Is fantasy accepted in Montessori, or is it frowned upon, or is it welcomed with open arms?
The wonderful returning guest Ginni Sackett joins us as we dive into fantasy, imagination, pretend play and more in Montessori schools, homes, and beyond.
Ginni Sackett | ‘Perspectives on Montessori’
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About Jesse McCarthy
Jesse McCarthy, founder of MontessoriEducation.com and host of The Montessori Education Podcast, has been in education for nearly 20 years. Through his career he’s worked with thousands of children, teachers, and parents — as an elementary & junior-high school teacher, a Head of School for infants to 8th graders, an executive with a nationwide group of Montessori private schools, a teacher-and-parent mentor, and an international speaker.
Jesse received his B.A. in psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and his Montessori teacher's diploma for ages 2.5 to 6+ from Association Montessori Internationale (AMI).
Transcript: Fantasy and Children
Jesse McCarthy 0:06
The educator, Dr Maria Montessori once said,
Maria Montessori 0:10
The child developing harmoniously and the adult improving himself at his side make a very exciting and attractive picture.
Jesse McCarthy 0:19
Welcome to Montessori education with me, Jesse McCarthy, where we talk raising children and educating students while bettering ourselves right alongside them. Hey, everyone. Good to be back here. Sorry for any delay. I am a little bit late, but anyway, I'm going to hump right in with a question, if you have young children, let's say under five. Do you play Disney movies for them, or do you read books to them with, you know, talking dogs or talking cats or talking hamsters, you know, just talking animals. Do you have your kids watch superhero movies, maybe alongside you or even on their own? Batman, Superman, I don't know, Ant Man, whatever superhero, man or superhero woman is out today, if you do well, you're a horrible person. I'm just kidding. But in all seriousness, today what we will be talking about, it might get you rethinking some of that fantasy, or at least, I'd say, the amount you might expose your children to it with me, sharing her take on all of this. So fantasy and children, pretend, play, imagination, that type of thing. And then definitely related to Montessori. Is the old school Montessori in Ginny Sackett. She has been here before, if you've been listening along, and she has been in Montessori, I mean, since, literally, before I was born. So she began as a very skeptical Montessori parent. Later, in 1982 she earned her AMI diploma for 36 year olds. If you're not familiar, AMI is the association Montessori Internationale. That's the organization originally started by Maria Montessori herself. Again, if you've been listening to the show, you already know who Jenny Sackett is, but after getting her Montessori training, she taught in the classroom for, I think it was a dozen years at the three to six level. She later became an AMI teacher trainer. I can't tell you how much work goes into becoming a teacher trainer. It's hard enough to become a Montessori teacher, fully trained teacher. To be a trainer is just so much work. Anyhow. She then, after that, served as director of training at Montessori, Northwest in Portland, Oregon. And she did that for some 15 years. And then, you know, if that wasn't enough, she really went on to the big leagues, and she became the director of pedagogy for all of AMI, and that's out in Amsterdam. She is now retired, happily retired, as she says. And this basically, this woman's credentials are through the roof. Oh, yeah. And she wanted me to note that she has an essay out in a new book, or relatively new book, called perspectives on Montessori. She wants to support the Dutch editors of that book. So go ahead and check that one out. As you know, if you listen to this show, you know, all these credentials books people write at the end of the day doesn't really matter unless you are good with children. And I'm not talking on paper good, but you know, in real life, for me, Ginny is exceptional in that regard. And really importantly, since she's been out of the classroom for such a long time, she is exceptional with adults. And it's hard to find people that are good with adults. So I find that many times teachers are you can find very good with children, and then they're just a hot mess with us adults. Jenny's not that she is a rock star, and I appreciate her coming back on the show. Always love to have her on here. So let's get to it, fantasy and children, and let's see what she's got to say. Jenny Sackett, happy to have you on another time.
Ginni Sackett 3:53
Well, it's wonderful to be here. Thank you for keep asking me
Jesse McCarthy 3:57
Yes, for sure. So we're just going to get right into it. Fantasy, I'll tell you, this is probably top three question I get asked emails, you know, on comments and so forth, like, what is up with Montessori and fantasy? You know, this idea. I don't know where each parent gets it from, or each teacher when they ask the question, but it's basically, you know, is Montessori, anti fantasy with children. You know what? What's going on there, basically. So what do you think? What do I think?
Ginni Sackett 4:25
Well, you know, I think a place to start is, let's define what we mean by fantasy, because it's possible that people are using the word in different different ways when I think of fantasy, you know, it's obviously an aspect of imagination. And imagination, we call it a human tendency, so obviously we think it's a good thing. But a common part of the definition of fantasy is to imagine things that are impossible or improbable, that they're not likely to happen in the real world, they couldn't happen in reality. So if we can agree, first of all that that's what we're talking about, we're talking about things that are imagined that you know couldn't actually happen in the real world.
Jesse McCarthy 5:11
So what do you like? What are some examples of this example?
Ginni Sackett 5:16
Well, a lot of what's presented as entertainment, whether it's cartoons or Teletubbies or whatever, the current version of that, you know, of that kind of is sci fi movies. You know, the thing about fantasy is that typically, as we age, as we become adults, we know it's fantasy we like. I'm sure when sci fi movies are made, everybody involved knows a lot of the stuff in this movie could never really happen in the real world, but it's part of it's kind of fun. But the young children, they don't know that yet. They don't know what is you know, they're still sorting out what is real and what does that mean. So they they accept whatever we have. Like I remember hearing Kay Baker talk about Montessori trainer, that something like Santa Claus is the product of a an adult imagination. But when we tell it, when we share that with the child, a young child, all they get is the product. They just they they're sort of have, and Montessori talked about that young children have credulity. They believe what they're told. They believe what what comes to them. So they're still trying to sort that out. So I think that's why we get confused and how we want to approach this idea of fantasy. I think a lot a lot of historians get very rigid about it. No fantasy, you know. But let's we could probably talk more about that.
Jesse McCarthy 6:47
So are you, I mean, when we talk about Montessori, then if parents out there just being like, you know? So what you're basically saying that Montessori doesn't want fantasy for children. Then if it's created by an adult, it's x axis. We don't want it. Is that? Is that, is that what you're saying, or what do you think?
Ginni Sackett 7:03
I don't know if, if it's practical even to say that, because we we, we can't stop we fantasize all the time. We humans. It's like a leap from the imagination. You could think about it like, is it good or bad for children, young children, to to be exposed to fantasy, and I think that we have to be cautious. So I'm going to, I'm going to give an I'm giving a little example of a story. Like I said, adult humans know pretty much what is real and what isn't. So we might fantasize about jumping out of a window and flying, you know, have a little fantasy about it, but fortunately, we adults or older children even know about gravity. It's not just a good idea, it's the law. So if I actually jump out of a window and fly, I won't fly. I'm, you know, it's, could be dangerous. So a story I read somewhere. I don't know if it's true or not, but it's a great little anecdote. So the right the English writer James M berry first wrote Peter Pan in 1904 and in the original he portrayed exactly that that Peter just led the children to the window and said, Think happy thoughts, and then they all would fly off to Neverland. But unfortunately, there were young children who saw this or heard about it, and they took the example quite literally, and they tried the same thing. And of course, the outcome was rather disastrous and horrible for those children leaping out of windows, they didn't fly. So what Barry did is he added the fairy dust to the story as necessary in order to fly, you can't just think the happy thought you you have to have the fairy dust. And that helped children realize that, you know, they couldn't jump out of windows and fly. But anyway, it's, I don't know if that helps a little bit that that that, you know, young children are just trying to sort out reality. And in our work with young children under the age of six, that's really what the the role of Montessori education. Montessori said that the, you know, children in the first plane up to age six, they wrap their hands around the world. The child older than six wraps his mind around the world. And so that's very different. So it's more about what's appropriate, what's best. I think that we as the educators with young children, a good a general guideline is to just stay close to reality in what we do, the books we read, The stories we tell, the songs we sing, poetry. Can push a few limits, but not too many. We provide reality.
Jesse McCarthy 9:58
So maybe you can. I don't. I have a quote that was like, way back. I wrote it down so I cannot find the source, but it's actually related to what you're saying, supposedly, for Montessori, in my own words here. But so we help a child fly by helping while he is on the earth. And I don't, I can't find the source, but it sounds like you know. What you're basically getting at is that by offering them more and more understanding about the world, about reality, it allows them later to kind of create fantasy and imagination, all these amazing things. But if they don't first have, you know, they're grounding their feet, they can jump out of a window per se, or do something else that's, you know, outrageous or even just confusing. So it's kind of like Montessori would be reality first. Is that how you frame it?
Ginni Sackett 10:46
Or yeah, I think that if you think about the first playing child and what they're creating, they're creating their imaginations. Imagination is going to be a power for the older child. The Montessori environment for an older child is built around exploration through their imaginations. Montessori writes about that in a couple different places, you know, from childhood to adolescence, and in the advanced method one, she writes a lot about this idea, this imagination, doesn't come out of nowhere. For the six year old, it's built. It's like coordination of movement. It's built. And we want to give the best opportunities and experiences and conditions possible for that power to be created. And so just as with control of movement, we're going to provide that environment and the experiences and the opportunities to, you know, to really develop a really high level of coordinated movement, we want to offer the experiences for the imagination. So imagination is built on abstractions. Abstractions are what we create out of our real experience. Once the abstraction you know, you manipulate something, you experience something, it becomes an abstraction in the mind. Usually it's labeled with language. That's how we know it's there. And now these abstractions can start interacting and get recombined, and that's where the imagination comes from. So we don't have to impose anything on the for the child to have an imagination, they're going to do that work just like we can't. We can't learn to walk for them. We can't, you know, they have to. They have to do the work to walk. They do the work to create their imagination. And the better the conditions for that, the better the outcome.
Jesse McCarthy 12:39
So let me, I'm thinking about this in terms of a parent context, what I've gotten or seen teachers ask questions. So just this idea that it seems like you're going to, let's say we're helping children to understand big versus small, or large versus small, and so forth, so shapes, and then they might go outside in the playground and see a big rock, and that's mom, and then a smaller rock is the child, and that's fine. That's the kind of imagination with the rocks. But we would never go out there and go, here's a family and it's a big rock. Is the mom, and there's the dog with a little leaf or something. We wouldn't impose that and say, Here's your family. But if a child does that through their own imagination, learning shapes and sizes, that's completely fine, and, and great.
Ginni Sackett 13:23
I think that's a great example. There's so many examples because, because now, actually you're kind of going into pretend play as an outcome. And if we go out and say, here's the mama rock and here's the daddy rock and here's the baby rock, we don't know if every child's mind that's hearing this from me as the adult is ready for that, but if the child does it spontaneously, that's telling you there's something they've experienced. And I think pretend play is also not completely understood in Montessori. I mean, I wouldn't we have how will I get to this? All right, it's pretend place. Starts really young. I'm going to tell a little story. So I recently watched my 18 month old grandson, and in his house, they have this little pretend miniature kitchen, no judgment. It's what they have. And he I was watching him, observing him, and he goes over to this little kitchen He's playing. And he hold, takes this little miniature cup. It's a real cup, this miniature cup, and he holds it under the pretend faucet. And he very carefully turns the faucets knob, as if filling the cup with water, then turned off the faucet, then pretended to drink the non existent water from the empty cup, and he repeated that several times. Now, observing that tells me he has some basic understanding of the dynamics of getting real water at a real sink with running water. So he is Bill. Using this pretend off of something that is real, and he has really experienced and it's almost like the pretend play is proving I have this abstraction in my brain, because I can now mix it up. And you know, if I so now if, if, if this was a child who lived in another culture that didn't have such a sink with running water, he would not have come up with this particular pretend play. He might have had a different version of getting a drink of water, modeled on how, how their people do it. And so whatever child experiences directly or vicariously through, images can be a prompt or pretend, and I would rather leave it to the child to do it in their own time and way than impose pretend play on the child. Does that make sense?
Jesse McCarthy 15:54
Yeah. And so, you know, just just got me thinking, like, maybe, like ancient times when a, you know, even pre kind of civilization times when somebody's say, the adult men are going out to hunt, or if there's that rare tribe where the woman goes out to hunt, obviously you don't want a three year old going on the hunt with you, because it's very, very dangerous. But back home, it seems in some tribes, the children would pretend that they're hunting, and in some way that's getting them prepared for the actual hunt. Yeah, yeah, just in our case, to the extent possible, when you could make it real, why add the pretend? Like us adding the pretend? Right there, there. There's a necessity with, you know, water, the child could be attempting to use the water himself from the real faucet,
Ginni Sackett 16:41
yeah, and that's what, that's what so like for our what we would do. So I think of this as part of the child adapting to their time and place. There's so much they have to sort out in this place they suddenly find themselves. This universal child needs is now with this task of adapting to this time, this place, this culture, this technology, you know, whatever. And so pretend is a way for children to further explore and rehearse almost what what happens in the real world, what they've observed and experienced. And so you can't stop it. Apparently, I mean, starts really young. As soon as they've absorbed enough of something, they will rehearse it and repeat it. Now, what we do in our Montessori environments is we give them the real thing. We give them, you know, real objects scale to their size and their capacities, accessible water source, and we guide them to do the real thing, get their own water. It doesn't mean they're never going to pretend to get water or gain out of pretending about water, but, but we're, we are making sure that they're they're also like continuing that exploration with the real objects while they're still so young. I wonder
Jesse McCarthy 18:01
if, do you think the kind of fundamentalism that we're not the ones, because a lot of this pretend play naturally arises from the child, as you've kind of suggested with some of this stuff. But then again, with the fantasy like, to the extent that they're coming up with things, why would we ever want to, like, put, oh no, put that away. Don't, don't pretend that that stick is a spatula, you know, but to the extent that we can give them real experiences, why not do that, where they can explore with that, and then, you know, if they want to, I don't know, sword fight or whatnot, you know, we're not going to give them real swords at two years old, because that would be dangerous, right? So with that, you think that's the kind of basis, the difference between the the adult imposing it, as you would put it, versus the child coming up with it.
Ginni Sackett 18:45
Yeah, I think I don't know when the child is ready. The child shows me he's ready by his by this pretend coming spontaneously from him, and he's going to, I mean, if you really observe pretend they you can source any pretend to a real experience. Now the real experience, the one that Montessori is really might get a little have difficulty with, shall I say, is they've been given some kind of an experience called dragons. Or, you know, Teletubbies, or
Jesse McCarthy 19:25
was the Purple Guy's name? I don't know purple. I can't wait. I can't forget his name. Now, it's like that song that went along with him. But yeah, yeah.
Ginni Sackett 19:35
So anyway, someone has provided them an experience, and they can take it in through images. You know, pictures. We know that children can learn about animals just from pictures at a very young age. They don't need to see the actual animal. They will take their experience can include images, and then this is where we adults share with them these images and stories. Things that are not based in reality, or at least not the reality of today, but they've accepted it, and this is the credulity that Montessori talks about, is like, yeah, they take it as whatever. And so a child might come into your room, a three year old, and be really excited about dragons, and they might know a lot about dragons, and want to talk about dragons. And I think the worst thing we could do as as caring educators is to say, No, we don't talk about dragons here. Dragons aren't real. I mean, bum, talk about, what are you doing to this child? They have been given every reason to believe that this is something real and exciting and important. Maybe they have wonderful conversations book reading with their parents about dragons. You know, it's part of their family. They watch, you know, cartoons about dragons. Who knows? So why would you stomp on that? But what we want to do is provide some of the counter balance of like, well, where do you know? What do you know? And actually, I think the best thing we can do when a child comes in and wants to talk about something is to just go into two modes. One is sort of our Tell Me More mode. Oh, dragons. Tell me about dragons. What do you know about dragons? You know, find out what they're thinking. What do they have to say about them? Do they know that they might already know that they're not real, but they're just a wonderful thing that they love to pretend about. So anyway, I think Tell me more. Sort of our question game that we have in our language area, you know, so, who, what, where, when, how, but do it in a very conversational way. Not I couldn't interrogation, you know. And just sort of like, I like to try to be dumb as the adults, like Dragon really tell me about dragons, you know? Well, I and of course, dragons, I'm using this example because I used to use this in my training. Dragons are a part of a lot of human cultures. They have different appearances. They had a really important role in human cultures. And one of the remnants of that is that there's all these animals in the world that we put dragon into their name. So that could be a link. You listen to what the child knows, and then you say, Oh, well, what do I have to myself, I asked, What do I could link this to something, you know, to become a stimulus? This is the child's interested in this. We build on interests. So I would put together a set of cards, which was just all the different kinds of animals that have dragon in their name, and learn about that their names, and learn about where they live, and, you know, sort of just like, widen the perspective. But I'm never, I'm not going to tell the child, don't talk about that. Yeah. And the one thing is that I have found, like, another story my another one of my grandsons,
Jesse McCarthy 22:53
when he Jenny, before you get you, when I heard your original Dragon story, I remember the way that you present. I was like, You told the child, like, you know what, I've actually seen a dragon, yeah. And then I'm like, and I was listening to this, like, Where the hell's Ginny going with this? She's seen a dragon and, and you're like, this one's at the zoo. So it was just such like, you, you brought the child into this, like, he's like, Wait a second. He's like, I know there's no drag. Like, it was almost like you knew, you knew that wasn't dragons, but you wanted to do it was such a, yeah,
Ginni Sackett 23:21
that's my favorite. Yeah, we stay literal and kind of dumb so. But I was, when I was in Australia, I went to the zoo in Sydney, and they had this amazing Komodo dragons. I mean, these are impressive. They deserve the name dragon
Jesse McCarthy 23:36
and the way, but the way you drew the child into me is like, that's the spirit of, like, let's get him back to learning about the world, but don't push down his interests, his desires, his feeling, you know,
Ginni Sackett 23:50
family, yeah. And so yeah. Then I happen to have a picture of the Komodo dragon. I'm going to bring it to you tomorrow and we talk about it, and I don't know what the child would say, like they often know, you know, like it doesn't. One of the things we want to find out is how literal is this for the child? If it's very literal, I don't want to destroy this child's sense of their self worth, or possibly their relationships within their family, or alienate the family by coming coming across in this very like, we don't talk about dragons here. Don't you dare talk about dragons? I think it's like the same thing with, like, even clothing. You know, the child comes in with a superhero shirt on, you know, I'm not going to make him take it off and turn it inside out that how humiliating is that? But I might decide to have this kind of question game, like conversation, like if it's attracting any attention at all, if it's not attracting any attention, forget about it. Children aren't clustering around and being like, you know, all distracted by it, but if they were. I would just say, Oh, you seem really interested in, you know, Jesse's shirt. You know, what's interesting about it? What is that like? I'm dumb. I don't know what it is. I never said. I don't know. But anyway, that kind of conversational approach. And then you can find out more. And then you find out where the where are the clues to the to the real interest, and how do I link that back to reality in the way that, I mean, the whole group can benefit from, from something like that?
Jesse McCarthy 25:29
Yeah, the way, you know, it's interesting. You just say you don't, you also you don't want to, like, push down and get rid of the family dynamic, because it just, it just hit me, like, you know, in today's age, people believe all sorts of crazy stuff, you know. So who knows what a child can come into the classroom with and say, Well, did you know this? And you know, we in our days of wanting to tell people how wrong their ideas are, you know, whatever side you can imagine a teacher being like, Oh, well, that's not true. You know, because I'm sure you've experienced that a child goes, Oh, I love so and so in politics. Or did you know that, you know this medicine will cure all the diseases or something? Who knows what the mom or dad was doing at home right now, right?
Ginni Sackett 26:08
I know. Well, I got, I classic example, two boys came up to me too. I think they were, might have been five good, you know, good friends, whatever. Everybody gets along well, but at least two boys come and they say, we're having an argument. And I said, Oh. And he said, Yeah, can you help us? You know, we were this. This is not exactly as literal as they said it. But anyway, basically they were having an argument because they were from two different family cultures, and one of them said there's a God, and the other one said there is no God. And that was their argument, and I they asked me to solve it for them. I'm not whole. That is part of their family culture, and it is not for me to judge that I might agree. That's a really interesting conversation. I think a lot of people have that conversation. They have different ideas about it, but the best place for each of you to learn more about this is to talk to your own parents about it, you know. And just just, you know, just set the limit right there, but also agreeing, you know, they're they're really perplexed because they're finding in each other, things that are, you know, contradictory, yeah, it's just like, yeah.
Jesse McCarthy 27:30
What a microcosm of our own world, where, you know, if you don't have some kind of conflict, you don't really have growth. Because, you know, you got, oh, do I agree with this? Do I don't agree with this? You know, what does my teacher think? What am I? So it's just a I think the Montessori classroom has a lot of that, and that's why we try to have different cultures, different just everything in there. So you just get all this experience, you know, not just one experience.
Ginni Sackett 27:52
Yeah. And I think to let in a world like the United States in particular, we, we, we cannot just give the message that there is only one way I don't feel now, someone could have a school that is all people from a particular culture, particular, you know, religion, whatever. But if I'm teaching, you know, in a, you know, a typical United States classroom where people are from all different backgrounds. I cannot give the impression there is only one way of anything. So for example, in we used to do the winter holiday was the celebration of light. And we we would from Thanksgiving until the winter break. We would do all kinds of artifacts and things and projects and stories related to all the different kinds of celebrations of light that have, that are have humans have created. I have a whole, a whole thing that I did. It was a whole, like, almost curriculum that I created. But, you know, we had, we ended up with Hanukkah candles and an Advent wreath and the Diwali lamps, the children of the five year olds every year would make some Diwali lamps. And, you know, and by the time the winter break came, we would have all of these things and all of these stories, the different ways that humans have celebrated this fact that it gets really dark in the winter, and we don't know if the light's coming back, but we've reached this point where the light starts to come back and we say, let's have a party. We got to celebrate.
Jesse McCarthy 29:32
Yeah, and Jeanette, I just connected with fantasy. It's just, I know every time Christmas comes around, there's a huge debate around Santa Claus. So I don't, I don't get into the right versus wrong with Santa Claus and Montessori. I've actually seen two different quotes of hers that seem somewhat contradictory in terms of how Maria Monteiro even dealt with Santa Claus. But the kind of thing that just paused mine is like, you know, we had, because we get, like, leprechauns, you know, you think about what's coming up with St Paul. Patty's day, yeah? So if I think about children in most classrooms, it's like, green everywhere, and there's leprechauns and pots of gold, you know? And I just think, just thinking of myself, like, oh, yeah, I remember that. And something, what's Patty's day? Oh, there's leprechauns gold. But how many children know? Like, oh, what's the capital of Ireland? Or what's, you know, what is the geography like in Ireland? Or, as you said, Well, when it's wintertime in Ireland, why is it so cold? But you know, in Florida, here in wintertime, it's not as cold. So, like so much that we're lacking of just about the world, but we know these fantastic things that some adult has come up with, right?
Ginni Sackett 30:38
Yeah, I have another great example, I think. So it was an era when Pirates of the Caribbean was all the rage, and apparently people were sharing those films with white young children. And so I was hearing from a lot of teachers that children are coming in, and all they want to talk about is the pirates, pirates in the Caribbean, and what should they do? So I'm like, well, listen to them, find out what they know. If they if you see them starting to like, I'm sure they're probably pretending to be pirates. Here's some things we could do within our range. Okay, listen to them. Find out what they know. Be neutral, absolutely neutral. And then start picking up on the links. So geography and language are great outlets for this. So where is the Caribbean? What else is there? You could create, and you could create a picture folder of all kinds of things about the about that part of the world, and what's going on there? There's islands there. So you can pick up stuff. More on about islands, you know, from our land and water forms, you can create a set of cards with types of sailing ships, you know, they, they, they are on these ships that don't use power, you know, that use the wind. Wow, what? That's an amazing thing to explore. How do you, how do you get wind to move a ship, you know, and parts of the sailing ship, and maybe even clothing from that era with its special vocabulary, have cards, and you just start like expanding. So exciting for everything. Yes, it is exciting. Suddenly this thing that you think is a threat and a distraction, yeah, the leaping point for building on a child interests. That's what we do.
Jesse McCarthy 32:27
And you turn you, Jenny, what you just said is you turned around this kind of, like, hot debate, like, oh, no, they shouldn't have this in the classroom and this other, no, let them be children and be free to like, oh, let's, let's make this enjoyable for everybody. We don't need to, you know, we need to, you know, we need a squash, or we don't need to, like, turn this into some it's fantasy time children.
Ginni Sackett 32:48
And that's, and that's the thing is, we are constantly looking for those clues of what interest is, yeah, and the only reason a child does anything, only reason a human does anything, is that they're interested, and so we cannot, we can't impose interest. We have to invite it. We have to build on it, and then we create in that building. We create new interests, or we just sort of satisfy it, and it sort of dissipates. And let's move on to something else. But we have to trust to that this young child wants the real world.
Jesse McCarthy 33:23
I wonder how much of like, you know, sound kind of bad, but like, it's just lethargy on our park. It's so easy. Like, Halloween, man, it's so easy to just be like, Oh, well, one Halloween, we just dress up and it's very simple. Versus like, can we learn something new about like? Because I know my wife, when we were here, I was thinking, Oh, we're gonna have Halloween in our little school house, because it's another hot topic, you know, yeah, and she just decided to carve a pumpkin, but not just carve it, like, open it and then do parts of a pumpkin. Absolutely. I was just amazed that, like even myself, when you lay out the parts of something very simple, you realize, well, there might be a part that you don't even know as an adult, you know, and it's such a and then everybody's learning. So you turn something that was like a conflict into something that's just beautiful learning about the world. But I wonder why. I feel like maybe in today's age, we kind of gravitate towards kind of contentious things, so we want to have a position, or maybe, I mean, Jenny, this I definitely want to ask you, because you you've been in it for so long. I know it's contentious, and I know I've interacted with a lot of heads of school and a lot of teachers that would rather not even deal with the issues because it's so difficult. What do you tell teachers and admin, practically speaking, let's say backpacks in the classroom. I know I've had a teacher once like, there's no Disney characters, there's no Marvel characters on children's backpacks in our school. Look at that type of thing. How do you deal with the kind of practical reality of children bringing in fantasy into the school in which we don't want to be pushing adult fantasy, and how do you deal with that in a.
Ginni Sackett 35:00
Really good, good question. If you want the children's backpacks to be of a certain type, then I would say the school should provide the backpacks free of charge. Just say, Oh, we're going to give backpacks to for each child in the class, and that way you have if you want that control, that's the way to do it. And the parents don't have to go buy one. You know, that's, I mean, that's sort of an extreme example. But otherwise, you can talk about keeping things simple with parents and why. You know, things can be distracting. You know, you can make suggestions, but I don't. I just, I just don't think we should be imposing it. And also, it implies that children can't ever tell the difference, that they will never tell the difference between what's distracting and what isn't. Let me give an other example, because a child might bring a book in, and it's one of their favorite books from home, and they they want to share it. And I just made it really clear, like, Oh, if you bring a book in, I would love to see it, and I would look at it with the child and and I would, you know, we would sort of the child, and I would enjoy it, you know, tell me what you know about this and how what is it you like about this and all of that, we'd have this wonderful conversation about it, and then if I felt that it was something that I would type a story I would share with the whole group, I'd say I'd love to read this later. Would that be okay to the to some of the other children? But if it's a book that I am not wanting to share, you know, it's all it's Disney all over, or whatever, I would just say, thank you so much for sharing this. And I always had this big basket up on a very high shelf in my in our room, where, if a child did bring something from home that isn't really for sharing with everyone, they brought their stuffed animal, or their blanket, or, you know, a bottle, or this book that would just be like, oh, you know that that made me Tell me about this. Oh, that you like, you feel good when it's here. And then I would say, we're going to put it in this basket, and it's going to be right up here. And when you leave today, you know, you can take it home with you, and then you'll have it at home again. And I was sometimes even see a child kind of go over and stand and sort of gaze up at the basket every once in a while, like, that's where my stuff is. But you know, if you just do it in this sort of way, I never had anybody object or cry or anything or and then it would be like, oh, let's make sure you take your blanket home with you. And you know, it's probably best if the blanket either waits for you in the car, or if it's just at home, waiting for you on your bed, because that's where it's, that's where it's, you know, safest. So let me, Jenny, let me
Jesse McCarthy 37:59
give you a hard one. So Miss Jenny, but why did you, but you read so sophia's Book Two days ago, and you now you're not reading my book.
Ginni Sackett 38:07
Yeah, you're right. I did. It was a different story, and I have to tell you a story about this. So one year I had these incredibly mature fourth years, they were all, I mean, second plan characteristics of the wazoo. So for Halloween, I decided, let's, let's do something different. So in late in the afternoon, it was just extended day. I only had them, you know, we we turned the lights down, we all sat and I read them this incredible story, Chinese. It's a beautiful Chinese picture book, and it's a story that involves hunting a dragon, and it's, I mean, it's, but it's just gorgeous. And these are, like, six year olds, right? Yeah, they're all, like, late five or six year olds, but they're all, and they're all definitely showing second playing characteristics. And so I, you know, I read this story, and I'm showing them pictures, and they were just totally captivated. And when I finished it, and I'm, you know, closed the book, and I said, wow, you know what, you think this one boy goes, you wouldn't read that in the morning, would you?
Jesse McCarthy 39:16
That's mature? Yeah, that's the maturity that we're talking about.
Ginni Sackett 39:19
Yeah, he knew. And I was just like, wow, you know, if you live this, they absorb what it is, but they don't absorb it with your judgment. You're not telling good or bad, you're good or bad. We're not telling you that you're, you know, Sophia was so good for bringing that book,
Jesse McCarthy 39:36
yes, yeah. We don't. We don't read this in our schools here, yeah.
Ginni Sackett 39:41
Like, sometimes I get to read the book and sometimes it doesn't, yeah, that's just the
Jesse McCarthy 39:44
way it is. So what I mean now, with all this kind of coming, I know I've experienced dads, usually it's a dad, but let's, let's say it could be a mom too, but it's almost always a dad. When I've experienced it is that, like, somebody will say, What's the big deal? Like, I grew. Watching all sorts of Disney stuff, you know, since I was three, four or five, who knows how young I was, and look at me, I turned out fine. What's the big deal?
Ginni Sackett 40:09
Jenny, well, and not to treat the adult like a child. I treat all human right. I would also come with the, you know, like, yeah, you're right. You know, we all have similar experiences to share. I remember, you know, things that I saw. You know, it's just part of our culture, isn't it? And so I don't want to imply any judgment of any kind of their parenting, or how they turned out, or the culture they embrace. But then I would try to guide the conversation to other aspects of what a child experiences in life and when they experience it, and how it relates to their stage of development. I think, actually, I think diet is a good analogy. So no one would argue with the importance of a well balanced, nutritious diet. You know, maximum support for healthy physical and mental development at the child's particular age, the younger the child, the more important, you know, the nutrition is. Maybe we could think of the sort of fantastical, you know, Disney stuff like sugars and sweets in a diet. You know, for a young child, some is probably okay, but we want to keep them in proportion. We don't want to have them eating a diet that's only sugar and sweets based on that was going to leave out important components of what they need. And so maybe the stories and the images we share with the children, you know, we'd want to have just more variety rather than so anyway, I don't know if that helps. It's, it's just a relaxing I
Jesse McCarthy 41:43
wonder, how much is, you know, with us as adults, we have such nostalgia, or some of the things that we had as children, so we and then, and then we put it on the child. Oh no, they love such and such. It's like, yeah, because if, if you love it, and you're presenting it to them with just this over, I mean, this gushing of just like, oh, I, as a child, I would sit in my mom's arms and watch, you know, Bambi. It's like, they're gonna, they're, of course, they're gonna love it beyond, you know, because they're absorbing from you.
Ginni Sackett 42:11
Yeah, I love that. It's but whatever you share with your child, they're gonna love. It's not just the fantasy. And so just like, you know, ideally, they're gonna, like, you know, the other aspects of a healthy diet, and not just, you know, the sweet it can be a special treat, yeah, but you don't tell them it's a special treat. It's just like, you just like today. But I think that helping parents feel feel good about whatever they share with their children, yeah, that the child just, you know, that's what they're craving, just that that time and that relationship and the quality of time. And of course, as the child gets older, what I would also tell the parent is, you know, as they begin to sort out reality, because, remember, it's this idea of, do you know whether this is really possible, whether you can really jump out of a window and survive as the child gets older, you'll be able to share more and more things of this type with them. Yeah, it's just really about, you know, their vulnerability when they're young, and as they get older, it can actually become something you really enjoy together?
Jesse McCarthy 43:21
Yeah, I like, and I like your old framework, because it's very it's, you know, you're making a judgment about, Hey, we should be show doing reality first. But you're not judging the person or the parent. It's not this moral condemnation or, you know, praise for somebody because, oh, you I love how you're only doing reality at home. What a Montessori and you are, you know, that's not, that's not your approach, which,
Ginni Sackett 43:43
no, no, and in fact, actually, it's okay. I'm not going to do any fantasy in my classroom, or aspects of culture that some people might call fantasy, depending on, like, you know, their perspective. But I'm not going to be doing any of that in my classroom, so it's okay. They can do it at home. You know, what I would be looking for is the child who gets lost in fantasy. Because I think fan and Montessori talks about this also. I know it's in the secret of childhood, at least one place she does that that fantasy can be a defense that the child plays, and they can, you know, it's a refuge. They flee into fantasy, or they create a barrier, like monastery talks about deviations. You know, like fantasy can be a sign there is something this child feels they need to defend themselves against, protect themselves against, in their world, and that I would want to be alert to, and that's where, you know, they can be challenging conversations, but they're important conversations to have. What is going on in this child's life that they are fleeing into fantasy?
Jesse McCarthy 44:52
Yeah, the escape. Yeah. And I think just, you know, hearing you say that just brings up these, I mean, these horrible school shootings. I just think, how many of. These children probably showed incredible signs of being in the fantasy land, not being in the world. But, of course, it's easier to kind of go, oh, well, push it away or suspend somebody, but not really delve into Okay. Sums up here. Yeah, you know. So maybe I want to, I want to ask, jump off. And I just went a little bit, a little too I mean, it's real, but it's a little deep, but I something that's very practical, and comes up a lot with parents and teachers, is, I know we're talking about fantasies. What about the kind of unless, if it's a fantasy or a story, or even the line that children, you know, like, I went to a zoo last week with my mom, I saw flying zebra. You I wish you were there, Mrs. Jenny, or something, you know. Like, how do you how do you deal with that? You know, it's somewhat related to fans, but it almost seems like the child, you know, I know parents go home, like, why is my child lying so much? Or the teachers, like, they're always telling these stories, and I'm like, I can't even tell what's true and false anymore, right? What do you do with that with a child?
Ginni Sackett 46:03
Well, one thing that I do to calm myself down about that thought is that young children really can't lie. Lying is a very intentional thing, and again, it's like knowing the difference between what's real and what isn't real. So I don't like to think of it as lying. But you know, children could come in with this store, you know, what sounds like a pretty fantastical story, like the Flying Pig, it can go in the other direction. They could go home and say something about stuff that happened at school that didn't happen to be disturbing to the parent, like somebody hit me or whatever. I tell you, I the first time I had a meeting with parents when their child was about to start in the before the child started in the environment I would have a meeting with with each set of parents. And one of the things I would do during that meeting, I was sort of jokingly say, okay, look, can we make an agreement? I'll believe half of what your child tells me about you and your family, if you will, believe half of what your child tells you about us here. And it usually created sort of a little laugh. And, you know, like, oh, kind of, you know, it's like, and then we would that would then introduce this possibility that a child might misrepresent, misrepresent reality in either direction, and that the door to sort of talk strategy with the parents for how to respond. Now, if a child came in and was talking about the flying pig with me, you know, we already know what I would be doing. Oh, tell me more. Oh, where was the pig? How did this happen, you know. And you know, help sort of give the parents that that technique a little bit too now, if it's, you know, a flying pig, we'll see, you know, where we will might, what that might end up with. Sometimes, another really helpful thing to say was, and I've seen this work really well. It's like so if I you know you said you were with your mom at the zoo, yes, if I asked your mom about the Flying Pig, would she tell me? Would she or similarly, if I asked your teacher about that, would you know your teacher agree that that had happened? I have seen young children immediately pull back on a story as soon as this is asked if they do this kind of funny grin and conspiratorial, oh, no, you know, and so that they know that it didn't really happen and it's just a story they're making up. And so, so there, there is that another way I sometimes respond to that is, is that something you wish would happen? Yeah, your family or, you know, like, maybe a child goes home and says, somebody hit them, and it's just like, are you afraid of getting hurt at school? You know, it's just like, just again that tell me more. What is it that's provoking this story? Not just coming out of nowhere,
Jesse McCarthy 49:06
man, just tell me more. I know we're talking about children, but it just keeps hitting me up, like, when somebody's coming at you with some story, or some, you know, oh, this is a miracle drug. This will cure all, or the left is, you know, ruining the country, or the right is gonna. It's like, Oh, tell me more about that.
Ginni Sackett 49:22
Could you I use Tell Me More at every age.
Jesse McCarthy 49:26
There you go. Because it's like, you're gonna, you're gonna get to something that's more important than just what's on the surface.
Ginni Sackett 49:34
Yeah, yeah. And, and again, you know, we it's this child, this particular child, not every child that's I have to know the child I have to be I have to be creative all the time. It's great job.
Jesse McCarthy 49:50
Really, I do feel like, I mean, I've said this multiple times in different episodes, but I feel like we're, we're in a culture that more and more wants the answer for every. Body, you know, and it's like, what you just came back to is, hey, we're in this profession. It's dealing with individual human beings. You gotta, you know what's being presented to you? You know, there is no this is exactly what you say to any human being, whatever age, walks up to you, except for, tell me more. I think Tell Me More is universal. You can
Ginni Sackett 50:18
Well, and that's the thing we have this incredible as we should never stop learning about our our educational approach either, because there is so much there that that to give us these guidelines. But we are humans. We are we have much more in common, no matter what we look like, where we live, what culture we're in, what we believe, how you know, we have more in common, and hardly anything that really distinguishes us, one from the other. And so there are these universals, you know, we all want to be believed, we all want to be honored. We all want to be valued. We all want to feel. You know that that love, it's love, you know, for you, but the point, and then everybody else does too. So we have this whole educational approach that helps children at a very young age totally come to terms and come to accept and embrace. We are all. We all have this in common. We all are the same, and then the differences are just these wonderful you know, like how we dress, how we wear our hair, you know, what kinds of furniture we I mean, like whatever that's just, that's just little details that make life so interesting, you know, and what we eat and how we prepare. So I think if we take that approach, we will see that everything in our environments, pretty much is there for us to launch from? Yeah, and
Jesse McCarthy 52:05
I think I learned that, you know, it being years in Montessori, that we've got these universals. We have our albums that that offer some real like universal truths of all children, that it's your work to, you know, apply that or utilize that with the individuals in front of you, Jenny, Sarah, Sophia, whatever. But yeah, I'm happy you're pointing out that there are universals to all of us as human beings, but it's, you know, it's our work to integrate that with individuals. So do you is there? Is there anything? I mean, I know we covered a tremendous amount, and again, I think in the start of this fantasy is not the easiest topic, and it's probably why it's not really dissected that often, because it's challenging. Is there anything else you know on fantasy, pretend play, quote lines, or anything you or even beyond that, that you'd like to say before we hop out of here?
Ginni Sackett 52:55
Oh, gosh, probably you've just simulated a lot of but it's a huge topic. I do think that one of the things I would say to parents and educators is to relax. Just relax, other than the deviation type situation where the child is truly, you know, fleeing from something dangerous in their life. Just, you know, just relax. See our role is to offer maybe a positive counterbalance to the fantastical influences in culture, and trust our approach that it will, it will give us means to channel if we feel it's needed what the child is coming in with. But get, you know, not be judgmental. Be very neutral with children and very, but very empathetic, you know, be a listener, ask those questions, and just sort of get, get things going before we leap to some sort of we don't want to leap to judgment, whether it's parents or of the child. And the other thing is that, you know, one of the imagination, like I said, is being created in the first plane. The other, the other power of that's being created in the first plane is reason. And so reason and critical thinking are also a partner of the imagination. And we, I would love for us to trust that we can support both of those we don't have to diminish the imagination by keeping children in touch with reality and develop the skills of reasoning and critical thinking as a vital power for the rest of their lives. If we get too hung up on the fantasy part, you know, let's also keep it balanced with this idea that we are supporting the development of an imagination for children and we humans depend on our imagination. Science, creation, you know, artistic, whatever it is we're doing, it's all launching from our. Imaginations. And there are things that people can imagine today that if they were imagined 1000 years ago, would not have been possible. In reality today, we can imagine incredible things that that they couldn't have imagined, that they would have said was fantasy. And so it's ever evolving for us as humans, what our imaginations do, and we want to support and cultivate that, but we want to help children develop the skills to distinguish what is possible and probable in our world and what isn't. And oh, I'm fantasizing here, and I'm not going to jump out the window and think I can fly.
Jesse McCarthy 55:39
I'm so happy, and I love that you ended on that, you ended on that, because I don't want it to seem like, Oh, we're Montessori in any ways, anti fantasy. But you've kind of, you really hit it at the end here that if they have a huge base, and in reality, that's the stuff with which you are incredibly creative or imaginative. So I appreciate your ending on that. Like imagination is what we're all about as humans, creativity is what we're all about computers. Computers have data points. We do stuff with the data, with the knowledge. Well, thank you so much, Jenny. As always you are. You are the wise one. I mean, so many more episodes than anybody else on this show. So always appreciate you coming on your wealth of information. I love it's for parents and teachers and and me myself. So thank you.
Ginni Sackett 56:27
Thank you for the opportunity, and I keep learning too.
Jesse McCarthy 56:32
Yeah, well, good stuff, Jenny, and we'll talk again. All right. Thank you. Take care. All right. Coming out of that discussion with Jenny Sackett. I am not going to add much. I've just got two quick notes for you. One, I have a quote about fantasy that I have always loved. It comes from a biographer of Maria Montessori named em standing and actually, he himself was quoting another person, and that's the late children's author, g k Chesterton. Think I'm getting that right. Yeah, Chesterton and he said, quote, when we are very young, we do not need fairy tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened the door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. End of quote. So I think you get the point there. But I mean, the natural world, just our reality, has so much to offer children. We need to give it to them, first, this young children, before we go giving them our fantastic creations about the world, right? Anyway, it's not much more to keep going on that. That's what we just had a whole conversation about. But I thought that quote, I've always thought that quote is awesome, and I wanted to share it with you. So second point, and this is just another big thanks to the wonderful the wise Jenny Sackett. I love talking with her, and let me tell you guys, I actually love maybe even more. But I do love the actual conversation, our pre conversations, which, you know, you guys don't hear, and that's because we get very real with one another. So we have different opinions on different things, and then usually we agree on most everything, but we talk off the record, you know, on all sorts of topics. So I'm noting this because I am thinking of bringing some of our future conversations on the record, so talking about any and all topics that might come to mind. Now, it's going to be related to children, but it's just this type of stuff that, you know, maybe sometimes people aren't raising because they're a little bit scared of, you know, the culture and especially in America, either way, politically, socially, anything, and I'm interested in what you listeners want to talk about that maybe hasn't been talked about before, because, you know, it's a little contentious. So I'm going to try to get Ginny on the show to do a little kind of Q and A with the two of us. And we're nothing is off the table, like any questions are open to discussion. So let me know what you think about that, and see if we can get that out. All right, that is it. Thank you for being on board with us. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it, please, please. You can subscribe to the show, of course, Apple Spotify. I don't know, whatever podcast player you got go for it, and now, especially on YouTube, as I am posting more videos nowadays, so get on it and leave reviews, you guys, please. I want to hear from you. It's good for the show. Get on that. That's it. Take care, everyone, until next time. Adios.