In Defense of the Kid-Led Household

Or, what I wish I had said when that one mom friend came over

About a year ago, I invited a friend and her kids over to our home for a playdate. This friend is a casual acquaintance; I don’t know her well, but she has children around the same ages as mine. Our parenting philosophies differ wildly, but we always manage to have a nice time together. 

We perched on the steps just outside my entryway and watched our kids run between the playroom and living room. Ellie had just secured a spot at the Montessori charter school in our neighborhood and was set to start Kindergarten in the fall. 

“I’m really excited about it, I think it will be a good fit for us!” I said enthusiastically. “I didn’t know much about Montessori before attending the pre-lottery orientation, but it turns out we do a lot of Montessori-like things here and I didn’t even realize it.” 

My friend paused and took a slow glance around before replying with thinly veiled judgment, “Well, it’s obvious this is a kid-led household.”

I smiled and changed the subject in the moment, but my friend’s comment burned like hot coals. I ruminated over the conversation the rest of the day, turning our interaction over, fanning the flames and giving way too much credence to her words.

“I just don’t understand what she was getting at,” I said to David later that night, recapping the day's events. “I mean, sure, Montessori places a lot of emphasis on independence, but why say it like it’s a bad thing? Was it a swipe at my parenting? Does she think I let our kids run all over me?” 

I stood on the steps where my friend and I sat earlier that day. Glancing into the living room, I noticed that Lauren had hung a trio of drawings on the side of our entertainment center with messily ripped pieces of blue tape. I looked behind me down the hallway and saw a picture drawn by Ellie. It was attached to the wall in a much neater fashion, but Ellie had hung it with the same level of pride in her work. I thought about our playdate, when the girls had pulled out paper, markers, and glue of their own volition; only stopping to ask for permission when they needed to use the scissors. A laugh escaped as the realization hit me. The aspect of my parenting my friend sought to tear down is one I am very proud of: we are a family that places a high value on creativity.

David and I have adopted the phrase “kid-led household” as a rallying cry. We exchange it with a knowing look when our kids let us into their imaginary worlds, when they make an over the top piece of art, when they do something innovative—it’s an inside joke that also serves as a parenting pat on the back of sorts. 

When Lauren moves most of the books she owns into the living room and adds them to a couch cushion fort to create a library?

Kid-led household. 

When Ellie runs strips of blue painters tape across the kitchen doorway to create a giant web, and finishes it off with a construction paper spider?

Kid-led household. 

When I come home from a Saturday morning appointment to find the girls, with light supervision from David, have made a functioning car wash for their toy cars out of play table chairs, tupperware containers, and string? 

Kid-led household.    

In her book Create Anyway, Ashlee Gadd describes a scene in her dining room that I think about often. She tells the story of her perfectly curated tablescape that brings a beautiful aesthetic to the room, but is ultimately swept aside in favor of both her and her children’s creative pursuits. She says, “I remember feeling a flash of irritation the day I finally scrapped my carefully styled decor, but today, looking around this worn and cluttered table, I am content with the work happening here. Concentration. Imagination. Curiosity.” 

As I write this, our dining room table houses a tub of modeling clay that has been shaped into fossils, a stack of completed coloring pages, a few scattered crayons, a small palette tray of water color paint, a paper airplane, and, perched on the corner where I sit to eat breakfast, my journal with a pen tucked inside. Because nurturing their creativity reminds me to nurture my own.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Create Anyway".