Remembering What Children Have Never Forgotten: On Cycles, Setbacks, and the Hope That Keeps Me Going

“How does it feel to still be defending movement in early childhood after all these years?”

That’s the question a friend and colleague asked me recently. The short answer was: frustrated.

Days later, when I received a request from a university wanting to help kinesiology students learn to conduct movement sessions with preschoolers at the campus childcare, that frustration turned to hope.

And around and around it goes.

It wasn’t the first time I’d felt that swing between resistance and possibility. It’s been the rhythm of this work from the beginning.

When I first started as the “movement lady,” bringing what I’d learned about movement education to local childcare centers and preschools, it wasn’t an easy sell. Early childhood teachers often reacted to the words children and movement in the same sentence as though I’d said something horrifying. In their estimation, children moved enough. Why was I suggesting that they move more?

It’s true that movement education was an unknown concept in ECE. It had its heyday in the 1960s, but that was under the purview of physical education. I stumbled on it when parents in my neighborhood asked if I would teach dance to their four-year-olds and quickly discovered the little ones didn’t need dance training as much as they needed basic body and spatial awareness, experience in fundamental movement, and opportunities for creativity and self-expression. Fortunately, the library at the University of New Hampshire had an excellent selection of books on movement education. I studied and practiced what I learned with the children…and it became my passion.

Later, I decided I could serve more children if I created a curriculum that others could buy and follow. One brave director gave me my first sale. It remained my only sale for a long time. I bought exhibit space at an NAEYC conference with money I didn’t have and made $183. I cried in my hotel room that night. My first NAEYC workshop had twelve attendees. I watched other conference rooms fill up and spill over.

I stuck with it and eventually began to see a change. As early childhood professionals became converts, I began presenting workshops and keynotes all around the country. In the mid-1980s, the University of New Hampshire’s kinesiology department asked me to teach Movement Fundamentals, a course that allowed me to reach both physical education and early childhood majors. In the 1990s, NAEYC asked me to write a movement column for their journal. My last presentation for NAEYC – in 2019 – was full and overflowing. Movement in early childhood education had arrived.

But cycles have a way of circling back.

Fast-forward to today, and things are worse than ever. Parents and policymakers have fallen prey to the myth that earlier is better, which has led to an overemphasis on academics, even among our littlest humans. The result is that early learning and care environments often neglect the body in favor of the brain, failing to realize the interconnectedness of the two. And because parents have also fallen victim to our culture of fear, they’re afraid to let their children go outside to play. So, both in school and at home, children have become sedentary. And the impact on their development is impossible to ignore.

From early childhood professionals across the country, and even internationally, I hear that today’s young children

• have so little fine motor control that they can’t tear a piece of paper;
• are increasingly unable to cross the midline of the body, the invisible vertical line that divides us into left and right sides;
• can’t walk a block without becoming exhausted;
• don’t have enough core strength to hold themselves upright;
• are falling out of their seats in school; and
• don’t know how to play anymore!

Somewhere along the way, we forgot what was once obvious: children learn through their bodies first. When I began this journey, early childhood teachers may not have wanted to encourage more movement, but they never questioned that children are wired for physical exploration. That nature intended children to learn and develop through play. It wasn’t a controversial idea; it was common sense.

In the 1980s, I may have had to convince educators to bring more movement to their environments. But today, I’m defending it with every population of adult decision makers: parents, school administrators, policymakers, and, yes, even many educators themselves. Thanks to the “earlier-is-better” myth, there’s been a return to the notion that children learn by sitting.

But children haven’t changed; the priorities of the adults around them have. And the children are paying the price. That’s why the question – “How does it feel to still be defending movement?” – hit so hard. Where was the progress education – and I – had made over the past four decades? Why were we even further behind than when I started out? The cycle had come back around, and this time the stakes are even higher.

Still, I find reason to hope. Cycles are inherently dynamic.  The request from the university kinesiology department is proof of that. Suddenly, here was another opportunity to do what I’d done 40 years ago: make a difference with a new generation of college students and young children – a difference that could ripple for years to come.

Additionally, I’m no longer alone in this fight. With no internet to inform me otherwise in the 1980s, I seemed to be the only person promoting movement in ECE. It was a lonely battle and one that often caused me to question my path. Now, though, with every daily visit to social media, I find passionate defenders of developmentally appropriate practice, including movement.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead once famously wrote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

I’m counting on that to be true. Because children need us to remember what they’ve never forgotten.