Chris Colley: 0:13

Welcome to another episode, Shift Ed Podcast people coming out of Quebec Canada here today. I'm reaching across our beautiful country to uh have a wonderful chat with Hannah Beach, who's an author, educator, amazing Canadian thinker. Has written like really good book, Reclaiming Our Children, which I think we should all reread over and over. And a great series for kids on I Can Dance. And we'll get into those because I can dance with anger, with all kinds of different ways. And also a great kids' book called Sometimes I Feel That Way Too. And we're going to talk a little bit about the beginning of the new school year and some of the things that us younger preschool teachers, cycle one teachers really need to keep at the forefront as we embark on new kids in our classroom. And just a few little important things to remember as we go through. So, Hannah, thanks so much for joining us today. I've really been looking forward to talking with you.

Hannah Beach: 1:17

It's honestly my pleasure to be here with you.

Chris Colley: 1:20

So, Hannah, just I'd love kind of going back a little bit in time and just what are one or two moments that happened in your career that have kind of brought you to where you are today? I I mean, obviously, writing a book must be a pretty big marker as well. Um, and you had just alluded to that you'd code-authored it with Dr. Newfeld's daughter. Are there any other of those kind of like salient moments that you feel were really important that brought you to where you are today?

Hannah Beach: 1:46

Yeah, it's that's an interesting question because you can look back on your at the time of your life when you're in it and you're doing things, you have no idea the impact. You're just living your life. And then you can look back and go, oh my goodness, that moment there, that moment just took me from here and turned me right there, if that makes sense.

Chris Colley: 2:02

Yeah.

Hannah Beach: 2:04

One of those moments actually goes way, way, way back to grade 10, I think, when I had a principal who I moved away from home for school for grade 10 and 11 to study um to study dance. So I moved from my city and I moved to this other place and I moved to a school that was considered extremely rough. There was police in the hallways, there were had been sexual assaults. There they were considering shutting down the school. Principal came into that school and said, just give me a few years. Let me I'm putting it into an art school. And it was this really big mix so that the some of the kids were coming out of juvenile detention, others were coming in from like other provinces who were, you know, artists, and it was it was an extreme mix. And this principle made every single one of us feel welcome. At the time, I thought it was just me.

Chris Colley: 2:52

Right.

Hannah Beach: 2:53

But he would call us into his office and he would say, Oh, I haven't chatted with you for a while, Hannah. What's going on in your world? Tell me everything, I want to know it all. And he'd sit down, he'd offer us these little baby Cokes, which it was the 80s, so people drank.

Chris Colley: 3:05

You could give anyone the minis.

Hannah Beach: 3:09

There was something about him where I felt like I dreamt about that school for years afterwards. I'd never had a school before that or afterwards like it, which I think it was the juxtaposition against them that actually changed me to go, oh my gosh. No, if every school had felt like that, I would have thought it was normal. Does that make sense? It was this little moment where I actually think Mr. Mascell made me an educator, he made me realize what school could feel like and how someone could feel welcome. And that's where I think it started.

Chris Colley: 3:43

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I love that answer because it's kind of leading to my first question. So our new school year's begun. Kids, you know, we've been probably a month or so of teachers getting to know kids and establishing routines and you know, all the great things of a new school year. Yes. What do you what do you find are the most important things that teachers need to keep their eye on? And maybe we talk about all youth sector school to be aware of as they're kind of embarking on this new school year of how am I gonna create the relationships that I need so that my class feels like they belong when they come in and have those similar feelings that you just alluded to in your in your intro here. What are some of those that you could offer up to us as to awarenesses of or just thinking of, or you know, things that are crucial that need to be established at the start so that the rest of the year runs where learning can be at the forefront?

Hannah Beach: 4:44

And yeah, I I think that if we can ground ourselves in an understanding of what's going on with kids first, it's gonna make us not even have to think of the answer. The answer will come. It's like if you to pull strategies out of a hat, because you have to get off this podcast, okay. Wait a minute, what did that lady say again? What did that say? It's not gonna stick. It actually has to hit our intuition. Does that make sense? Yeah, or I'd rather back that up a little bit. Like because if you just try to memorize something, I don't know, it's gonna last like a day, two days, or if you just look at it as inspiration, like I can, I don't know, I can listen to some amazing podcast or watch something, some amazing talk all about getting healthy, and then I'm like, yes, I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna, you know, change my diet and exercise and five o'clock hits and I'm in bed eating chocolate, watching Netflix. It doesn't last, right? Right. I think that we have to ground ourselves first in why are kids so difficult right now? And if we can ground ourselves in that and understand it in an intuitive way, where it's like, okay, I get it. The answer will come to us naturally every day. And I think right now we have an epidemic of aggression. We have more kids that are aggressive than I've we've ever seen in history. Kids are, you know, kindergarten kids are like not first in line and they're just throwing themselves on the floor, chairs are falling across classrooms. The number one cohort of teachers leaving the profession in Canada is kindergarten teachers.

Chris Colley: 6:10

Yeah.

Hannah Beach: 6:10

We have an epidemic of anxiety all through the grades. We have also what we would say is an epidemic of shutdown kids, which is shut down meaning kind of like whatever. I don't care. Doesn't matter. Hoodies up, shrunken into their bodies, like no sense of curiosity or anything. And if we I think if we look at what's going on, there's a whole bunch of reasons. And in our book, we go into sort of three main culture shifts that happened that wreaked havoc, which changed our us as teachers, changed us as educators. Like, but one is though that we're living in a culture of disconnection right now. But the other is that we replaced play with entertainment. I'm gonna say this again because we don't understand these why these kiddos are showing up this way. We replaced play with entertainment, and entertainment is the in-breath, it's the breath and play is nature's outbreath. We put who are breathing in and in and in and in and in and in and in and and they're showing up into our classrooms and they're not coping. And so one of those things is if we think about that, and I I don't want to get carried away here. I wanna have this conversation going back, so I don't want to actually read too longly, but too sort of been too long about away. But we have kids right now who've they've lost what we would call Dr. Gordon Newfeld coined this term, and I think it's a beautiful way, is he calls a void moments, but basically it's just boredom. The times a kid just sits in a car and looks out the window and counts telephone poles or I don't know, lies in a trampoline and watches the clouds change shape. But without void moments, kids aren't okay. Children fall into play in void moments, but also their feeling surface. And we have kids who are many of their grown-ups are on devices 24-7 as well.

Chris Colley: 8:07

Right.

Hannah Beach: 8:07

They're attachment hungry, they're they're not having their eye contact needs met, they're not have they're not eating together, they're and they're they're not playing. They've lost it all. And then we want to know what's going on. And so this is actually the very first generation of children ever since the dawn of time, since humans have existed, that does not have a play-based childhood. This is the very first time this has ever happened, ever since humans have existed. So children aren't coping, but that means those of us that lead, love, and care for children are also struggling. Right in time. And researchers are examining this period and it and all the statistics are coming out, and it didn't go well. So if we can remember that, I think that instead of going, okay, what am I supposed to do to make my year go well? Intuitively, we would go, Oh my gosh, these kids are free-floating in their own universes. Many of them need a device in the car in the morning, doing breakfast in the morning. They're gonna need a welcome. They're gonna need some contact, they're gonna need me to intentionally reach towards them to ground them in a hello in a relationship.

Chris Colley: 9:18

Right.

Hannah Beach: 9:22

Yeah.

Chris Colley: 9:23

Well, and and and Gordon Newfeld also was the I had mentioned before we hopped on that I had a great chat with him, and he was saying that instead of our young attaching to you know parents, uncles, and it's the higher level scale, he says they're attaching to peers and and and the detriment that that's causing on them. Because within a peer attachment, it's competition, it's judgment, it's like all of these anxiety-ridden emotions that they're getting established, right?

Hannah Beach: 9:58

Children weren't meant to take care of one another, they're meant to be resting on their grown-ups. So, like a child, for example, like when I was in school, like children change groups. You're like, I want to play with you today, I want to play with you tomorrow, like whatever, right? Like children have that, like children, ch children are growing and changing. They're not thinking of how to caretake each other's hearts because that's not their job.

Chris Colley: 10:19

Right.

Hannah Beach: 10:19

Totally. If I think about this, if my my main attachment's my mother and my mother said, Hannah, I don't want to be your mom anymore, it would be deeply wounding as opposed to if a girlfriend said to me, I don't want to be your friend anymore. Well, that would hurt a lot, and I probably would still cry, but it wouldn't be as deeply wounding as if my main attachment told me they didn't want to be attached to me anymore. Right. Many children's main attachments are their peers. So by the time they get to high school, it's like they've had 10 divorces or deaths. Really? It's it's like because that was their main attachment. Children should have tons, friends are great, but friends aren't your main attachments. Friends are different than attachments.

Chris Colley: 11:01

Is it in a void, though, of that, Hannah, that they just aren't having those relationships, those strong enough bonds to a parent or you know, a higher-up adult?

Hannah Beach: 11:12

There's a lot of reasons that peer attachment's happening. One, right now, a lot of children have what we call attachment soothers, which are devices. That's really hard for parents to get in because they're attached to the dopamine that's flooding their brains. So a lot of parents are like, I want to talk to my kid, but they're in their bedroom 24-7. I don't even know how to get in. Devices were developed in the same way like the casino effect is with slot machines, in that it's the randomness. So dopamine isn't given to the brain only when you get the thing, it's the it's the expectation of it coming, right? So we have kids who are very addicted to their um iPads or uh cell phones, and so it's very that we call those attachment soothers because a soother is something that might kind of like if you're a drug addict or an alcoholic or something. When you feel the need for it, you get it and you feel a little bit better, but it doesn't make you feel all the way better. It doesn't satiate you. You need more, and so kids need more and more and more and more. They'll never receive the benefit of the human vulnerability and relationship from a attachment soother, like a device. They they're stuck on it. So parents are having trouble even getting in, if that makes sense. They're I can see, yeah. Like, how do you you know, and also I think that's start to compete against, really. I mean, you're competing against a drug.

Chris Colley: 12:40

Yeah, yeah.

Hannah Beach: 12:41

It's it's open, you really are. And so, I mean, there's all sorts of things now. I mean, the World Health Organization has put out the age of 16 before children should have a smartphone.

Chris Colley: 12:50

Right, right.

Hannah Beach: 12:51

Children shouldn't be flooded with the world before they have a self, right? We believe that eventually cell phones will have age limits on them, the same as drugs and alcohol, already happened in Australia. But we believe it'll be all it'll be everyone will have that eventually. But this is that one blip of time where it all happened so quickly we haven't caught up yet.

Chris Colley: 13:10

Oh god, it goes fast, particularly because technology just never it's it's relentless, like the newest, the faster, the quicker, the more things out there.

Hannah Beach: 13:19

They're and I'm not anti-tech. Tech's amazing, like I have no problems with tech, but children's children aren't grown-ups and their brains are our brains. And so, but also in terms of attachment, there's been a deep misunderstanding, I think, in this parenting culture too, of what attachment is. And so a lot of parents think it's just about being nice. And attachment, same with teachers, it's not about being calm, attachment is who the child feels safe with, yes, go to, and that requires firmness as well. So it requires us to be warm, firm, caring leaders, but it's not tiptoeing around the child. And so we have a parenting culture, so a lot of kids are coming in who've never heard the word no, never, you know what I mean? Who who don't who aren't attaching in the dependent mode, which is what brings them to rest, which helps them. Yeah.

Chris Colley: 14:12

Right, right, totally.

Hannah Beach: 14:13

There's a million reasons, so yeah, yeah.

Chris Colley: 14:14

No, but it's I mean, it's just so fascinating. And and I want to just bring it all back to play because I think you hit on that, right? When we began this chat of how fundamental it is that if we as adults or you know, the caregivers are removing that from the experience of a small child, we are causing a ripple effect to happen. Absolutely. That we don't even we might not even be aware of, right?

Hannah Beach: 14:41

Honestly, I see the whole ripple effect, like from what childhood loss, the loss of childhood play, all the way. If you look at young adults, you can see it's it's absolutely fascinating. I think the thing is is that a lot of people think of play as this sort of extra weird little thing kids do in their spare time, but play is essential. And if it's the bulk of play is where children are digesting and processing their lives. And I'm gonna kind of give this a little win just for a moment because a lot of people really who cares? Like big deal, big deal. It's a massive deal.

Chris Colley: 15:14

Like it's a big deal.

Hannah Beach: 15:17

One of the ways is if we can see that kids are playing the exact same games in every single culture that's been studied, or they're playing with the same themes within their games, okay. It tells us something really big about kids, but also about how play is taking care of the child's psychology. Because play takes care of emotion and emotion drives behavior, so that's why they're all connected. So the study of kids' books gives us a window in, and I find this super fascinating. There's one theme in kids' books, maybe you can even guess if you want, but it's the most common theme in the entire world that for every culture that's been studied, it's the most common theme for kids ages four, about four years old, all the way up to around 16, which is an absolutely enormous span, if you think about it. The exact same thing you're interested in from 4016. But I don't know if you want to guess. But anyways, I think chapter books, not skinny books, but or movies. But I'll just I'll just tell you for the sake of time. But it's being being orphaned is the most common theme in the whole world.

Chris Colley: 16:18

Really?

Hannah Beach: 16:18

Yeah, I didn't think about this. I didn't tell you something, it's gonna tell you something about anxiety and play and what's going on. Sorry, I seem to cough. Just think about it for a moment. Like Harry Potter, Anakin Gables, Batman, Superman, Lion King, Bambi, Frozen, every Disney movie, Oliver, Annie, Bambi. Like you could just go on forever. Like children's office, you want a best seller, you just gotta kill the parents.

Chris Colley: 16:41

Like let me venture off on my own. I'll find my way.

Hannah Beach: 16:47

But here's the thing: it goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning when you first asked me the question why? Why would children want to read books in which they've been orphaned or play games in which they've been orphaned? Because this is very common. A child's greatest need is attachment. Human babies, unlike lots of other mammals, would not survive without our attachments. We can't eat on our own, we can't walk on our own, we can't talk on our own. We don't learn to emotionally regulate until we've been regulated by like soothed by a caring adult tons of times when being upset. And so what happens is kids process it one step removed. It's not them who lost their parents, it's the character. And not only does the character survive, the characters thrive like Superman. They fly, they can take care of the whole world, or Harry Potter, they are magicians. So these attachment thriving stories are deeply psychologically soothing to children. Well, Disney understood this intuitively, although he did go a little too far sometimes, like in Bambi, he shot the mother right in front of us. That was a lot, right?

Chris Colley: 17:46

Yeah, I still traumatized from some Disney movies.

Hannah Beach: 17:50

Out of the theater for that's big. So I might have been one step too far. But the point is that children need to process big things one step removed. Play is one step removed because it's not for real. So it's protected in a bubble, just like stories are, it's one step removed. And so this place where you process and digest your world, if you don't get to process anxiety, you just have it. If you don't get to process your frustration, you're just aggressive. And so kids, so I'm the youngest of nine, plus I had 11 foster brothers and sisters growing up, giant family. I would have come home from school, been given a snack. My mom would have said, now you go go out to go to play. She didn't ask me if I said I don't feel like it. She was like, This wasn't a democracy. I wouldn't ask out, out, we can come back in at supper time. My mom wasn't reading books on the psychology of play. There were no books on the psychology of play because it didn't need to be written because we were all playing. So we would have been practicing courage for hours a day without our grown-ups. We knew where our grown-ups were, should we need one. We've been riding our bikes, climbing trees. We would have been what we look at now, what we researchers now understand is we were calibrating our alarm systems by repetitive low-stakes risk. We now over-protect kids in the physical world and underprotect kids in the online world. And we have the most anxious generation of kids we've ever seen.

Chris Colley: 19:23

Yes. I see that. I see that.

Hannah Beach: 19:27

Their systems were meant to be for hours a day releasing frustration, playing, digesting fears, calibrating, and not only did we take away the place where kids are calibrating their alarm systems, where they're, you know, riding their bikes and climbing the trees and doing all the things, we actually turned play into performance. Like if you look now at the average family, and I'm saying this in jest, but I also I my heart goes out to families like I was walking a few months ago by a park in Vancouver. I was watching the people in the park, and all the parents are right behind their children. Okay. This is a generational thing. This is not how when I went to the park, my parents, I don't even know if they knew I was there. Okay. And there was this kid going down the slide. I'm not kidding. I don't think this child was not a toddler. This child was like maybe eight or nine years old. The mom's at the bottom of the slide, and she's going, Good job, good job. I'm thinking it's gravity. Like the kid.

Chris Colley: 20:28

And do you need like congratulations in play? You know, do you need reinforcement that you're doing a good job playing?

Hannah Beach: 20:37

The problem is, Chris, with that, and of course I know that mother was being loving. I don't want to in any way say she wasn't. I know she was, but here's the problem like we didn't trust nature. We got in nature's way. We didn't think play was doing its work. So we felt like we had to help. The problem with that is that when you congratulate a child for playing, they start to do it for you. You get a child who'll be on the swing going, watch me, look at me, did you see me? Was it good? Am I good? So we develop what's called pursuit behavior. So children are trying to get us, they're now wanting us to watch them rather than receiving the histor restorative healing effects of being inside that experience simply because it felt good. And so we've got this sort of backwards with the best of intentions.

Chris Colley: 21:30

Sure.

Hannah Beach: 21:31

But not it's like we didn't, we're not letting play do the thing that it needed to do, which is to help kids, and then they show up at our schools and we're like, stop it, cut it out. We're frustrated with them when they've lost the connections they need with the people they need it with and the places to process, and their systems are on high alert and they're not coping.

Chris Colley: 21:52

Yeah, yeah. And in your book, Kenna, like reclaiming our our students, like it just seems like we're we're at the bottom of this hill and trying to roll this massive boulder up that hill. How do how are we gonna do this? Like, it's scary when you said we have never had a generation of kids that valued that played so little.

Hannah Beach: 22:17

Never, it's never happened. This is the first generation without a play based childhood. It's never happened.

Chris Colley: 22:22

I imagine those are, I mean, it's gonna start to affect everything. Is there a way of reversing this trend? Is there a way of and I'll give you an example in Quebec, starting this school year, they have a bell-to-bell ban for sales across all youth sector, right? They took an initiative, they said, it's you know, we we've read the research, we've seen what's happening, we know the anxiety that's there when they're behind these things. Is this one example of how we can start to reverse the trend a little bit? Like we have to go this direction where it's we gotta ban things. Sorry. Like, is it is that the point we're at right now?

Hannah Beach: 23:03

I would say that that's one of the things that we're gonna have to do. I think we're gonna have to take that weight of leadership on on our shoulders. It's it's like we have um a lot of restaurants where I live now that have safes that you can put your cell phone in when you go to the restaurant, and so that and they don't unlock until you pay the bill, and you will not get it out until you like pay the bill. And my daughter, who is 31, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Go for dinner and they, you know, like it's great. You can just chat, you don't think about it. I'm thinking, or you could have just left your phone in your pocket, which adults can't even. Adults can have struggle with this, they are built to be addictive. So we are going to have to take the weight of leadership on us and say, we're going to carve out spaces so that children. My son, I have a I have a child, I have kids who are 33, 31, and 17. So one in grade 12. His school has no cell phones. And at lunchtime, the kids have eye contact again. They talk, they're playing basketball, they're doing all sorts of things that they wouldn't do if they had the dopamine because it's so addictive, if that makes sense. So that is one of the things that we're going to have to do. But no, I don't think, okay, maybe I'm just an extremely optimistic person, but I don't believe that we personally, or I personally, I don't have this power to change the culture at large. But I feel in my work, what I see that fills me with hope is that I can't change the culture at large, but maybe I can change my classroom, my school. I see now my cul de sac, like all these schools going, okay, well, we're gonna just do it here. And I used to give professional development or a keynote for a school, a school board, or whatever, but not the parents. 90, I say 99% now. If I go to a school, I have the parents at night. We're gonna do this together. We need to do this together. Because like we're this culture right now that's obsessed with self-care, honestly. And I'm like, really, there's only so much a hot bath is gonna do for you. Like, you know, like we need to go back to looking at how are we coming together as people to do this together and not in silos. Like, and I I I I'm feeling heartwarmed, I guess, because I don't know if you know, and I'm I'm not saying this to like um, I don't know, be egotistical. I'm saying it because it genuinely brings tears to my eyes when I think about it. But Tamarinar's book hits the number one Globe's Globe and Mail's bestseller list in August. That's just this month.

Chris Colley: 25:40

Congrats.

Hannah Beach: 25:41

Thank you. But for me, what the reason I'm bringing it up is that that's almost unheard of for a book for hitters. Like my publisher publishers were saying we've never seen like I mean, Mark Carney's book's second, right? And this book's first. Like how? Like, how does this niche developmental relational book hit a bestseller's list? Well, it tells me two things because it's not common. It's I knew, you know, when I wrote my book, maybe my mom will read it. Most people don't read books that are this niche, you know what I mean? Like, how does this happen? It happened A, because it's it's saying kids aren't coping right now, but it's telling us more than that. It's saying educators are the one creating the change. If educators are coming together in that volume, they're they're the one stepping up and saying, because families might have one, two, three, four kids. Educators are 30 at once. They're like, we can't do this actually. Like, how we actually need to make change. And so they're stepping up and saying, We've it's not working. Whatever we were doing before, telling kids to stop. I wish it worked, but doesn't work. Like it doesn't work. You can't force growth. Okay, and so it's for me, that question made me think of that. It made me think of, well, look what just happened in August. Like, look at this, look at all the people moving to this. It's like people now feel like they're part of a movement.

Chris Colley: 27:01

I agree with you on that.

Hannah Beach: 27:04

We're gonna rethink recess. Like I partner with a lot of school boards, and they're doing the Ottawa Catholic School Board has a a new pilot project called Rethinking Recess. They're like, we can't change our our instructional time. Let's harness the time we already have, let's have loose parts outside in the playground so kids can draft logs or build things. Let's the irony is it's like we're it's like we're recreating freedom. It's like we're it's like we're we're scheduling freedom.

Chris Colley: 27:34

We're giving nature a little helping hand because nature's like like that's what what Gordon had mentioned. He's like, nature will take care of the kids growing up, and you know, they'll grow. We don't need to get in the way of that, but we kind of have, you know, in the sense that we're we're stopping certain things from happening that are in the natural growth of a human. And you know, but I love too the idea that you said about your book, and that there's an awareness, I think, more now than ever before about where we're at and the importance not only of play, but outdoors. More and more I'm getting requests from teachers in schools for more outdoor education. What is it? How do I do it? How do I start?

Hannah Beach: 28:17

Exactly. And it can be an inner city school in the cement playground. You don't have to have woods because people sometimes feel overwhelmed thinking, but I don't have all that. There's this great school right now that I've been following online to they post almost every day. And it's an inner city school in Ottawa, and it's I think it's called St. Bernadette's, but they're posting all their play stuff, and they just bring big bins out of these a lot of milk crates. Yesterday, they went to Home Depot and they bought like these massive plastic tubes and milk crates, and kids are building spaceships and all these before they were just standing on the playground. The reason that matters, people might be like, okay, they're having fun. It's not actually about fun. Some play is fun, but a lot of play is not fun, and it's frustration play that lowers aggression. And so people often don't know that. And so if you can have your playground set up to have some play that's a little frustrating, the brain wires differently. And so the children are actually coming back differently. So it's very fascinating because not all play is the same, and people really don't like gross motor play, like slides and swings, great, it's good for your body, but it doesn't change aggression in the same way.

Chris Colley: 29:32

Right, great. So I love loose parts. I mean, particularly outdoor loose parts, the tires and the gutters and the it's so you build it, it falls apart.

Hannah Beach: 29:41

You build it, it falls apart, and it's driving you crazy because it won't work. And sometimes, like I remember with my youngest kid this doing, he was really obsessed with Lego, and he'd be crying, he'd be trying to build something, but he couldn't get it to look like the idea he had in his mind. He's tears pouring down his cheeks while he was building. And would you say he was having fun? No, he's crying. Well, he's playing. Is he engaged? Yeah, a thousand percent. That's why, under the definition of play in psychology, the word fun's not there, but the word engaged is. And the reason that matters is because his brain is teaching it himself. Like in play, the kid goes, Oh, I want to build a Ford or a Lego or whatever, draw a picture, whatever the thing is the kid wants to do. No one's making them do it. It's their own self making them do it. And so what happens is the brain, the play hooks them in, then they'll work very hard to master the thing, maybe having tears and being really frustrated. But no adult was going, You can do this. I don't care whether my play kids playing Lego. Their brain's wiring itself, which changes their capacity to do their homework, study, etc. Because eventually their brain, when something's hard, goes, Oh, this is so hard. Then their brain goes, It's okay, I recognize this hundreds of times. It's crazy, it's amazing how play works. It's crazy.

Chris Colley: 31:00

I love the brain, I love little kids. I just love this process that we we can't interfere with, we just have to create environments where it can happen. And oftentimes that's yeah, I mean, that's what I talk a lot with preschool teachers about is just creating play provocations for the kids. You don't have to guide them through play, they'll figure it out, you know. Once if you read them a cool story and then put a bunch of materials around that reflect maybe a bit of that story, they have that hook of the book, throw them in with the stuff.

Hannah Beach: 31:33

What's hard now is a lot of kids are coming to school, but they've actually never played. And this is the first generation, so they don't even they can't feel the call within their body, they don't hear it. The thing that says, Oh, I want to do this thing, they don't, they can't even hear the call. And so all of a sudden teachers are like, I'm making this face and the children aren't the children aren't falling into play. And like you said, like you can't like you can't you have to create the conditions. It's like sleep. The more you tell someone they have to sleep, like if I said to a kid who couldn't fall asleep, you've got to go to sleep tomorrow at school, now you're trying to sleep, you can't sleep. And I have to say to a child, Oh, your body's got this. Whenever you're tired enough, your body knows exactly what to do, it's gonna bring you to sleep. Then you relax and you fall into sleep. The same with play. If I some if teachers go to their kids and say, Okay, I just listened to this awesome podcast with this guy, Chris, and he said that you've got to play, all of a sudden the kids are like, Oh my gosh, I have to play, then they're stressed because now I've made it work.

Chris Colley: 32:33

Right, right. I got you.

Hannah Beach: 32:34

Totally, totally creating the conditions which make more likely to fall into play, right? Creating those rhythms where it happens sort of on similar times each day, where if the child says, I'm bored, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, and just think, Oh, your your body's got this. Just give it some time. Maybe you need to roll around the you know the grass for a little bit, it's gonna be bored for a bit, but eventually an idea is gonna come because you are filled with ideas, it might not be there right now, but I promise you it's gonna come eventually.

Chris Colley: 33:04

Yeah, yeah. I totally see the boredom thing too, because oftentimes my kids would use that line because I wouldn't let them have screen. They're like, Oh, I'm bored, I don't know what to do. I'm like, good, just sit there. What did you call that? A moment you wrote it down.

Hannah Beach: 33:20

Just go lie in the grass for just go roll around the grass for a few hours.

Chris Colley: 33:24

Avoid moments. There we go. You know where that's fine, just sit there and think about maybe what you want to do, maybe, but no, you're not gonna get the screen.

Hannah Beach: 33:32

Yeah, that's you know that there's biological cues that actually help children fall into play. And so what's fascinating about that, and I do a lot of work with Britannica education, like helping them with their Head Start programs. And I help preschool and Head Start programs sort of look at okay, so if the kid won't fall into play or they've never played and they don't know how to fall into play, if the adult's body's in a flow state, so if the adult's body is gently occupied but emotionally present. So let's say you're cooking, chopping things, chopping carrots, stacking books in the classroom, cleaning, folding laundry, etc., but you're able to be present to the child, like they could walk up to you and ask you a question, and you could look them in the eye and answer them. There's a cue, there's a biological safety cue for the child to play. If you take, if you reverse that and you're just sitting on a couch and you're just sitting there, present, but you're not occupied, that looks like it's time to chat with you, which is wonderful. And maybe that's a great time to have, you know, read a book to a child or chat with them. But if you're trying to get the child to play, that's not gonna work. Same as if you're on a computer or a phone. If I'm on a computer or a phone and I'm typing away and I'm busy, and a kid comes up to me to ask a question, it will take me a moment to go. Sorry, sorry, what did you say? Because I'm leaving, I'm pulled in too far. That's why when we tend to get on phones or computers, a child will stick to us like glue because their alarm systems are notified that we're we've been pulled past their awareness. And so if we want to get kids playing and they're struggling, we just kind of have to get into our own mirrored flow state. Stacking books, clean up the classroom. Or if we're outside, we're raking, we're piling um, we're cleaning up the pine cones, we're washing down some things, and then the children may come to us and you can help me out. You're welcome to join me. If you don't feel like helping, you can go find your own thing to do. They're more likely to go play nearby in their equaled mirrored flow state.

Chris Colley: 35:30

Amazing, so cool. It's crazy.

Hannah Beach: 35:32

And in my opinion, that's since the dawn of time, we had to like get on with the busyness of life. Like, yeah, yeah, you know, run gardens and hunt and gather, and children would have had to play right nearby. So there's a safety in seeing that their their adult's body is in its own flow state.

Chris Colley: 35:48

Right, right. I imagine too, that's like the beginnings of attachment as well. Like you're attached to that adult, you know that you're safe, so that you can now go and focus on your work as a exactly.

Hannah Beach: 35:58

That's exactly it. And and the younger the child, the more they're going to come in and out of their play to have a hug or say hello, and then move back to play. And as the children get older and older, those play periods become longer and longer. But toddlers, for example, are coming back and forth and back and forth the whole time.

Chris Colley: 36:12

Okay, okay. And this has been outstanding. I'm so happy that you took me up on this invite. So many things, my head again is buzzing. I'm glad I have the weekend process. We could just go on and on, and this is just I I want to respect our time. I want to thank you first off that this has just been great knowledge that you've shared and experiences and ideas. And I would love to have you come back. I think I feel that we could just another half hour of talking and like sharing.

Hannah Beach: 36:47

I love it. I you have such a lovely energy and a real a real way of making me feel safe to be because I've just noticed how much I talked. Sorry about that, by the way. It's also one of my you got me excited and also made me feel safe to just just share. You know, sometimes you go to podcasts, you feel like you have to sound smart or something. I feel like that. I just want to it just felt like a really disgenuan conversation. So amazing. Thank you.

Chris Colley: 37:12

Well, I appreciate that. I try to set up an environment where the guests feel where we're just chatting, you know, we're having, you know, but it's interesting enough that other people want to listen to it. And today, no doubt you hit the mark on that. I'm I'm just so grateful. So and I I wish you a great weekend. And hopefully our pass across uh sooner than later.

Hannah Beach: 37:34

I I look forward to it. Until next time.