Zakira Urooj Fatima

Erika Christakis is a former faculty member of the Yale Child Study Center and the author of the best-selling book The Importance of Being Little: What Young Children Really Need From Grownups. Christakis says that we’ve reached a perilous moment for very young kids: Increasingly we treat them as commodities and find ourselves “in danger of losing the child in childhood.” Instead of imposing adult expectations, she argues, parents and teachers should try to “take their blinders off” and see the world through the eyes of young children—a change in perspective that might allow us to better understand and cultivate their unique abilities. I recently had the opportunity to ask her about our evolving cultural values around childhood, what good early educational environments look like, and how we can resist the tendency to “adultify” young children. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Your book on early childhood education is called The Importance of Being Little. Why is “being little” so important? What do you want parents, educators, and policy makers to know about this developmental stage? Traveling around the country, teaching and talking with parents and educators from a variety of backgrounds and environments, has persuaded me that we’re in danger of losing the child in childhood. The notion that there is something of value in being a little kid—with little kid desires and, above all, needs—seems to have fallen out of favor. We talk about young children, increasingly, as commodities to “invest” in for future payoffs. Parents express enormous anxiety about their children’s futures, and seem to be curating their children’s life experiences in a way that would look quite unnatural and even rather joyless to previous generations. There’s a weird paradox that early childhood is both safe and stressful. On the one hand, for most children, especially in the industrialized world, the early years are safer than they’ve ever been in human history. Children have fewer fatal accidents and debilitating diseases. We don’t send children down coal mines to work. Of course there is poverty, stress, and trauma—and some of these problems affect very large numbers of children—but in general terms, many of the big ‘killers’ of childhood have been vanquished. On the other hand, 21st-century American society poses many challenges for young children too. Technology is not always a friend to the young, and there are new and troubling stresses. We have an actual epidemic of preschool expulsions, for example (which disproportionately affect children of color and boys), and increasing numbers of kids with mental health and behavioral challenges. “Being little” is of critical importance because we see the signature of early childhood experience literally in people’s bodies: their life expectancies are longer and their social-emotional capabilities are more robust when they have a chance to learn through play and through deep relationships, and when their developing brains are given the chance to grow in a nurturing, language-rich, and relatively unhurried environment. It’s clearer than ever before that young children are not simply mini-adults. Right, and you use the term “adultification” in your writing.