Bottle Drive
Connell School of Nursing Assistant Professor Britt Pados is on a mission to help pediatricians, hospitals, and specialists improve the way they identify and care for the one in four infants and toddlers who struggle with feeding.
Illustration: Michael Parkin
Kids These Days
51茶馆 evolutionary anthropologist Dorsa Amir on recapturing childhood in the modern era.
Spring 2020
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Classrooms, sports practices, play dates: Some aspects of childhood seem so routine you鈥檇 never think to question them. But maybe you should. Postdoctoral research fellow Dorsa Amir had just such an opportunity while studying childhood among the Shuar, a foraging-horticulturalist group in Ecuador鈥檚 Amazon rainforest.
For a month during 2014, Amir watched Shuar kids deciding how to pass the time. And鈥攕urprise!鈥攖hey didn鈥檛 choose to spend it under adult gazes. Instead, they ran free in mixed-age and mixed-gender groups, wielding weapons, climbing trees, lighting fires, and cooking food, sometimes while carrying infants. The kids perpetuated their own thriving culture with social networks, rules, and games.
When Amir got back to the United States, she experienced culture shock. Suddenly, the American childhood that she also studies seemed strange: overly structured, overly supervised, and solitary. 鈥淚n America and other Western cultures, much of how children spend their time is determined by adults,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hey go to school, where they don鈥檛 have much say about what they鈥檙e doing. And then they go home, where many of their play activities are scheduled by caretakers.鈥�
While it would be incorrect to say that the Shuar are living in the past, foraging communities tend to more closely mirror how humans have lived for 99 percent of our time on the planet. So, Amir decided to see how other such groups approach ado- lescence. Her subsequent research among groups in India and Uganda solidified her suspicions: Western childhood is bizarre.
Amir argues that we鈥檙e biologically hardwired to learn through unstructured play and experimentation. What鈥檚 more, our shift away from that in the Western world could be contributing to a rise in attention disorders and the spike in anxiety聽among young adults who leave home for the first time.
What can be done? Amir cautions that not every aspect of Western childhood is problematic. 鈥淐hildren are living the safest lives they鈥檝e ever lived, they鈥檙e the healthi- est they鈥檝e ever been,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 want to lose those benefits鈥攂ut there are probably some benefits that we can integrate from practices we seem to be losing.鈥�
Reclaiming childhood starts with the following steps, Amir said.
Grant kids independence. 鈥淚鈥檝e worked with kids all over the world, and I know that they are extremely bright, responsible, and understand things in a very deep way,鈥� Amir said. So, treat them like small adults. Include them in decision- making and reason with them at a higher level. Assign them tasks around the house and let them use real scissors.
Allow them to make mistakes.聽鈥淪ometimes we think that if we set kids up for success and they don鈥檛 have to deal with failure, we鈥檒l give them a better life,鈥� Amir said. 鈥淚t feels counterintuitive, but letting them take risks and make mistakes can provide opportunities for learning that we take away when we鈥檙e always telling them what the right answer is.鈥�
Set aside time for agenda-less play.聽鈥淭here鈥檚 a tendency to think that when children are playing we need to guide them through an activity or teach them some- thing,鈥� Amir said. 鈥淏ut in unstructured play, children are making new connections and discovering more about their world.鈥�
The good news is that these inter-ventions are not expensive, nor do they necessarily require large-scale change. And Amir noted that parenting styles fall along a spectrum. Each family should figure out what works for them.
The benefits of a reimagined childhood could extend to adults, too, Amir said. 鈥淲e live in a world where there鈥檚 a lot of input, and we have an aversion to being bored,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut I love activities that are less structured鈥攇oing camping and sitting by the fire, playing tabletop games. Those kinds of things promote creativity and new ways of thinking.鈥澛犫椊
