Written by Laura Grace Weldon
Flow is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
My daughter spent much of this week with a deer skeleton she found in the woods.
As she searched the site she was thrilled to find most bones intact. Supportively, I provided toothbrushes, bleach, and other supplies to clean them.
Today she’s reassembling the skeleton in the driveway. She shows me how the back legs fit into the hip sockets, giving the deer power to leap and run while the front legs are mostly held on by bone and connective tissue.
She points out that the spine is somewhat similar to a human spine in the lower thoracic and upper lumbar regions, but very different where the large cervical vertebrae come in.
I know so little about this topic that I forget what she’s telling me while she speaks.
Handling the bones carefully, she faithfully reconstructs the skeleton. She’s so deeply engrossed in the project that she hasn’t come in for lunch or bothered to put on a jacket to ward off the chill.
Her interests are far different than mine, but I know what it’s like to be this captivated.
You know the feeling too. You become so absorbed in something that time scurries by without your notice. Your whole being is engrossed by the project. You feel invigorated.
Skiers call it becoming “one with the mountain.” Athletes call it being in the “zone.” Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has termed it the “state of flow.”
In this marvelous state the boundaries between you and your experience seem fluid, as if you are merging with what you’re doing. The more opportunities any of us have to immerse ourselves in activities we love, especially those that stretch us to our full capacities, the more capable and centered we feel in other areas of our lives.
Photo by Clare Weldon
Children, especially the youngest ones, slide into flow effortlessly. While playing they concentrate so fully that they lose sense of themselves, of time, even of discomfort. They’re inherently drawn to full-on engagement. As Csikszentmihalyi explains in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,
Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.
For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.”
Kids demonstrate flow when they’re eagerly drawing, building, climbing, pretending, reading and exploring. Their intent focus makes a mockery of what is supposedly a child’s developmental handicap — a short attention span.
Flow truly puts a person in the moment. No wonder it can be hard for our kids when we call them away from what they’re doing to what we deem more important. No wonder they might be more enthusiastic about playing with Legos than taking part in a structured geometry lesson.
Imposing too many of our grown-up preoccupations on kids can teach them to block the experience of flow.
What do we need to remember about this state?
Flow is typically triggered:
- when a person’s abilities are stretched nearly to their limits
- during a self-chosen pursuit
- when they are looking to accomplish something worthwhile to them.
These characteristics are also the way we’re primed to learn from infancy on. It’s been called the Goldilocks Effect. This means we are attracted to what holds just the right amount of challenge for us. Not too big a challenge, not too little, but something that sparks our interest and holds it close to the edge of our abilities, moving us toward greater mastery.
That’s pretty much the way science, art, and other major human endeavors happen too. Flow may be our natural state.
Photo by Cheryl Holt
How do we encourage flow?
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are some ways to allow more flow in your kids’ lives (and yours too!).
- Foster a calm, relaxed environment.
- Engage in what brings out delighted fascination. If you’re not sure what that is, fool around with something hands-on. Tinker, paint, write, sculpt with clay, take something apart, dance, experiment—-whatever feels enticing.
- Let go of worry and pressure.
- Welcome mistakes as well as challenges.
- As much as possible, don’t interrupt.
- Remember that flow isn’t really separate from play.
The outcome of flow?
Deepened learning and stronger confidence. And, as Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s work tells us, achieving the flow state regularly is a key component of happiness.
That’s vital, even if it means you end up with a deer skeleton in your driveway.
Portions of this post are excerpted from Free Range Learning.
Have you ever witnessed your child experiencing flow? Have you ever experienced it yourself?
A dose of homeschool inspiration
I’m getting a good chuckle imagining your neighbor’s expressions when they see the skeleton in your driveway. 😀 What an awesome opportunity! And on a purely selfish note, I’m a bit relieved to hear I’m not the only one who lets my children explore dead animals, lol.
When a new homeschooling family came to our group, a mutual friend introduced them this way:
“They’re the ones I told you about from Cleveland. They once dragged roadkill to their backyard to observe decomposition over time.”
I knew we had to get to know them!
Laura’s latest post: The Benefits of Natural Math
Just added a comment to http://www.aplayfulpath.com/measuring-fun/ referring people to this post. Great work, once again, my friend and fellow-traveler.
Bernie DeKoven’s latest post: The blog, she has moved
You must have been sending thought waves when you wrote that Bernie, I picked up a few glimmers to write this post!
Laura’s latest post: The Benefits of Natural Math
There’s a concept of “microflow” (some scant description here – http://gradworks.umi.com/34/36/3436593.html – ) which might help in this – especially in understanding your lovely conjecture that flow might very well be our natural state. I think we are always, or whenever possible, trying to have fun, looking for opportunities to be more totally “in play.”
I touched on it in also this article – http://www.deepfun.com/of-fun-and-flow/ – and I continue to play with it from time to time. I think it’s useful for us to develop a broader and perhaps looser interpretation of what is really fun – so many kinds of fun are the all-encompassing, transforming kind described in the flow concept, but the gentle, subtle kind that we get from watching our baby sleep or listening to the rain on the roof of our wonderfully dry, warm house….
Beautifully said Bernie.
Laura’s latest post: The Benefits of Natural Math
I have a question about this. We try to do any lesson work in the mornings. By noon I want to have lunch and have time for reading and pursuing passions. However, if I have to tend to a little one, my 10 yr old is immediately immersed in something. It’s either reading comics, drawing comics, building marble tracks, or building with Lego. Bringing him back to the original task can be daunting. By the time noon comes, he is frustrated and sometimes winds up wanting to do something mindless. I guess my question is how to keep the ‘household flow’ going so he can hold off on his own flow. School stuff in the afternoon is a futile task. Let him get lost in something in the morning, and you’ve lost him for the day.
I’m so glad you wrote this comment! I have the same struggle with my 9-year-old son. I love that he gets immersed in things he loves to do… reading, building things, playing outside, etc. But I, too, want to finish any formal lessons before lunch. The the children can have the rest of the day to play, relax and explore their interests. We have a newborn in the house now, so I am often distracted from keeping him on task. It’s frustrating and I’d love to hear any solutions others have come up with.
Stephanie and Cindy, kudos to you both! You’re raising kids who are enthusiastic self-directed learners. Preserving this quality in our kids is essential.
I know it doesn’t seem beneficial when the homeschooling day doesn’t go according to plan, but one beauty of homeschooling is that we can keep readjusting what we do and how we do it to best fit our unique children. As you know, kids let us know what they’re passionately drawn to learn. Often that’s not through more structured assignments, but through their own discovery-based, hands-on, fascination-led learning.
There are plenty of approaches you can try, You might look over their required assignments and reduce the “busywork” aspects, for example, have them do a quarter of the math problems on a worksheet and check to see they’ve mastered the concepts without doing all the practice equations. You might set up an upside-down shaped pyramid weekly plan, basically motivating them to get as much morning work as possible done early in the week so they have more free time later in the week. You might alter your approach, going from a formal curriculum to more eclectic, interest-based homeschooling. You might consider those activities they’re drawn to (reading, drawing, making things, etc) as significant parts of their education, just as important or more important as lessons. These are some of the many ways you can rethink this, but of course you know best what is right for your family.
Laura’s latest post: The Benefits of Natural Math
Blah….I wish I DID know what was best! I keep feeling like I’m failing him somehow. Busy work is virtually nonexistent in my house. Getting this kid to do written work or projects that take more than 10 minutes is such a struggle. The learning is lost in the struggle. I don’t know if I’ve done some damage…..but I also have yet to read something that makes me think it’s necessary to make him, say, write an essay. I want to pull my hair out sometimes trying to figure this out!
Cindy, you might take heart from this article on how unschoolers turn out, indicating they do very well in college and are more likely to end up in the sciences.
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/09/how-do-unschoolers-turn-out/
We never really unschooled, although we got closer and closer to it every year. There is plenty of inspiration there, especially when you approach it on your own terms rather than try to fit into some rigid definition of what is and isn’t unschooling.
Laura’s latest post: The Benefits of Natural Math
And one more thought for Cindy and Stephanie. Giving kids choices always helps. Those choices can include doing the week’s work as they please, maybe dashing ahead in English to get it all done in one day while doing science every day. Or maybe having them write their own goals/checklists to determine everything from chores to schoolwork. Or designing their own learning plans, demonstrating to your satisfaction and theirs that they can reach mastery in ways that interest them.
Here’s an interesting study about the value of self-designed learning. Although it’s based in the classroom, the ideas are relevant to homeschooling. http://blogs.babycenter.com/mom_stories/study-kids-who-pretend-together-11192014-learn-more-at-school/
Laura’s latest post: The Benefits of Natural Math