Cornstarch

Summer 2012 at our old place.

A. was wanting something to do that he hadn't done before, and I figured that a year ago is long ago enough for any play like that to be "new". I got out some cornstarch and water and I added turmeric to make yellow. He said he also wanted pink (and I'm happy to use up our food colouring on stuff that my kids aren't going to ingest!!) so I made up a bowl of that too.

While all this was going on S. was happy to just sit and build huge constructions with Duplo. He has frequently done this for about a year and, copying his brother, this has mostly been called building "towers" and "guns". Recently however he has been making me monsters, and race-tracks, and other things, which is a sign that he is starting to create for himself, rather than copying an existing form. He is probably ready to get into Lego now that he has better fine motor control and is beginning to get the strategy of overlapping bricks to make the structure more stable.

A. spent quite some time mixing his cornstarch. He puddled and stirred and slapped at it, noticing how the paste went runny when allowed to flow and firm if you ever tapped or hit it. He frustrated himself several times over by digging in it and having it crack and flick out of the bowl and onto the ground. Thankfully, he mostly did this on the bench and on the ground outside which meant that the mess was contained. He decided it was important to mix the two colours together and I discussed with him first, what colour he thought this might make if he mixed the pink and the yellow. This is a basic scientific experiment so it helps to have an idea or guess as your "hypothesis" that you are testing. Armed with a hypothesis of "it might turn an orangey colour" A. went off to test his idea by combining the two containers of gunk.

He didn't trust his own ability to mix the two colours together without making "a huge mess", so after attempting to spoon the stuff from one bowl to another he gave up and came and got me from where I had been building with his brother, to tip one bowl of mixture into the other one. I had a go at spooning mixture first, as we found that we could make swirly patterns in the liquid because it doesn't combine straight away like dye in water would. I wrote a letter in the bowl. "AHAH! What's that?!" I asked. "It's an A.!" he told me. We mixed the whole lot together and lo, we got the orangey colour that we had been guessing about. Sometimes it's nice to be right, and the only reason that he had the information to make a correct guess was lots of experience with mixing coloured paints.

I don't like to focus a lot of energy on being right, with my kids, but it's such a hard-wired thing in me that I have to work hard to be aware of it. Getting things perfect is something that it's so easy to want for, but it's not a healthy thing, because it cultivates a risk averse nature. People who want everything to be perfect all the time are less likely to take on new things, because if they aren't familiar with it, they are less likely to get it right. I want my kids to feel that they can succeed, while not having the insecurity that would hold them back from trying new things. Getting things wrong now and then is cool because you can learn something new. I try to model this every time I make mistakes myself... but it's hard to stay on top of things when you are stressed by your mistakes.

It can be a really good reframe to look at mistakes from the point of view that you are showing children that when you mess up, the worst that can happen is that you have to deal with the consequences, and the best is that something unpredictable and wonderful happens. A broken jar can be an opportunity to use the vacuum cleaner, and a chance to look at the layers inside the ceramics. A wrong turn when meeting with friends can be a chance to learn how to use a map, or it could teach you the whereabouts of a park or a previously unknown shortcut. There is a book by Carol Dweck called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, which talks about this in more detail.

I like to focus on how "where we are at is just one step in the journey" and "the only time you really fail is when you are giving up".