When asked what their favorite part of school is, a lot of kids will say…recess! I was always so disappointed by that answer, as I thought it said something about the quality of the education we’re offering. The fact is that adults typically want kids to work and kids typically want to play. Those opposing positions often create a conflict of agenda. Children can either play outside of school, called recreational play, in spite of school, called illicit play or within school activities in something called instrumental play. Pause for a moment and consider where your child finds play during the day.
When I was in the classroom, my intention was to create meaningful activities that could be experienced as playful. In other words, embedding the work we did with a spirit of fun and playfulness. Because of the large numbers of students in the classroom, my goal was to create situationally motivating activities, rather than meeting each child’s individual interests, something similar to the blockbuster movie when compared to a film with a smaller, cult following. That’s one reason why I turned my classroom into a version of living theater with simulations and role play at the center of a wild and crazy interactive learning environment. At home, however, you have the freedom to follow your child’s interests and embed meaningful content into those personal interests. That’s one very effective way of solving the work/play dilemma. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I now understand that there are very good reasons for children to have an agenda of play and to understand that, we’ll turn our attention to biology.
Looking at the work/play dilemma from a biological perspective will show us that play is really not a dilemma at all, but a necessary part of human biology, no matter how young or old we are. Let’s take a simplified look at the chemical activity in the brain when learning happens. We’ll start with a visual of what I call, the Flow Learning Cycle, which includes all four stages of what’s often called the flow cycle (Flow Research Collective, 2020) paired with the focus/diffuse modes of learning.
Stage One: Struggle
Focus Mode. During this struggle stage, children are focusing intently on one clear goal at a time for the particular amount of time that they choose. A daily plan made up of small, clear goals tells your brain what to focus on now and what to focus on next.
Stage Two: Release
Diffuse Mode or what I call a Brain Break.
During this release stage, children are letting go of the focus and letting their minds daydream in play or relaxation for short periods of time.
These two stages alternate back and forth to complete valuable learning and I often refer to those sessions as deep work or superpower time. The goal is to string a few of those alternating sessions together for a solid block of time each day.
Stage Three: Flow
Once we obtain some mastery, we can enter into flow through the learning activity, but until then we still need to make time for flow (i.e. play) in our lives to reset and recover from the effort we use learning. Most of us have some enjoyable activity we would choose to do in our free time, usually it’s one or two activities that we really enjoy and consider play. We can’t wait to get to do it. The activities differ for each of us, but our kids have these favorites, too. It might be snow-boarding, playing in the front yard, playing a board game with family or reading a good book snuggled up with a stuffed animal or favorite pet, for example, but there are thousands of possibilities that excite us.
There’s a reason flow is part of this learning cycle because if there’s no flow, we not only give up the speed and ease of optimal learning found within flow, but we, in fact, degrade the mindset we bring to the learning because without the release that comes from flow our bodies continue to fill with anxiety and stress hormones, like cortisol. Imagine traditional school for a moment. For most kids, it goes something like this…work, work, work, play at recess, work, work, maybe play at lunch, work, work, go home. It is no wonder that kids like recess and lunch because they get to dump all the stress and reset their nervous systems before loading more stress back in again.
One challenge is that there are few opportunities for natural flow in traditional schooling. Kids wait anxiously for recess and lunch or maybe for some, physical education to get a release, but for many kids recess and lunch and PE are just as stressful, if not more so. They trade academic stress for social stress, for example, adding more and more stress hormones into their bodies. Or, if opportunities at recess and lunch aren’t flow triggers or are very short in time allocation, there’s not enough of a release and the build-up continues. What effectively happens is work, work, work, work, work, work, go home, leading kids down the road to exhaustion, depression and cynicism. Do this day after day and you have a stressed out, anxious kid that’s in major burnout.
When we enter into flow, our bodies flush away cortisol and other stress hormones right out of our system and replace those stress and anxiety producing chemicals with positive feel-good neurochemicals instead. This process effectively resets our nervous system, calming our kids down. Flow is a type of focusing skill and the more we train our brains to get into flow, the more flow we get. Kids who recharge their energy stores and reset their nervous systems through flow get a payoff for all that grit and perseverance during the struggle stage of learning. Getting into flow makes the perseverance worthwhile.
If kids are learning new things, they may not get into flow during superpower time. We usually find flow when we have some mastery in a content area. When kids just don’t have a lot of knowledge yet, it can be a grind to build that knowledge framework in the brain. We want kids that set daily, manageable goals and meet them, rather than kids that associate goal setting with burnout. It’s important, therefore, to have opportunities for flow (i.e. play) after those learning sessions for your child to be able to reset and recover.
Stage Four: Recovery
Creating a container for the day with a beginning and ending point can help kids feel like they’ve won the day. For each day, build motivation by stringing together a number of small, clear goals, bouncing from small win to small win throughout the day. After those goals are accomplished, children can relax, recover and get the sleep, hydration and nutrition that they need for wellbeing. Wellbeing is the foundation that we build all learning upon and the quality of each component of physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual and relational wellbeing is a precursor to flow.
Actionable Steps:
To summarize, your child might start by focusing on several clear goals throughout the day (perhaps using pomodoros, often early in the day). Children may transition into flow within the activity or may choose a flow activity of their choice after the learning and/or a recovery stage to let go of the stress in their bodies and replenish, closing the day with a win. Get in the habit of setting goals, meeting them and then stepping out of that space to relax fully. Optimal performance is really about getting our biology to work for us, not against us, so the last two stages of the Flow Learning Cycle are critical to our kids performing at their best.
Your child will develop perseverance by using clear goals to move forward and recovery to reset and recharge. Motivation happens from small win to small win and being able to persevere to meet goals compounds, resulting in massive gains. Kids feel the pride of systematically building competence and the win from work already done, gives children the energy to do more and keep going. This type of incremental success doesn’t only build competence, but it gives our kids joy.
In Boldschoolers Blueprint we learn methods to include flow triggers and high engagement in order to encourage flow while learning the basics and beyond. If you would like to learn more about optimizing your child’s learning using the entire Flow Learning Cycle, come join us in Boldschoolers Blueprint!
Leave me a comment below: What is your child's flow? What are a few activities that your child considers play?
