I fondly remember setting out on a Saturday with nothing more than phone-keys-wallet and the idea of hitting one exhibit at a museum, only to return 10 hours older and seven-miles footsore, having foraged a meal and a snack on what became an epic, multi-stop adventure.
Needless to say, that level of spontaneity does not exactly fly with kids in tow. The time has come to recalibrate what you can expect to put into — and get out of— an outing. In this ongoing series, I’m going to share some of the ways we’ve successfully adapted our habits.
You won’t get to read it all. And that’s OK.
I mean this on the micro and macro levels. If you’re standing in front of a museum case and there are three panels describing the contents, don’t expect to make it through actually reading them. You’re more likely going to skim the first one, explain what the common thread for those items is and then field questions. Depending on your kid’s age, you can try reading out loud, but you’ll have more luck with image captions or item descriptions than longer interpretive texts.
Chances are also good that you won’t even stop at some of the items on view within a single exhibit (forget about thoroughly exploring an entire facility!). A crowd or a line might be a turn-off for a little one who wants to keep moving. Documents they can’t yet read and, until a certain age, black and white pictures won’t draw them in. You may even find your child content to only take in the left side of the gallery. Or to return to the same spot several times — in which case, you may get to memorize that particular text.
Obviously, you should guide your young companions to things you know will be of interest to them or are particularly important, but try to do it sparingly. Exploration matters in and of itself, and following their lead, within reasonable limits, gives them an empowering sense of agency. There is so much that, as parents, we must dictate to our children. So I advocate saving it for what matters. Eating a balanced diet? Absolutely. What direction to walk through an exhibit that doesn’t have an honest-to-goodness queue? Hardly.
Let your child give you a “tour” and you may learn a surprising amount about them. What are the first things to catch their attention, versus what holds it the longest? Can you find patterns in the types of things they want to see or ask about? It’s a tactic as useful in a science center at an art gallery, on a hiking trail or in history museum.
Admittedly, this is a hard mindset to embrace. The reason I want to imbue my kids with curiosity is that I’m naturally that way myself. I want to learn something too! And leaving this incomplete or failing to follow what I consider a logical path can leave me chafing. But instead of insisting on my preferences or whims, I’ve gotten better at absorbing information quickly, taking in key facts as I cruise past in the boys’ wake.
