Sometimes it works best to interrupt just as something is taking place– the equivalent of grabbing their hand to prevent them running off in a busy parking lot. And sometimes it’s far more effective to wait for a quiet moment, and circle back. 

…we are so often in a hurry, with an important agenda and a timetable. During the “Tarry Time” of Cottage, we can take the opportunity to slow down and stay curious, remembering that it takes time to learn, but that freely chosen work is always the most compelling.

For attentive, caring adults, ostensibly supporting children’s emotional regulation, our goal is to utilize the tool of co-regulation: a set of signals between people that send the message to our nervous system that we are safe.

 There is so much unseen work that goes into a child making a painting like this, and it cannot be skipped.

In the span of the last generation or so, we have removed most of the opportunities our kids have had for free play. We seem to have convinced ourselves that enrichment classes would be like play, but better, because a grown-up is in charge of it. It won’t get too chaotic, there won’t be so much arguing. Everyone will line up and do the thing when the adult in charge tells them to do it, and they will be getting exercise, and they will be around other children, and they will burn off some of that infernal energy that has them resist bedtime and makes them climb the furniture like monkeys. 

Without the courage to be vulnerable with each other, there’s no room for compassion and for connection, which is the best part of being human. 

 Every child deserves a childhood to the best of our abilities to give them one. I am observing that “fairness” is really a distraction of our thoughts and our best parenting intentions rather than a concept that any of us could actually define in any conclusive way; here is your permission to question it.-Wallace

I was having shower thoughts this morning about how some of us here use "Cottage” as a verb. I am not personally in this habit but I understand it, and agree that it is somehow an action as well as a school, and a community. And I was thinking about how important our shared language is in the way we do the thing we do when we are Cottage-ing. 

Why would a child do those things? What would have a child do something they absolutely knew was dangerous to other people’s bodies, and would definitely result in adults being all over them, stopping them from doing anything else?