Creative, open-ended play is so January. Sunday's NYT magazine reports that classrooms are achieving dramatic results by pushing kids to create a "play plan" before they hit the sandbox. Po Bronson wants us to try this at home. I'm advocating a little parental self-control.

Reading the description of the "Tools of the Mind" program (which had already filled me with preschool envy, based on a similar piece in Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman's NurtureShock) reminded me strongly of the Marshmallow Experiment. This long-term study, devised by Stanford professor Walter Mischel, has much going for it besides its irresistible title. It's simple, easy to replicate at home, and apparently amazingly predictive. Give a child a marshmallow, tell the child that if he waits to eat it, he can have two marshmallows when you come back, leave, and observe. If your kid waits, long-term life success surely lies in his future. If not, you have some work to do.

That's a gross oversimplification, of course, but the marshmallow experiment and other studies have led many researchers to conclude that it's self-control, more than innate ability, that leads to success both academically and socially. One result of a new focus on teaching that self-regulation is "Tools of the Mind." In a "Tools" classroom, teachers use various techniques to teach children to control their emotions and their behaviors, both socially and cognitively. They coach kids to review their own work, choosing, for example, which of ten letter "D's" they have drawn looks best. They teach them to listen to an inner voice while writing letters to avoid distraction ("start at the top and go around"). They play games and do exercises in restraint, like "Simon Says." And then they do really, really well on skills tests.

But the most dramatically different thing done in a "Tools" classroom is to require kids to create something called a "play plan" for daily "mature, extended pretend play." Going to play fire station? Everybody choose a role, write it down, and stick to it. If a "fireman" leaves the "911 operator" and the burning house in favor of a box of blocks, a teacher gently gets him back on task with the question,"Is that in your play plan?" It's that line, and that example of staying "on task" that's the easiest take-away from both the Times article and the NurtureShock chapter on the Tools classroom. I envision thousands of reading parents hovering over the play kitchen, coaching their young pretend chefs. Polly Pockets in your soup? Is that in your play plan?

The Tools program is a total immersion course for kids in the cognitive executive function: planning, controlling impulses, and persistent pursuit of goals. It's tempting to imagine we can recreate it at home just by devoting sudden attention to the make-believe portion of our kids' playdates. Tempting—and impossible. Even if supervising pretend play didn't represent just another thing for the modern parent to beat herself up over (not only is "homeschooling the new black," but now you have to monitor every minute of "let's be mommies," too), it's missing the point of the curriculum to focus on the single, faddish notion of the "play plan."

What we can do at home is to try harder to teach the life skills that come from solid self-regulation. The notion of directed pretend play seems to support more hovering, but most of what parents can do probably involves less. Dr. Mischel, of the marshmallow experiment, advocates encouraging kids to save their allowance, to wait until dinner, to stare at those wrapped gifts until the birthday party begins. Bronson and Merryman suggest asking a child to rate her own letter-writing or marking a line with a mistake in it instead of correcting a child's homework. Not delivering the forgotten lunch, not extending the tenth reminder of the upcoming book report—those are the tougher, long-term strategies that might help teach a child not to grab the marshmallow before its time. As for failing to put out an imaginary fire? Just pretend it started to rain.

KJ, I agree that the idea of having adults hover around playing kids to make sure their games are on track seems a touch overbearing—not for teachers, necessarily, but certainly for parents. But the part of Paul Tough’s New York Times Magazine article on the “Tools of the Mind” program that stood out to me wasn’t the image of micromanaging adults but the question of how, exactly, they’re supposed to regulate the kids given the rules of the program. In the “Tools of the Mind” classrooms, Tough writes:

There are no gold stars, no telling the class that they are all going to have to wait until Jimmy is quiet; even timeouts are discouraged. When there is a conflict—when, say, Billy grabs a toy from Jamal—the Tools of the Mind teacher’s first questions are supposed to be: What was it in the classroom that made it hard for Billy to control himself? And what mediators could help him do better next time?

But what’s wrong with gold stars? I understand the premise that kindergarteners should be trained to value self-control for its own sake, rather than seeking extrinsic rewards. That was the explanation my parents usually gave when I asked why, unlike all my friends’ parents, they didn’t give me money or a fancy meal out when I got a good report card. But a gold star is hardly a $20 bill. When students work toward earning one, it’s not the star itself they seek. It’s the approval from an adult figure; the recognition that they’ve done well. Still extrinsic, yes, but not such a bad thing to encourage. After all, we spend our adult lives working to please the powerful people above us; why not train kids to do the same?

When I read the rules about the types of discipline “Tools of the Mind” bans, I was reminded of a video of my cousin from his Montessori school days. My cousin, all dark curls and dimples, was filmed at each of the work stations in school, where teachers sat beside him as he completed tasks. The instructors weren’t supposed to tell him he was right or wrong, but just ask questions to nudge him along. Sort of like how “Tools of the Mind” teachers should ask why a student is misbehaving rather than punish him for it. You can see the teachers occasionally struggle with this verbal gymnastics. One asked him to spell “fox.” He did, then added, with glee, “Did you know a fox is a coyote?” Since she couldn’t shoot back that it wasn’t, she instead said “You know that a fox is like a coyote.” Grinning, he explained, “It is a coyote.” And that was that.

In my family, we still coo “It is a coyote” whenever someone is being needlessly obstinate. But the thing is, a fox is not a coyote. And my cousin’s school’s teaching philosophy prohibited the teacher from saying as much, just as it sounds like the rules of “Tools of the Mind” strip teachers of some authority to reward good behavior and punish bad. Elena Bodrova, a child development scholar who helped build the “Tools of the Mind” curriculum, explains the thinking behind the no timeouts rule: “These kids are not born criminals. Even if they do something that is completely out of bounds, they do it because they can’t stop themselves.” I appreciate that sentiment, and the encouragement for teachers to understand why kids are acting out. But sometimes you need to lay down the law—to punish repeated bad behavior or say that no, a fox is not a coyote.

Tags: discipline, education, new york times magazine, parenting, tools of the mind