We’re trying to equip our children with the skills they need while questioning what others deem important. In today’s episode, Jenna is joined by Kier Gaines, a licensed therapist, former special education teacher, content creator and father.
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Kier and Jenna share what milestones (actually) matter most to them, which ones they’re working on and which ones we can spend less time thinking about. At Begin, we’re convinced that children are capable of academic success and self-worth. We’re committed to moving away from outdated benchmarks that neglect our child’s sense of wonder and re-centering their milestones around self-discovery and exploring the world around them.
Recap
Guest: Kier Gaines (Licensed Therapist, Father, & Social Media Personality) & Dr. Jody LeVos (Chief Learning Officer at Begin) Host: Jenna Arnold
In this inaugural episode of Let’s Begin, host Jenna Arnold explores the immense pressure parents face to raise “perfect” children in an imperfect world. She is joined by Kier Gaines, a licensed therapist and father whose viral videos on mental health and parenting have resonated with millions (including Oprah and Vice President Kamala Harris).
Together, they challenge the traditional “benchmarks” of childhood success—academic scores, obedience, and early achievement—and propose a radical shift toward “waypoints” that prioritize emotional health, resilience, and the messy, nonlinear process of growing up.
The Problem: The “Vending Machine” Parent
Kier identifies a dangerous transaction mindset in modern parenting. We often treat children like vending machines: we put in the “coins” of good parenting (organic food, tutors, activities) and expect a specific “snack” (a well-behaved, high-achieving child) to fall out.
- The Reality: Children are independent humans with their own wills, temperaments, and timelines. As Kier notes, you can create the perfect environment of empathy, but if your child is intrinsically abrasive, they won’t simply become kind overnight.
- The Consequence: When the child doesn’t “perform” as expected, parents feel they have been ripped off or have failed, leading to resentment and pressure that damages the relationship. We mourn the “idea” of the child we thought we would have, rather than accepting the one in front of us.
The Philosophy: Connection Over Correction
The core theme of the episode is shifting from “correcting” behavior to “connecting” through it. Kier argues that we spend too much time trying to make our children “good” (compliant) and not enough time helping them be “healthy” (emotionally intelligent).
Kier’s Insight:
“We are raising resume children… We want them to have the accolades. But the real milestone is: Can you sit with disappointment? Can you repair a relationship after you’ve broken it?”
3 Key “Waypoints” That Actually Matter
Kier prefers the term “waypoints” over “milestones” because milestones imply a destination, whereas waypoints simply indicate direction on a journey. Here are three critical waypoints discussed:
1. The “Repair” Waypoint (Resilience in Relationships)
The Issue: Parents often feel they must be perfect authorities who never make mistakes. They fear that apologizing diminishes their power.
The Solution: The milestone isn’t not yelling or messing up; it’s how you repair the rupture after. Kier emphasizes apologizing to children to model accountability.
The Lesson: “If I can show you how to say ‘I’m sorry’ and mean it, I have given you a tool that will save your marriage and your friendships 20 years from now.”
2. Emotional Vocabulary (Beyond “Mad” and “Glad”)
The Issue: Particularly for boys, emotional vocabulary is often limited to two states: happy or angry. Sadness or anxiety often manifests as rage because there are no other words for it.
The Solution: Expanding the child’s lexicon to include words like “frustrated,” “disappointed,” “anxious,” or “jealous.”
The Lesson: You cannot regulate an emotion you cannot name. Giving children the words to describe their internal state (“Name it to tame it”) is the first step to self-mastery.
3. The “No” Waypoint (Handling Boundaries)
The Issue: We want our kids to be happy, so we often avoid setting hard boundaries or distract them immediately from disappointment to avoid the tantrum.
The Solution: Allow children to sit in the discomfort of being told “no” without fixing it for them.
The Lesson: The ability to accept a boundary without collapsing is a critical life skill. As Kier notes, “The world is going to tell them ‘no’ a lot. They need to know how to handle it in your living room first.”
The Science: The 5 Cs Framework
Dr. Jody LeVos joins at the end to explain the framework Begin uses to measure these “new” milestones, called The 5 Cs:
- Core Skills: Reading, writing, math (the traditional stuff).
- Character: Empathy, resilience, and social-emotional skills.
- Critical Thinking: Executive function and problem-solving.
- Creativity: Innovation and expression.
- Curiosity: The driver of lifelong learning.
The Research: While schools focus on the first C (Core Skills), research shows that the other 4 Cs are actually more predictive of long-term life satisfaction and career success in the 21st century.
Final Thought: Give Yourself Grace
Kier concludes with a message for the parents themselves. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and you cannot teach emotional regulation if you are dysregulated.
“You are doing a hard job in a hard time. Give yourself the same grace you are trying to teach your children. If I die and just don’t make sh*t worse, that’s winning.”
Episode Transcript
Jenna: Hello friends. You, like me, might be part enthusiastic, part curious, part confused, and then a large part flat-out scared about navigating what was supposed to feel natural, straightforward, and constantly blissful: raising children. Hi, I’m Jenna Arnold, a mother of two with a handful of degrees in childhood education who, in partnership with the early learning company Begin, is calling into question the ways we should reframe what achievement looks like for our children today. We’ll also hear from their brilliant Chief Learning Officer, Dr. Jody, at the end of this episode.
I found myself questioning a number of these societal suggestions, like these age and stage-based benchmarks that help us track progress but also cause wild levels of anxiety for caretakers already stretched too thin. As a former elementary school teacher and mother, I hold goal setting and boundaries sacred for obvious reasons. Yet I’m confused about what to do with some of these benchmarks that feel unhelpful and unnecessary when all I care about is helping my little people absorb this layered world and their constantly evolving selves with grace. At the same time, I need to prepare them for a life of stability, success, relationships, and paying their cell phone bills on time so I can track them constantly.
Of course, I’ve invited Kier Gaines, the most expert dad and licensed therapist whose millions of followers—including Oprah and Vice President Harris—look to him for guidance on how to reframe their views on themselves and particularly on how to parent. I wanted to see which milestones Kier thought were time to shove and which ones we should dust off and celebrate more. To my relief, he agrees self-deprecation is absolutely critical, but the ones that aren’t just our personal oxygen masks require a much deeper dig into the way we actually treat ourselves. We’re glad you’re here. Take a deep breath, and let’s begin.
Thank you so much for agreeing to be part of our inaugural episode. You’re certainly the go-to for so many folks today.
Kier: Well, I love to hear that because as a parent, sometimes I have no idea either.
Jenna: Yeah, that was good in conclusion right there. Just like that. There’s so many different lanes that we could dive into, but there’s one that I want to be able to pull some layers back for our audience, specifically related to the “I don’t know” of what it is that we’re doing in this time. So for me, I’m finding myself stuck in this space of old-school milestones and things that we need to check the box on, and these new, more existential, soul-filled oriented goals that I want for the kids. So how do you juggle the contradictions of the things we want for our kids and dare I even say ourselves?
Kier: The short answer: Sometimes I don’t juggle them very well. And it’s not about mastering all of these different things that I would like to see in my child that I probably secretly would have liked to see in myself. Sometimes it’s about being very real with myself about my expectation setting and where it comes from. But just with the things that I want for my children, the way I kind of manage it is—and I think you said it before in the intro—you can’t really account for human behavior. Sometimes I can set up the perfect environment of empathy and understanding, but if my child is just intrinsically an abrasive person, that’s not going to go the way I want it to go.
And now it’s not so much about hitting the goal; it’s about my attitude between point A and point B and how bad I make my child feel about who they are as an individual. And it’s different. It’s not the same thing. I think kindness and developing a level of just genuine niceness for the people around you works in conflict with you also trying to teach your child how to be tough. There are points in the classroom where if a child says something to you you don’t like, there are times to be amicable and hold out an olive branch and say, “Hey, you know I really don’t like that.” And there are times to really stand up for yourself. You can’t get it right every time. It’s not about hitting the mark.
You say benchmarks; I use the term waypoints. It’s not about hitting the waypoints every time. It’s about the lessons that we learn in between. I always say adult behavior is so fixated on the end goal—how did it end up? What was the final result? How successful or not successful was it? And we kind of measure kids by the same standard. And the end goal for them isn’t really the big thing; it’s the process. Which for me, even though that’s a good thing and that is developmentally appropriate, it doesn’t mean that I can’t be profoundly frustrated by it, which I find myself quite often.
Jenna: I love the idea of waypoints. I think of Moana—happy to break into song at any point, I’m sure you’re well versed in all those songs.
Kier: Oh absolutely.
Jenna: But this idea of like waypoints is actually just a direction on a compass. You were just headed North-Northwest. And so I love this idea of… one of the milestones that I really want to break with my kids—and I’m doing this with myself too, and I find myself having to do this a lot with other adults—is breaking the idea that there’s a fixed answer.
Kier: Yeah, I mean look how much evidence we have around how much the old way of thinking doesn’t work. Because we’re not only trying to build this infrastructure of our children’s childhood, we’re also kind of trying to outpace our own childhood. You know humans have this imaginary—not imaginary but this invisible—understanding of “I had to suffer through this, it created this important part of my identity, you should have to suffer through it too in order to obtain this important part of your identity.” And I think our generation is really understanding that this doesn’t work.
But I have a video I just posted on my social media of my two and a half year old calling me weird because I told her not to post a picture. She’s two and a half. She said, “Daddy you’re being weird. Stop being weird.” And I said, “I’m not being weird, I’m being your father.” It look what you look at what you’re doing to me! It’s because in our house we emphasize emotional expression. And we emphasize emotional expression because it’s so different from the way that we grew up and we see those divots in our own personalities.
So the goalpost is moving because time is moving. Society is different. What we prioritize is much different. We’re raising our children in comparison to the childhood that we had, and we’re mapping all of these new territories that we’ve never seen before and we’ve never experienced before. With that comes a lot of blind spots. And yeah, maybe in 1992 compassion and kindness and empathy weren’t emphasized because they weren’t a part of our social zeitgeist the way they are now. You can’t scroll on Instagram without hearing the word “empathy” or “empath” or “kindness” or “compassion.” We see all the time the fallout from when different margins of society all meet in the same place and those tools haven’t been taught to people. We’ve seen what hate looks like.
But also back then, you can’t get a job that feeds your family with niceness. You know, “yes sir, yes ma’am” is amazing, but it doesn’t necessarily get you to the point where you have some economic self-sustainability. So it yeah, the goalpost is being moved absolutely. And in 20 years it’ll be moved again as society continues to evolve and we find different things more important.
Jenna: I love that your daughter was using the term “weird” because probably in a year from now she’d probably pick new language and then in like six years from now she would just be like “Dad you’re annoying me, stop.” But just sitting in this time… allowing time to evolve and take its time to arrive too feels…
Kier: Allowing it to happen to you.
Jenna: Allowing it to happen. Yeah.
Kier: Allowing our kids to show up. That’s tough. Because nothing exists in singularity. You allow your kids to show up and in your mind you’re thinking this is only going to be beneficial. We also have to remember that humans are very dichotomous in thinking it’s either/or. You know, you can’t have competing ideologies—God forbid—even though they all live inside of us. All of us have competing ideologies, competing identities, competing perspectives all existing in our heads at one time.
And it’s this idea that my efforts are going to produce this specific outcome. And you know, Jenna, one of my favorite things is when people—you’ve seen on Instagram sometimes—when they say “Oh, I do these things so my kids never have to go to therapy.” And I chuckle and I’m like, “Oh man, that’s going to be an interesting topic in 20 years when you’re talking about it in therapy with your children.” Because you think it’s the things that you conscientiously do that are going to affect your children negatively. But really it’s your blind spots. Really it’s the things that you don’t see. The parts of your blind self. The things that you’re too close to.
The things that you think you’re hiding like, “Oh man, little Jimmy you really suck at doing that. Little Jimmy you’re not that imaginative, you’re not that funny.” You know, these things that we think because sometimes our kids’ jokes—and “hey look at me”—they really do suck. It’s not impressive. And that’s okay. But you think you’re not communicating that because you’re not communicating that verbally. But you are saying it with your body language. I mean you told me even your daughter knows you very intimately. They see the things that you don’t say. They have to survive your personality.
So it’s yes, the things that we put into our kids… we hope that we sowed that seed and it produces a little plant that ends up being a tree that ends up producing fruit that ends up feeding everybody. But sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. And not only are we battling the disappointment—or sometimes preemptively battling the disappointment that comes with that—sometimes we’re mourning ideas. We’re mourning the idea of what I thought you would be if I gave this kind of effort. We’re mourning the idea of feeling like time has been lost or wasted if you paid for your child to go to private school for 6, 7, 8, 12 years and then they come out like, “Dad, I really just want to make sandwiches in a delicatessen.” And then you have to test your theory of “I want you to be happy” versus “I want you to be successful” in real time. So it almost everything with human disappointment or just human emotions are going to come down to expectations. Almost always your expectations and how you deal with them when they don’t come to fruition the way that you wish they would.
Jenna: This is a lot for me coming from you because I am real-time trying to raise a daughter to not have the same relationship with her body shape that I do.
Kier: Oh let’s talk about it. I love that you broke that one. Let’s please let’s talk about it.
Jenna: And um a lot of my friends and I spend a ton of time trying to fall on the sword around the relationship our daughters have with their outward appearance. I hold two things. It’s like the “sacred and.” On some token I’m like “I don’t care, me, I love me, I’m so grateful to this monument.” And then there’s sometimes I’m like still in my beach cover up on the beach. And we were laying in bed…
If there is one thing—I could burst into tears Kier—if there is one thing I could take off of my baby’s heart it is her relationship with the way that she looks. But she look… she got right to the like the cord. And I felt so hopeless and helpless that I could spare her of that. And when you say spare you mean like almost protect in a way. I wanted to protect her curiosity and her love for dance and her love for just “go and be yourself.” And that I see a lot of the world telling you “go be yourself, but no not like that.”
Kier: I know that’s a very tough thing to struggle with. In my mind the first thing I said was wow thank God you’re having those conversations with your daughter at 9 years old. Because you get to have the conversation early while the idea of who I am and how I look is still forming.
Jenna: Can we like punt this for another year or seven? Right? Like yeah. But no we can’t. Let’s do the now because her battle with this thing—even though it feels like my battle with this thing—it’s not my battle with this thing. I never had this kind of conversation with my mom. And I have to remember that my stuff is my stuff and it looks like her stuff sometimes. And it lives in the same airport terminal. It might be on the same carousel. But she has a completely different set of baggage that she’s going to have to manage.
So yeah, I hate that you have to have the conversation. But I’d argue that her doing dance and her being in the world, the conversation was going to happen. And I’m glad that she’s conscious that her mom knows and her mom cares and that her mom is not some impenetrable Superwoman that’s impervious to these social pressures. No, mommy deals with them too. And I think that’s one of the most beautiful things that you can model for your children is humanity. “I dealt with it too. I stumbled and I failed and this is how I still manage it.”
I think I mean you probably like “Yeah cool but we still got to deal with this in the house every day.” But it’s a beautiful conversation to have at this juncture of her life in a safe place with a safe person where she can be curious like we already talked about. She can ask questions like we already talked about. She has the room to be self-conscious and be validated in a safe space by a multitude of people who love her. I don’t know if our generation had that same thing. So it’s not the same. It feels just as nasty. But I think the end result will be far different than it was for us.
Jenna: You know when I’m honest with my kids uh with what I like to call the sacred and…
Kier: I love that term by the way. I love the sacred and.
Jenna: Yeah yeah that’s why I like I like make necklaces. This was my… I made a necklace out of it so that I didn’t have to get the tattoo. This is a philosophy thank you.
So when I’m honest with them I call it the sacred and. They don’t know what I’m talking about but I often like hold my hand… my two hands like a whole cup. And in one hand I have one thought and feeling and emotion and in the other I have another. And it’s I have to hold them both in my hands at the same time.
But when I talk about breaking the rule and pushing us both—conversations with my kids—into the sacred and, I feel like um I’m like breaking from the previous generation. Because my parents—I don’t know about yours—but my parents were expert performers. They were like “Everything is perfectly fine honey what would you like for dinner?” You know there was no like “Oh no what are we going to do?”
And so one of the things that I have to hold some grace for myself in when it comes to milestones is this idea of Dreams Deferred for my kids. And what it means to like break the myth in between us. I would say initially on their backs cuz they’re a new generation under like our wings. And we are all experimenting in real time. And if you say at the top of the episode of what we thought parenting was going to be and their burdens… and I couldn’t read till I was 11.
Kier: Care.
Jenna: I had severe dyslexia and so I was like so crazy about my kids learning to read. Like I care… I could care less they don’t know how to ride a bike and they’re nine. You’re all welcome to judge me. I was so obsessive over that because that was the scar that I didn’t want them to have. Shout out to Langston Hughes for the “What happens to a Dream Deferred.” But I often ask whose dream is it? You know? Is it my dream or is it my kid’s dream?
Kier: I keep referencing Instagram, it must be a real… a place I spent a lot of time. But there was this woman on Instagram who posted this image and she says, “Hey I know I’m ugly. I know I’m ugly. I accept that about myself and that’s fine. Just don’t be cruel to me because I’m ugly.”
And all of the comments were like “No you’re beautiful! You’re beautiful! You’re not ugly you’re beautiful you’re beautiful!” And all I could think is she didn’t ask you all that. She didn’t ask you to validate what she already feels. You’re saying that because you’re uncomfortable with the way her words make you feel in your relationship with that thought. It’s not about her. It’s about you. You’re validating yourself through validating her.
And I think that’s something that we have to be conscious of when we’re raising our kids. In the human brain sometimes it’s easy to identify the things in other people that we have a bad relationship with within ourselves or something we’re self-conscious about. I got crazy forehead wrinkles. It’s the first thing I noticed when somebody walks up. Like “Oh your forehead is wrinkly like mine.” It’s “How’s my forehead? Flawless.” Well that’s we call that Botox. I wish I was sponsored by that. That’s hilarious. But that goes to show you like we all have different assertion points into this idea. A lot of people don’t care about those things. Some people care about it tremendously.
But it’s something that I noticed because I identify it in myself. My oldest gives up very quickly. I am not a person that gives up very quickly. And I find myself being way too hard on her when she gives up. And it’s not even about her. She’s six. She’ll grow out of that eventually. Or maybe not. There hasn’t been enough time to tell. But I think when these things happen and we begin evaluating our children and we begin evaluating our own parental capabilities it’s really really helpful. And I know this is hard in 2024 where we we’re emphasizing how valid everyone’s feelings are—which is another conversation, I think we do that to a detriment—but I think it’s good to stop and say, “Hey who is this about right now? Is this about them or is this about me?” And that’s a very hard question to ask yourself as a parent because it’s a million things going on at one time.
Jenna: I don’t want it to be about me. Who does? But there are some other benchmarks that we’ve inherited that we want to make sure are part of the foundation for our kids. What are some of those milestones that still matter for you?
Kier: They’re always going to be milestones that promote autonomy and personal development. Um and this stems from my stuff. You know I lost my mom at a very young age so in my mind it’s very real to me the idea of impermanence in terms of parenthood. My job isn’t to raise a person for a lifetime. I mean it is. But more importantly my job is to prepare a small person to be a bigger person who can learn to take care of themselves.
To me it’s always going to be the the pocket of milestones not the ones that determine success in the world so much. Your vocational success. To your point, what college you got into and and those type of things. You know, how well you can take notes. I think it’s important. But to me the larger success are the milestones that live within the confines of the human mind. How I see myself. How I talk to myself.
Even things that are like personality traits. How well I can tell a story. Feel free to judge me. I know that doesn’t seem like a big deal. But when my two kids tell stories they tell it very differently. It’s… you can ask… you ask a 5-year-old what happened during your day? They’ll probably tell you they don’t remember. But then when you make it into a story narrative you see so much of the personality. And through a story you get something you can’t get through an explanation. Which is like this the leaning into exactly how they see the world. Um and what makes sense for them. Those are always going to be power for me.
Um don’t know how it was in the past but being a special education teacher and working this SPED for so long, I’ve seen families who have children that have severe challenges around those milestones. And even though those families are super strong doing a great job, I can see the frustration on their faces especially when they start doing comparison. I don’t take for granted those developmental milestones that really emphasize personality and being able to make friends and being able to go out into the world and be comfortable with who you are. Or at least developing the sense of doing that because that’s an evergoing journey. I’m 30-something and I’m still working on that.
Jenna: As I’m both like trying to build and as we’ve already discussed protect a heart, I’m also so focused on um the the kind of framework and function of creating a life that doesn’t get in the way of curiosity. So sometimes I find with um some adults that their to-do list is not organized enough that it it becomes the thing that they end up having to focus on is like how to prioritize, how to sequence, how to organize oneself. And because I had um such significant learning challenges early, I worked with educators—special educators—who helped me understand the value of like color coding and numerating tasks or time management. Shout out to the graphic organizer. And so so to me—and it’s the same ex when I was in third grade is still how I organized my priority list today—and so to me there’s some of those key milestones that um I think could be emphasized and lifted up a little bit more.
I also think it’s so critical um to let our kids be bored and understand the difference between being bored and being lonely. How to like sit with yourself and your thoughts and like get in the way of some of those thoughts. And you’ve been at the forefront of this and thank you on behalf of like all of us—and I will just go ahead and speak on behalf of all of humanity—but you’ve really been helpful in naming emotions and how to put language to emotions um for our babies and for ourselves. But there are still some milestones that are important for us to block and tackle for.
Kier: You’re right. And even with my kids uh one thing that we’re practicing in our home in addition to putting words to our feelings is not filling space with words. Not feeling like we have to fill every space with words. Sometimes there’s nothing to be said and that is okay. And I think by modeling the discomfort that it it that comes with not contributing to an awkward situation with words, I think if you can normalize that not being weird or just being a part of how you manage conversations with people, I think they grow into adults that are more comfortable with saying, “Hey I don’t have the words right now but I can sit with you.”
And I think if you can do that for the world, you can build internal systems to be able to do that for yourself. I don’t have the answers you know but but I can I can sit with myself right now. I can sit and I can just be without working towards some idea of perfection or wholeness. Um yeah it’s it’s a Mucky mck.
That’s why I’m comfortable saying I’m a parent and I’m a therapist and I know people like “Oh you know everything.” No. Like experience doesn’t make you a master. That’s why if you get cancer you don’t go and see a cancer survivor, you go and see an oncologist. Experience doesn’t always make you an expert in these things. Um and sometimes formal education doesn’t either. Uh sometimes you never become an expert. You become a person who is a a lifelong passenger of the experience.
And practicing not filling words with space gave me a lot of mental reps and made my muscle stronger in just being like “Hey I’m not supposed to be an expert. I’m not supposed to have the answer. Maybe we can figure it out together. I don’t know.” But it’s definitely a muscle that you strengthen through time with practice.
Jenna: Well Kier Gaines you just thread the needle for us. I appreciate that as we’ve outlined that there are some milestones that we love like color coding and then there’s some milestones we would like to toss away—this performance of perfection. And how as we all enter um um these new phases uh these different waves of parenting um that there is a milestone that should absolutely be centered which is the one around “I don’t know.” Holding the sacred and being confused. Ooh I love the power of silence as a Quaker on Wednesdays that’s really important to me. So Kier Gaines thank you so much for blessing us for the blessing the interwebs. Don’t stop keep going.
Kier: Oh stop it thank thank you for having me. This was a really great conversation. I find that parents need space to be honest because there’s a lot of uh guilt associated with parenthood. It’s such a reflection of who you are and your capabilities even when it shouldn’t be. And I think we need room to say like, “Hey this sucks. I can still be grateful for it and I can still love my kids but it sucks. It sucks right now.” And embrace that and allow that to be a truth without sinking you to the bottom of the ocean. So thank you for having me and allowing me to be my imperfect parental self on this beautiful day while my kids are being rambunctious just tearing my house up right downstairs.
Jenna: Yeah that’s right. Good girls good girls. Yes when you when you can sit when you can sit in the the other… the sucks… and joy is right around the corner. And that’s something we don’t let ourselves have access to that much. Kier thank you so much for holding my hand down the path of milestones that actually matter.
Jenna: Here was us. Now is Dr. Jody, the Chief Learning Officer at Begin who’s going to PhD our confusion. Dr. Jody hi help.
Dr. Jody: Hi Jenna. Thank you so much. And I would I would just love to dig in to what you and Kier were talking about. But first of all I really want to validate the fact that you know you and Kier both expressed throughout your conversation that sometimes it’s hard to know what to focus on. It’s hard to know what’s really important as a parent. And I get it. I have two teenage boys myself and a PhD in developmental science and yet I don’t always feel like I know what I’m doing either.
Um and so when it comes to my work at Begin it’s just been so important for me to really make it my mission to help parents and caregivers find that reassurance in the fact that every child is unique and that growth and development is nonlinear. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes things seem to get worse before they get better.
And I also want to call attention to the fact that academic standards and the metrics that we’ve you know been using socially um as measures of success—the ones that we were raised with—they need to evolve because we need kids to really be able to thrive in this ever changing world. We know that learning is never done and it’s not the same for every child. We are all on our unique learning journeys, even us as parents.
And so I want parents to know that you know if their child is learning to recognize letters maybe a little bit later than one of their friends children, it’s okay. Or if their kids are out digging holes in the backyard while their friends children are sitting nicely and coloring, that’s probably okay as well. There are so many skills that their kids are building out there in the backyard. So every child is unique, development isn’t always linear, and we’re on this journey together.
Jenna: So I’d love to know why you and your expert learning team believe that reframing these milestones is important for parents today. You had mentioned that it’s a relief for parents to be able to see and identify achievement and growth for kids that are outside of the traditional metrics. When I think about growth sadly I sometimes think about Reading Writing arithmetic or you know making our beds properly. But why is it important for us to see other accomplishments for our children today?
Dr. Jody: Listen we live in a really complex world with some really big challenges. And so part of what you know my team is focused on is making sure that we’re not losing sight of the forest—you know the big issues—for the trees.
So yes we need children to be able to recognize letters and and be able to um you know solve math problems. That is important. That will always be important. But we also need kids to know that books are magical. To fall in love with learning. To ask all those W questions even when we feel like we are tapped out of answering questions. Because we need kids who are curious about the world around them. We need kids who are passionately creative uh because we have some really big problems to solve.
And so our milestones—we have over a hundred of them—um but those are really focused around the areas that we believe are so important for the future. And so it will continue to evolve as we show up for each other other differently, as um as the problems in the world change we’re going to continue to evolve our curriculum. But it’s all about having the milestones that we know are going to have the biggest impact in the future.
Jenna: Thank you Dr. Jody on behalf of all of us. So as you can see the effort to thread the needle even with the experts of experts is a futile effort in some cases at best. It’s inevitable that we dream of a life for our children and a future world capable of ensuring they all thrive. And while I’m optimistic that conversations like this and you continuing to join us here is part of that effort, our request is that you too embrace the freedom that exists in the “I don’t know-ness.” In the moving of the milestones. In using outdated benchmarks as backboards not bullseye.
To learn more about Begin and the milestones that matter, head to BeginLearning.com and follow @BeginLearning on social media. Please subscribe to Let’s Begin wherever you get your podcast and leave us review. We appreciate your feedback. A summary of this episode can be found at BeginLearning.com/podcast and you can follow me on Instagram @ItsJenna and Begin @BeginLearning.
Please note that opinions expressed on this podcast are solely those of the host and guest, not of Begin. Let’s Begin is produced by Begin in partnership with Pod People. Special thanks to our production team Alexia Liberman, Beth Roe, Brian Rivers, Caitlin Ryan, Leah Weinstein and Susanna Vasquez. Show cover art is designed by Eleanor Green.
