I recently watched the Dreamworks film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron with my daughters. At the climax [spoiler alert], Spirit, a wild horse, and his rider scale a plateau then leap across a deep divide to more open land, leaving their pursuers faint-hearted and humbled. Despite being an animated feature, it was terrifying to watch because I had grown rather fond of that horse. rethinking the gapIt struck me; this is parenting – standing back as the people we love and have nurtured for years attempt to leap across gaps on the road to adulthood. It’s tough to watch. We would like to minimize these gaps as much as possible by bridging them and steering our children down known, seemingly “gapless” paths. I’ve done this with my own kids; I’ve done it with students many times. However, we must let them leap. Rather than scrambling to fill in gaps, we must help young people strengthen their resolve, for “leaping” is the very thing that marks the threshold between dependence and independence.

The gaps we are most inclined to fill can actually serve as practice for the more significant challenges that kids face as they mature. For example, one of the greatest fears of parents and teachers alike is that the writing of the next generation is steadily declining. However, it’s been my experience as a teacher for thirteen years that teenagers who avoid writing of any kind, learn to write quite proficiently for college applications and other writing of necessity. Without prodding, they use online resources and seek the help of friends and mentors. I think thesis development and subject-verb agreement are important, but surely this teaches more than that! It teaches resourcefulness and instills confidence, serving as the most natural rite of passage to college itself. The gaps we tend to imagine are not the main event at all. Bridging these gaps in advance is a little like buying a classic gray suit to keep in the closet for the potential job interview one day. A suit is not terribly difficult to purchase if needed (and it may never be needed), just as many fundamental skills are fairly easy to learn, especially in the information age. The suit is not the event. If there is an upcoming interview, however, the process of looking for the suit, getting it fitted, purchasing it entirely on one’s own, can be an excellent ritual to prepare for the interview itself and even the job. This is the practice that young people desperately need to enter the adult world. It is important that we leave these gaps for them to experience themselves when they feel the need, the desire and the readiness.

By preparing a way for teens, I believe we do more damage than good. If we push them to learn a skill that we feel is necessary and they don’t, we may be successful in teaching the skill itself, but we also communicate a lack of trust in their ability to learn for themselves and to discern what is important. This can lead to paralysis every time they are faced with a gap that hasn’t been filled. Still, the alternative, letting them wander directionless from one interest to another, does not seem viable to most of us. However, Richard Schwab, a mythologist who works with young people and recently gave a lecture on pathfinding for PLC, argued that wandering is absolutely essential for maturation. It is possibly more frightening for the adults in their lives than the teens themselves, but it is an independent activity that builds “leaping muscles” -desire, self-confidence, prowess, grit, and spirit. Wandering can look different for different kids, and it often looks, well, pointless, to adults. Recently one of our members at PLC put together a ukulele out of scrap wood, pencils and rubber bands. To most adults, that is just silly play, and to some, even a waste of time, but this sort of play encourages kids to believe that they are capable, eventually helping them to do things that they didn’t think they could do. For others, wandering may look like a lack of follow-through and avoidance. For example, teenagers may avoid real world applications of the very thing that they do best. A young person who loves working with little kids, may pass up an opportunity to work at the local daycare center and take up a position as a cashier instead. This seems illogical, but the daycare job may be a gap that this teen is not ready to leap yet; it is just too real. Alternatively, the cashier position is only “practicing” to be an adult; it is preparation for leaping bigger gaps. There is a lot of pretending in wandering. That is the point. If it were real, it might as well be leaping. Many of us played a game when we were kids in which we leapt from the couch to the loveseat to a pillow because the carpet was “lava”! That is precisely what goes on while we are wandering. It starts off very silly and “irrelevant” and eventually gets more and more real, until we are leaping over real, not imagined, gaps. Therefore, the seemingly pointless pursuits of young people are most purposeful. They are practicing jumping because they know what goes unsaid – that there WILL be gaps we cannot bridge for them.

The greatest gap of all is that between leapers and bridge walkers, and it stands to reason that those who spend their youth jumping, mature into leapers, and those who walked, continue, turning around where bridges go unbuilt. Tyler Cowen, economist and author of Average is Over, predicts that in a fast-changing world that is becoming more and more automatized, the gap between the creative minds, the artisans, who make their own paths and those who follow the well-prepared paths will only get bigger and bigger. The innovative ideas and skills of the former will be most needed and desired. If this is true, the best way to prepare our youth is to equip them to go down the UNpaved paths. More than this, such preparation leads not only to likely success but joy and whole well-being. After Spirit, the horse, and his rider leapt across the ravine, there was shouting, jumping, laughing! Leaping gaps results in great celebration and a deep internal security because there is the joy of knowing, “I’ve done something. I’ve really done something.”