This morning lucian was in the playpen with a small pile of blue and white balls scattered around him.
a blue bucket was sitting between us, the bright edge of its open mouth ready. i was on the floor with him. i picked up a ball & i tossed it in. it landed inside the bucket & stayed. i did it again. ball, arc, drop, stay. i wanted him to see that a ball can fly in.
he reached out to try.
the aim is not there yet. the release is not there yet. the timing between the open hand & the moving wrist is still arriving. he tried the throw a couple times. the ball went sideways. the ball went down. the ball did not go in.
he stopped trying to throw it.
he picked up a ball. he moved his hand over the open mouth of the bucket. he opened his fingers. the ball dropped into the bucket. he watched it settle inside & stay there. then he picked up another one. he did the same thing. the ball settled & stayed. he picked up another. then another.
he had just found the version of the task he could author this morning.
i sat with that for a while.
what i had shown him was a throw. what he had taken from me was the idea that the ball goes into the bucket. he could not yet do the throw. but he could find the motion he could do. he could place. & he could keep placing. he could stay in that motion long enough for the bucket to start filling. the bucket received what he offered it.
he did not perform a bad version of the move i had modeled. he found the version of the move that was his to do at thirteen months old. & he stayed with it.
i think about this often when i think about what the next twenty years are going to ask of him.
the world he is growing into will be saturated with demonstrations. agents showing him how to write the paragraph. models showing him how to outline the project. interfaces showing him how to make the picture, the song, the deck, the post. every surface he meets will arrive pre-loaded with the demonstrated move. press here. accept this draft. take this suggestion. let the system do the version of the task it already knows how to perform.
the kid who only mimics the demonstrated move never finds the version of the task that is his. he hands the conductor's seat to whatever was loaded into the interface before he opened it. he becomes an instrument. he produces, but he does not direct.
the kid who can sit on the floor in front of his own bucket & say 'i cannot throw yet, so i will place' is the kid who keeps the seat. he authored a version of the task. the demonstrated move did not become a wall. it became a target he is growing toward without surrendering his current capacity to it.
i do not want him to mimic me on his way to capacity. i want him to use what i show him as a hint about where the task can go, & i want him to find the version of the task he can own today.
the bucket does not care which way the ball arrives. the bucket receives. the question is whether he showed up as someone who tried the move that was his to try, or someone who waited for the move he could not yet do.
he showed up. the bucket filled.
the throw will arrive. the coordination & the understanding of the container grow side by side through repetitions like this one. some morning, weeks or months from now, he will pick up a ball, & the aim & the release will both be there at the same time, & the ball will fly in the way i showed him. it will be the same task he was doing this morning. it will not be a different one.
i remain of the mind that the most important thing a child carries out of this decade is the instinct to author the version of the task he can own at his current capacity, without abandoning the fuller version that has not yet arrived. that is the conductor's first move. the rest follows.
he was thirteen months old & full of blue & white balls & a blue bucket & his own steady hand. he was not mimicking me. he was authoring his own version of the work. i will keep playing with the same bucket & the same balls alongside him for as long as it takes.
What I am holding onto
the version of the task that is his to author at this capacity is the one i want him to keep finding. the throw will arrive. it does not have to arrive today. what has to be alive today is the move that he chooses, in the materials in front of him, with the hand that is currently his.
the bucket received what he offered it. i want to keep being the kind of room that receives what he offers, at the capacity he currently has, without flinching about the fuller version that has not yet arrived. the place that receives is the place that builds.
i showed him a throw. he showed me a placement. i learned more from his version than he learned from mine. i want to stay porous to that for as long as he is willing to teach me with his hands.
Cheers, JanCarlos
if you have ever watched a small kid take a move you demonstrated & quietly author a different version of it at their own capacity, reply & tell me what they did.