Mr Renz-Polster, what can you teach children?

Mr Renz-Polster, the year is 2018 - what do our children still have in common with Stone Age man?

Our children have not yet outgrown the Stone Age in terms of their equipment. We think they are exactly what we want them to be. But children are born with their own expectations.

What does that mean?

If you look at childhood from an evolutionary perspective, parents play an important role, don't worry! But human children always develop into a new, uncertain future. You only have to look out of the window: As the children grow up, new territory is literally being created under their feet. And there the children have to get along with their mates, not with mum and dad. That's why they look around quite persistently at other children when it comes to their own life strategies.

How important are other children for, say, four to five-year-olds?

I also call this age range the age of middle childhood. In the evolutionary context of the highly mobile hunter-gatherer group, the mother would now be very busy with a new arrival at the latest. No wonder, then, that children are now ready to turn to a different social world that no longer consists solely of the intensive one-to-one relationship with their mother or main carer. The central developmental motive at this age is being together with other children. Children in general, that's the big thing now.

With every game, children learn to regulate their emotional balance.

Nature planned middle childhood as a kind of economy mode, you write.

Yes, she is picking up on a peculiarity of Homo sapiens. The other ape species only have offspring again when the previous child is independent. With us Homo sapiens, however, the care requirements overlap - in the original wild prey cultures, the birth interval was on average around three to four years. So when the next child is born, the older children are still dependent on care. At the same time, the parents now need a lot of energy for the next child. It is then an advantage if the older child is a little less dependent.

And the firstborn must learn to postpone its needs. In technical jargon, we call this executive ability. This is something that is also emphasised in kindergarten.

However, this does not only develop in kindergarten. Children develop executive functions right from the start. Even two-year-olds learn the meaning of waiting and postponing when playing hide and seek or building towers. They learn all by themselves that waiting can also be nice because something comes afterwards - a reward in the form of positive feelings. For example, when playing hide and seek just before being discovered. With every game, children learn to regulate their emotions. As they get older, however, self-control and therefore getting to know themselves becomes an issue.

Can parents encourage this?

Executive skills are not something we can teach children; they can only develop them on their own. So we can't expect a child to learn to sit still by making them sit still again and again. It will only memorise: What stress! Only if they act on their own initiative, i.e. are intrinsically motivated, will they make progress. A child learns to sit still and concentrate by sneaking up on us during play!

Nevertheless, the child is judged on this in kindergarten.

I am very cautious about observing and evaluating children because the variance in child development is simply unbelievably large. So the child is observed by teachers, but who can guarantee that this observation does not include a norm variant, i.e. that everything is within the normal range? In my opinion, assessing this is not a pedagogical task.

Many parents are frightened by this assessment.

It is the assessments that unsettle parents far too quickly. It would be easier and more sensible to simply tell them: I notice this or that. That way, parents are encouraged to think about it or perhaps involve other professionals. However, today's assessments of children in kindergarten and school are seen by parents as a diagnosis - and these temporary weaknesses are suddenly meticulously observed in everyday life and eventually get out of hand.

Children get up in the morning to make an effort. We can trust that. We parents can only provide support and set a favourable framework.

Can you give an example?

Language is currently an issue that concerns many parents. Your child is a little delayed, still says «l» instead of «r» or «taffy» instead of «coffee». These are normal variations within child development. Nevertheless, someone with an educational background may be of the opinion that this is pathological and requires speech therapy.

And it stays with the parents: My child has a problem with language.

Exactly. They think: My child is particularly vulnerable or perhaps has a disorder. It's a child who can't do something yet. What happens? As soon as a weakness is pointed out, everything centres on this one weakness. Parents are afraid that their child won't be able to keep up and will have disadvantages later in life.

What advice do you have for parents?

It is wonderful for the child when parents see what the child can already do and not what it cannot yet do. Development helps against the latter, and this is inherent in every child. You don't have to tell children that they are children and can't do many things yet. And you also don't have to tell them that they develop what they can do at their own pace and not at that of the neighbour's child. Children get up in the morning to make an effort. We can trust that. We parents can only provide support and set a favourable framework. And that means first and foremost: I'm there for you if you need help. We are a team.

And yet we parents of today are raising our children very consciously.

Parents always act in love and only want the best for their child. But that was also the case in the past.

In what way?

Take the topic of cleanliness education. Parents expected cleanliness as early as possible to have a positive impact on the child's life: It was supposed to help them acquire discipline and learn to control their instincts, their wild, unpredictable selves. Today, however, we know that this potty compulsion has a traumatising effect. Quite apart from the fact that it leads to fighting between parents and child.

So you are calling for relaxation?

No. I find the battle cry «Parents, relax» unrealistic in today's society. The world as it is today offers little reason for optimism. But that's precisely why I think it's important that children are prepared to make the best of their situation. And they can only do this with alert eyes and a courageous heart. If they are self-confident and can stand up for others. And in order to develop this inner strength, they don't need educational programmes born out of fear, but rather human support and a childhood worthy of the name.

Can you give us parents a little help and specific advice?

Everyone has their own story and everyone also has their own «relationship language». In this respect, parents can no more be «educated» than children. Instead, I want to help them understand children and therefore explain why children are the way they are. This avoids misunderstandings and often leads to the next steps. For example, what parents can leave alone so as not to cause unnecessary stress where nothing can be changed anyway.

What do you mean?

Children are not deficient beings, they are 100 per cent ready babies, 100 per cent ready toddlers and so on. They have what they need to be children and take the next step. That doesn't mean that children don't sometimes have problems with their inheritance from evolutionary history - after all, we have changed the world quite a lot. Often so much so that the little Stone Age creatures hardly fit into our world any more.

If children were the way we would like to reprogramme them, they would not be able to grow up successfully!

I don't quite understand that.

Compared to other species, children are actually glorified care cases. No species has to do more for its offspring, has to cater for them so completely - and with as many helpers as possible. So it's only normal that we wish they would just go to sleep on their own. Or eat what's on the table. And not make a scene when shopping if there are no jelly babies. Especially when we are stressed, we wish that the children would just be good and fit into our system ... But they don't.

Is evolutionary history to blame?

What's more, I maintain that if children were the way we would like to reprogramme them, they would not be able to grow up successfully! Because that is the basic problem of Homo sapiens: he is always creating the world anew and human children always end up in uncharted territory. That is why it is not enough for human children to simply copy and copy the book of human life as they develop. Children must learn to write their own stories. They have their own future and therefore have the right to prepare for it «wilfully».

This stubbornness sometimes makes parents doubt their abilities, for example when a four-year-old child doesn't want to sleep alone or only eats pasta without sauce every day.

In fact, many of our children's behaviours can only be understood if we consider the conditions under which children have grown up in 99 percent of human history. Of course they are critical when they are told to eat unfamiliar green food - it could be poisonous. Of course they protest when they have to be alone at night - that would have meant certain death in the past. And of course they imitate older children because they grew up in a mixed group of children from the age of four or five.

Do we have to treat our children in the same way as our ancestors did?

Of course not. We just need to be aware that we are asking a lot of our children today. We have to make sure that we don't overtax them. Because as flexible and willing to learn as they are, they are evaluating their daily experiences with ancient instruments.

So good education is not a privilege of tribal societies?

Not at all. We can offer our children what they need for healthy development, even under today's conditions. But let us become more sensitive again to whether we are not expecting too much from our children. At the same time, we parents would do well not to see ourselves as the movers and shakers in our children's lives, in whose hands the well-being of our sons and daughters lies. We can become more modest. We develop together and are both part of a larger whole. Even if we do everything right, that is no guarantee of success.

Every child has to find the challenge that suits them best.

So closeness and distance is the theme of children's lives?

Not only of children. It is the basic theme of us humans: Attachment and freedom, security and risk. We need security and closeness in order to summon up the courage to go on discovery tours. We can only develop curiosity if we feel comfortable. Stressed children don't learn and they have no courage. Incidentally, we should write this on the door of every educational establishment.

How do children learn?

Children don't want to be overchallenged or underchallenged, but prefer to do what they can «just about» manage. That's when they start to tingle. They find this tingling zone best in unstructured spaces of experience - every child has to find the challenge that suits them best. Because for me, pleasure and fear are in balance on this branch or in this jump! Disorganised nature is therefore a real aid to development.

Because we parents are not always perfect: Do children actually forgive us for our mistakes?

Rest assured: Nature doesn't expect everything to go perfectly, otherwise we would be extinct. Children are quite error-tolerant by nature. It's the pattern that counts, not every brushstroke.