way for them.

That was my why—trust. Adults have to believe there’s value in trying this radically different approach. We have to consider, “what do I feel is valuable for me in supporting this kid to explore and decide things for themselves?” Perhaps you believe their ideas are valuable and you want to support them to grow. Maybe the value’s in the kid practicing the skill of independent decision-making. Or that the kid and you both get to learn more about their interests and what they like. Maybe it’s about building trust, like it was for me. There are limitless options, you decide. What’s important is to hone in on ones that resonate in a relationship in your life and recall them in moments when it’s challenging to support the impulses that are coming up.

It can be easy to ignore or challenge such impulses from kids when we are not practicing trusting our own impulses and the processes that evolve from exploring them, which is not easy to do after having been conditioned as we have. If we only know to ignore these ideas that flow from us, how can we possibly expect ourselves to be able to collaborate with kids on the ideas that flow from them? Once we learn to try out these ideas on our own, we can do so with others and have more trust in the process—we can embrace the potential for these ideas to fizzle out, fail, evolve, or leave us with more questions than answers because we understand that this, too, is learning.

PRACTICE TRUSTING YOUR IMPULSES: while I was first getting into this practice, I found adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy to be extremely encouraging. It’s about embracing change and learning to map these evolutions into a matrix that extends beyond oneself, to others, communities, the planet, etc. Brown is a healer and science fiction lover at heart, so if you like mindfulness and Octavia Butler, this book is a must read!

If you do want to buy yourself a copy, I recommend buying from one of these in person or online black owned bookstores instead of Amazon (blech).