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Getting Kids To Thrive Outside Of Their Comfort Zone
Education & Catastrophe 74
John Tan
October 22, 2023
Tree climbing at Saturday Kids Unplugged Karuizawa
Hey y’all! This is John.
This newsletter is about human flourishing. Ostensibly it’s about better parenting and fixing education, but ultimately what I really care about is helping young people flourish.
I spent the earlier part of the week running the first autumn edition of Saturday Kids Unplugged Karuizawa. For those unfamiliar with Unplugged, I wrote about spending time in nature with city kids in issue 60. Covered in this issue:
Getting kids outside of their comfort zone
Providing the scaffold to help them thrive
Let’s dive in!
Karuizawa is one of my favourite places in Japan. It has so much to offer in terms of nature, weather, food, architecture and culture. There are good reasons why it’s called the Hamptons of Japan. After seeing how much kids enjoyed Saturday Kids Unplugged this June, I decided to run a shorter camp (3 days instead of 5) in autumn. This week is not an official school holiday in Singapore - just three days of school being closed for PSLE marking - so getting enough sign-ups to start the camp was a challenge. In the end, I brought 4 of my 5 kids (Cory had to stay in Singapore for his GEP test) to make up the numbers — 9 kids in total from 3 different families.
One parent told me at the start of the camp that one of her twin daughters does not enjoy the outdoors and was not particularly pleased about having to join the camp.
I have twin girls and one of them did not want to attend because she said she doesn’t like the outdoors. She was apprehensive and was unhappy that we sign her up without asking her. Amazingly after day one she came back super happy that she has new friends and was breaking out of her comfort zone. She was tired by the end of the day but was happy she tried new things.
The quote above really sums up the spirit of Saturday Kids Unplugged. It’s about getting out of your comfort zone, adapting to a new environment, putting aside your apprehension (fear even), making new friends, trying new things, and enjoying the moment.
This week we started the camp with Owl Adventure in the morning of day one. Having done this high ropes course several times, I know some kids need a little nudging at the start.
The two youngest kids (both 5) getting ready for high ropes course
One of the 5 year olds did not want to do the high ropes course and was tearing up a little. I told him Quinn (my youngest) is also 5 and will help him along. Quinn just did the high ropes course in June and is comfortable doing it again. It really helped the other 5-year-old that someone the same age as him was showing him the way.
The interesting thing about high ropes is that very often, after kids get over their initial fear and attempt the course, they want to do it again. My 7-year-old, for example, did the 6-metre and the 8-metre (twice) after doing the 2-metre. Two kids, at the end of day 2, asked their parents if they could do Owl Adventure again the next day. For a coach, there isn’t much more you can ask for than hearing kids ask their parents for more.
Kids don’t thrive outside of their comfort zone just because they are placed in a new environment. These are the necessary conditions.
Play
Kids want to play. If you ask an 8-year-old what they want, more often than not, the answer is to have fun. Adults can tap on this instinctive desire to play by designing fun and challenging activities. A high ropes course may seem daunting initially, but once they get into it it’s a lot of fun getting across different types of hurdles, at different heights, with the reward of ziplining to the bottom if you clear the course.
Peers
If you’ve ever spent time in the military (as all Singaporean men have), you’ll know that whenever the going gets tough (e.g. the first day of basic military training), what keeps you going are the peers you have around you. The same goes for kids. Just like how Quinn helped the other 5-year-old overcome his fear of getting on the high ropes course, kids discover their self-confidence through attempting new things with other kids.
Projects
Kids develop skills by working on projects. Projects provide kids with the context for the new environment they are put in.
Quinn collecting branches to build a shelter
A new activity we added in the autumn edition of Saturday Kids Unplugged Karuizawa is a build-your-own-shelter challenge. We split the kids into two teams, gave them the simple brief of constructing a shelter using found materials in the forest, and let them get on with it. Kids learnt to plan, collaborate, lead, build and be resourceful. The fact that they were split in two teams also added a competitive element to the activity, which motivated them to try harder.
The winning team’s shelter
Another project kids attempted this week is learning to start a fire using flint and steel, and chopping up vegetables to make soup.
Vegetable pasta soup
If play, peers and projects sound rather familiar, it’s because Scratch inventor Mitch Resnick calls them the 4 Ps of creative learning (passion being the missing P here). Not that passion is not important, more that in the context of a five-day outdoor camp, it’s a big ask to also help kids discover their passions.