all my waldorf guilt, revisited after sixteen years

Long ago, so long ago—sixteen years ago, in fact—I wrote this:

Long ago–so long ago–when H was a bald baby with a big head, I read about Waldorf education.

This was the beginning of a post called “All My Waldorf Guilt,” published a few days after I began this blog.

The other day was my blog’s sixteenth birthday. The blog I started when that bald baby, now a 32-year-old (!) was sixteen. (My friend Meliss says my blog can drive now.) These birthdays always make me nostalgic, but this one, maybe, especially so. In my book-in-progress draft, I’ve made it to 2008, the year I started this blog. I’ve been rereading my early posts, to remember.

As I made our home a learning place when the kids were young, I included lots of Waldorf-ish things–wooden toys, instruments, garden tools, books with fairies and princes, and copious, copious craft supplies. But somehow other things managed to sneak in through the backdoor, things like computers and (shudder) gaming systems.

And that’s when this little creature I call My Waldorf Guilt began to sit on my shoulder and taunt me, to whisper how much I have failed.

It’s fascinating to me, our fascinations, how though they may shift, their essence stays with us through the years. Back in 2008, we didn’t have smart phones or social media. But still, I worried about screens.

The computers have been an issue since H was three and my parents bought him a Richard Scarry computer game. H would gladly have spent hours maneuvering Huckle around Busytown if I would have let him. But I didn’t let him. I went on to spend years monitoring his computer use—trying to limit the time spent in passive entertainment, to give free reign when the computer was used as a tool. My Waldorf Guilt nagged at me when he played too much Age of Empires; I told it to shut up when H used the computer to write stories, to record music, to make movies.

Almost all H’s creativity is connected to the computer these days. He’s taught himself to podcast, to record soundtracks for his films, to use professional film editing software. I’m glad I listened when he argued for more computer time; sometimes kids know what they need.

I worried about screens; I also saw the power of screens.

But I’m sure kids don’t need gaming systems. I’ve stayed stubborn on that one for years. But this past spring the kids wore me down after they played on a Wii at a neighbor’s house. They needed one. They would pay for it themselves, they insisted. They would be moving when they played, instead of sitting at a computer! It would be a fun thing for the family to do together! Something H could do with his brother, ten years younger! And knowing their mother, they promised to monitor their time.

 I caved. And My Waldorf Guilt screamed in my ear.

If you follow me on Instagram or TikTok, you may have seen the video I recently made about Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, a bestselling book getting a lot of attention right now. A book that insists that the current youth mental health is mostly due to the rise of smart phones and social media. A book driving school phone bans across the country.

Haidt devotes a fair portion of his book to the loss of childhood independence, an issue you know matters to me, that radiates hot at the center of my manuscript. Those portions of Haidt’s book, according to him, are largely influenced by his work with Lenore Skenazy at LetGrow—a woman and an organization that I very much admire. LetGrow, which promotes youth independence, was co-founded by Skenazy, Haidt, and psychologist Peter Gray, whose research on play I link here constantly.

I’m not so concerned about the Wii for my sixteen and twelve-year-old. But having my six-year-old grow up with a gaming system puts My Waldorf Guilt on overdrive.

 (Just sixteen, twelve and six! Can you see me clutching at my chest?)

But while I agree with the parts of the book that raise concerns about losses of youth independence, I disagree with Haidt about phones and social media being the main cause of the youth mental health crisis. There have been many writers and academics (see the section on Candice Odgers), including Gray, who have come out to say that Haidt’s research is cherry-picked, that he’s ignoring other causes.

What bothers me, especially, is that Haidt does not include the voices of young people in his book. He ignores repeated, reputable surveys of teens in which they say, emphatically, that the number one source of their stress—with no other cause coming close—is school.

 Still, I want to listen to my kids. If they’re willing to work with me and all my limits, I need to work with them.

Sixteen years ago, I wrote those lines. The lesson I kept learning, all my life as a homeschooling parent, as a mother, was that I didn’t know everything. I had a lot to learn from my kids, if I’d only watch. And listen.

You see my long-running concern over screens—I’d end up writing many other posts on the All My Waldorf Guilt theme. I would never say that phones and social media aren’t problematic. But I also learned from my kids to be nuanced in my thinking. A while back, when I made another TikTok that went somewhat viral, dozens and dozens of teenagers showed up in the comments. What many of them said: Their phones are the one place of freedom they have in worlds in which they aren’t allowed freedom. In micro-managed days sucked up by schoolwork; in lives in which they aren’t allowed freedom to be together with friends in person.

We adults will always, I fear, worry about what’s new–the moral panic of the day. Reading novels or comics. Listening to rock n’ roll, watching too much TV. My own parents worried about me talking on the phone too much, the avocado green one with the long, long, curly cord that stretched past the family room.

The Wii hasn’t been so bad. After an initial week or so of gorging on gaming, their play has been reasonable. But the one thing that still gets My Waldorf Guilt hollering is that the stories Mr. T tells are now filled with characters named Mario and Luigi.

Sigh.

In her book The Gardener and the Carpenter—beloved favorite—developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik writes,

“Childhood isn’t really a period of innocence when children are protected from technological and cultural change—instead, childhood is the very crucible of such change. It is both the period when innovation becomes internalized and, especially in adolescents, the period in which innovation is often actually sparked.”

In other words, teenagers have a role to play—they push society forward. I can see that now, my kids grown. Letting fear steer the ship never served me as a mother. To calm those fears, I just needed to watch. To listen.

A few days after the All My Waldorf Guilt post, I followed up with this:

One of Mr. T’s many wii thoughts for today:

“I’m making up my own wii game. It’s a maze game, and it’s in first-person. Wait. Is first-person when you see with the character’s eyes?”

Not bad for a six-year-old. But that’s my boy. Managing to temper the wii talk with a little literary point-of-view so his mama doesn’t feel so guilty. Next time he makes up a game for the wii, maybe I’ll ask him to consider third-person omniscient.

That kid, the six-year-old in the photo above, is now 22, home for a long weekend—first time since Christmas—still talking and talking to me, his thoughts still a swirl of banal cultural stuff, history, literature, and personal insights–and now punctuated with endless weird photos of Willem Dafoe.

Delighting me, as always.

* * *

A few random links:

• Another video I made that has people talking in the comments, this one about how much schools have changed in the 30 years since I was a teacher. Really interesting (and often heartbreaking) to see all the feedback from teachers.
• A delicious summer cocktail: The Chestnut Cup, sent to me by Meliss, who now wants us to make our orgeat from scratch. And my favorite new NA cocktail: Pathfinder with Zevia Cherry Cola.
• After I posted my Anxious Generation video, two different people pointed me toward the You’re Wrong About podcast episode with Taylor Lorenz–a tech journalist with a focus on the media–as she discusses many of the same issues. So many insightful points she makes on the show, like: “Instead of saying, let’s fix all of these problems with these systems and build a better world that these young people can thrive in, we say, well, let’s take away their access to the information because we just cut them off. They won’t be able to organize. They won’t be able to question things.” Imagine my surprise a week or so later when Lorenz came by and commented on my video–and then reshared it with her audience. Hope some young people saw it; hope it fired them up!