By Sarah DeLuca

Slow down everyone you’re moving too fast – Jack Johnson’s soothing voice brings me back to ‘Oahu and a relaxing day at the beach. I love this song because it puts me in a calming space and reminds me to slow down. Life seems to move quicker and quicker. I know so many of us can relate to getting caught up in the grind and are seeking a balance where time slows down a bit and we can appreciate the small moments. Growing up and now raising my family in Honolulu has been an interesting mix of “slowed down” and relaxed experiences at times. For example, when your friends say the BBQ starts at 6:00, and you know it’s totally acceptable to come at 7:00 or 8:00. Yet, in recent years I find myself getting caught up in a faster pace, rushing from school to pick up my kids with anxiety creeping in while moving from one appointment to another, meeting deadlines, or feeling like things just keep getting added to the plate.

Living in Italy is an interesting, paradoxical experience of both fast and slow living. The Italians talk a mile-a-minute, and drive even faster (I recently told my mother-in-law not to be offended when the Italians, tailgate, honk, or cut you off, it’s literally just how they drive). In fact, I feel like I need to shoot my morning espresso for an extra jolt of confidence before heading out on the narrow country roads I drive my kids to school on each day. The ironic thing is, after speeding to get somewhere, most Italians slow down and take the time to engage with each other. 

For example, at 10:00 on any given day of the week, people pause their workday to head to the Bar (coffee shops) for their morning coffee and chat. Friends or colleagues will meet up at this sacred hour, engaging in chiacchiere (the Italian form of talking story), catching up, or gossiping with the local townspeople. This is typically followed by a long lunch around 1:00. You’re never given the bill unless you ask, never pushed out of a restaurant, or cafe. People take the time to savor their food, conversation, and companionship of those they are with. It’s no surprise that the Slow Food movement started here, an organization focused on “preventing the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions, to counteract the rise of fast life and combat people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat”. 

It’s not just the coffee and food that people take the time to savor, but family, community, and the arts are also at the top of the list. Even taking the time to do nothing is valued. The Italians have this iconic phrase, “la dolce far niente,” which translates to “the sweetness of doing nothing.” I understand this as an ode to living in the present moment and savoring the simple things. For me this has been a real cultural mind-shift, particularly so because it is such a stark contrast to our popular American cultural concepts, as in phrases like, “time is money,” and our focus on individualism versus collectivism and community.

As I reflect on all of this I realize that children, like the Italians, have a pace of their own. How often do you see children pausing to stare at a grasshopper, ask questions about specific things, persist in doing something like fastening their seat belt until they can do it themselves (even though you’re late to school, again!)? Ellen Lynn Hall, Jennifer Kofkin Rudkin, authors of Seen and Heard: Children’s Rights in Early Childhood Education, write about children’s natural pacing and adult expectations:  

Listening to and respecting the rights of children means providing time. It may take time for children to exercise autonomy when they are mastering such new skills as crawling or walking down hallways, climbing into car seats, putting on socks and shoes, or washing their hands. Similarly, it may take time for children to express their thoughts and desires, especially when using a language that is not yet well developed. It also takes time for adults to understand the languages that children may prefer, such as creative expression and play. Adults may have neglected and forgotten these languages in the course of growing up (2011, p. 13). 

For me, as an adult, parent, and teacher, this is a powerful reminder of the child’s perspective in our grown-up world and it resonates with me on an emotional level. I think too often adults try to make children see something from our own perspective, but how often do we really question (or remember) what it is like for the child? How can I truly be more aware and respectful of this lens? Hall and Rudkin further describe the tension between an adult’s and child’s concepts of time: 

Differing orientations to time can create challenges for adults and children alike. The adults' desire to hurry easily eclipses the child's momentary fascinations, and it can be difficult for adults to share authentically the focus of children's interests. The challenge of integrating different time orientations led one adult writer to describe childhood as a time when ‘the days are endless and the years fly by’ (Schiff, 2003) (2011, p. 13.)

How can I be more intentional about showing children that I believe in a competent image of themselves?

In the Reggio preschools and infant/toddler centers, a thoughtfully designed schedule allows for a relaxed day with minimal transitions, offering children time to investigate, explore, create, and reflect at their own pace. Louise Cadwell, an American educator who spent a year interning in the Reggio Emilia schools, describes the atmosphere of children and teachers catching up after the weekend: “Children and teachers chat, catch up, and share the pleasure of each other’s company. There isn’t any rush, there isn’t a feeling that there is a need for control on the teachers’ part. It is just pleasure” (2005, p. 18). In fact, the word “pleasure” comes up a lot when describing the Reggio schools. Reggio Emilia educator Carlina Rinaldi shares how pleasure is an integral part of the approach: “Pleasure, aesthetics and play are essential in any act of learning and knowledge-building. Learning must be pleasurable, appealing, and fun. The aesthetic dimension thus becomes a pedagogical quality of the scholastic and educational space.” (2005, p. 53) Pleasure – what a beautiful word to describe school, a true reflection of what Italians value in communal life. I can’t help but draw parallels to the word joy we use to describe Hanahauʻoli, which literally translates to joyous work.  

During my recent study tour in Reggio Emilia, Atelierista Filippo Chiedi shared images and videos of how the day begins in the Balducci preschool. In the piazza (a large central area of the school, a place for gathering, intentionally built to mimic the town squares all over Italy), families and children gathered with their teachers to begin the day by listening to music, dancing, and playing instruments. Light flooded the space, with plants, trees and children’s work everywhere. Children were seen giggling, families were hugging, dancing, running around, and playing. It was an incredibly joyful and relaxed atmosphere, full of pleasure. Like many early childhood goodbyes, there were some tears when parting with parents, but the intentional time to connect eased the transition for all. 

Throughout her speeches and essays, Reggio Emilia educator Carlina Rinaldi often remarks about children and time. She shares:  

The etymology of the word ‘school’ links the concepts of school and time. . . The Latin schola (shole in Greek) means leisure, free time, time to spend studying and reflecting. . . SO a school that forms is a school that gives time – time to children, time to teachers, time for their being together. . . Is it legitimate today, when everything seems to go towards ever greater speed, in fact towards super-speed, to admire slowness, empty time, pauses?  . . The question is to be able to listen to this time of ours and propose it not only as a right, but as a social and cultural value – a value that children offer to us (2005, p. 158). 

This shows the direct correlation between time and how we construct the meaning behind what school could be. Now 18 years later with advances in technology and other fast-paced modalities this lesson from the children holds even more importance. As educators and parents we may have to ask ourselves, what values do we hold around time and how do we listen to the children's sense of time? 

Over the course of my sabbatical, I am contemplating more and more how to slow down, appreciate a child’s pace, even the ‘empty time’ as Rinaldi puts it, and learn from it because it can add to the joy, pleasure, and togetherness of being with children, both as a parent and as an educator. Our early childhood classrooms are full of joyful and busy children, buzzing about, working and playing. Each school year seems to begin with a slow, intentional pace of easing into the school year, building community, connections, and play. Before you know it, it seems we are running out of time to include key experiences, skill areas, or learning trips, but I am beginning to truly reflect about the value of a more relaxed pace. How can I shift my perspective and take the time to pause, and truly listen to children?

This work also has me reflecting on seeking a better balance for educators. Teachers often have maxed schedules and responsibilities in addition to teaching, such as report writing, committee work, curriculum redesign, parental communication, and more. At times, this can lead to a state of overload. I contemplate how the school culture as a whole can spend more energy listening to one another, being with the children, being with each other, and finding pleasure in the day-to-day process of sharing meaningful learning experiences. In our fast-paced culture, can schools be a haven of natural childhood pacing, where we take the cues from children to slow down and concentrate on finding the joy in what we do? How can we intentionally transition from a constant state of doing to be more focused on just being?

Rinaldi further explores the concept of time and directly relates it to listening in her speech, The Pedagogy of Listening. She states:“In fact, the most important gift we can give to the children in the school and in the family is time, because time makes it possible to listen and be listened to by others” (2005, p. 39). Rinaldi adds, “when you really listen, you get into the time of dialogue and interior reflection, an interior time that is made up of the present but also past and future time and is, therefore, outside chronological time. It is a time full of silences”(2005, p. 39). How often do we take the time to listen? To make space for children to develop their thoughts, without answering them, to get to something we hope they will understand from our adult perspective or agenda? Do our early childhood schedules reflect an intentional pacing where young children have time to develop these relationships, reflect, and live presently, and where adults are attuned to truly listening to children? 

Rinaldi builds on her ideas of listening and time sharing:

In the metaphorical sense, in fact, children are the greatest listeners of all to the reality that surrounds them. They possess the time of listening, which is not only time for listening but a time that is rarefied, curious, suspended, generous – time full of waiting and expectation. Children listen to life in all its shapes and colours, and they listen to others (adults and peers). They quickly perceive how the act of listening (observing, but also touching, smelling, tasting, searching) is essential for communication. Children are biologically predisposed to communicate, to exist in relation, to live in relation” (2005, p. 40). 

Rinaldi adds that schools should be “a context of multiple listening” that “overturns the teaching-learning relationship. This overturning shifts the focus to learning; that is, to children’s self-learning and the learning achieved by the group of children and adults together.” (2005, p. 40) The Reggio educators assert that we adults spend so much time teaching children to listen, perhaps lamenting that they don’t know how to listen, but really, they are listening with all of their senses, and it is us who need to take more time to listen fully to them. In this way, we can understand their search for meaning, their reflections, and their natural inquiries. 

It seems that in America, and worldwide, more and more pressure is placed on children to learn and achieve at a quicker pace. A fellow mom at my son’s preschool in Florence told me she was at home in Texas over the summer and saw a sign at a preschool that read “We teach three year-olds to read.” She was appalled, as her experience at our children’s asilo nel bosco (preschool of the forest) did not place any pressure on young children to read and write (and by this I mean decoding text and writing by sounding out letters and their associated sounds; it is clear that children read from birth and begin mark making shortly afterward), but rather gave them the gift of time to develop and wait for developmental readiness to learn these skills. During my initial study tour in Reggio Emilia, the educators told us that they do not push children in the skill areas, and take their cues from listening to and observing the children to indicate their readiness for such things. Rinaldi concurs and speaks of the Reggio Educators’ conviction and assertion to stay strong to their values of not pushing children: “All this requires time. Time gives shape. We chose. We sought to give time to the children and to ourselves. We have said no to any form of precociousness, to starting children early at primary school or on reading and writing. We strongly defend the 0 to 6 project that guarantees children a time when they are not being pressured” (2005, p. 131).

Rinaldi suggests that the time for listening is also strongly connected to the conviction that children (and adults) are on a constant search for meaning: 

Listening plays an important part in achieving an objective that has always characterized our experience in Reggio: the search for meaning. We understand the school (which, for us, is the early childhood center) as a place that plays an active role in the search for meaning - the meaning of the children and adults as well as their shared meanings. One of the first questions we ask ourselves as educators is: How can we help children find meaning in what they do, what they encounter, what they experience? And how can we do this for ourselves’  (2005, p. 40)?

I find that this is also the case in our Kindergarten-1st grade multi-age classrooms at Hanahauʻoli.  Children are constantly asking questions, discussing their experiences, creating and designing projects to demonstrate their learning and questions, and are immersed in hands-on, community-based experiences to support this meaning-making.

In The Hundred Languages of Children, contributing author Lella Gandini describes what a detriment a strict schedule can have on all of us: “We tend all too often today to become slaves of the clock, an instrument that falsifies the natural and subjective time of children and adults” (1993, p.58). Teaching at Hanahauʻoli, I have been incredibly fortunate to have worked alongside exceptional educators who have dedicated their careers and lives to listening to children and respecting their sense of time. My mentor teacher and former partner teacher, Lauren Inouye, is an incredible example of an educator who takes the time to engage with everyone she sees, especially children. I realize now what a rarity it is to meet and be privileged to spend time with someone who makes each person, each child feel as though they have your complete attention, as though the time they are taking to listen and engage with you is of the utmost importance. It’s a special individual who can make you feel this way, and a total gift to those who experience it. 

Leslie Gleim, Mid-Pacific Institute educator sums it up well:

In our hurried 21st century North America, we are often careless about the value of time: time to greet each other in the morning, time to observe, time to know each child intimately, time not just to watch the sunset, but time for the exciting afterglow that follows, time to slow the pace of the day down to let connections form, time for creativity to flourish fully, time to let classroom traditions emerge. Realizing how much you must slow your adult stride to match the child’s pace — is recognizing, as teachers must daily, that little boys and little girls need time (Clemens, 2012, p. 81). 

This observation so beautifully captures the message that we – adults, as parents and educators – are students of children. If we only take the time to listen, to be present, with all our senses as our children do, then we too can slow down and enjoy the sweetness of time.

Works Cited: 

Clemens, Sydney Gurewitz and Gleim, Leslie. Seeing Young Children with New Eyes: What We’ve Learned From Reggio Emilia About Children and Ourselves. Self-Published, Leslie Gleim, 2012.

Gandini, L. (1993) History, Ideas, and Basic Principles. Gandini, Lella, Edwards, Carolyn P. and Forman, George. The Hundred Languages of Children : the Reggio Emilia Experience in Transformation. Norwood, N.J. :Ablex Pub. Corp.

Hall, Ellen Lynn and Rudkin, Jennifer Kofkin. (2011) Seen and Heard: Children’s Rights in Early Childhood Education. New York, N.Y. : Teachers College Press.

Rinaldi, Carlina. (2005) In Dialogue With Reggio Emilia: Listening, Researching and Learning. London, England: Routledge.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sarah DeLuca is a K-1 early childhood educator at Hanahauʻoli School, where she has been teaching and learning with and from her students, colleagues, and families since 2009. Sarah was born and raised in the Kaimuki area and is an alumnus of Iolani School. She received her bachelor's degree from the University of Oregon in International Studies and her (MEdT) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has lived and studied in Italy and enjoys traveling to spend time with extended family there. She finds great joy in working alongside young children, particularly exploring our beautiful island home, creating art, and getting lost in the wonderful world of books.