As is likely clear from these posts, I am increasingly morphing into a mad scientist of devising ways to soup up the current K-12 educational system, and I am hoping that sharing my experiments and discoveries helps other parents who have been thinking there has to be a better way.

At the same time, it is important to level set and state that on some level: none of these efforts really matters.

Say again?

To be more specific—these efforts to augment and improve our childrens’ educations do not matter if we parents, in our zeal for providing something better, get so caught up in our efforts that we fail to simultaneously address what science has established as the prime directive of parenting.

Love and safety. You are loved. You are safe. You are loved. You are safe.

More and more, the data suggests that if we establish bonds and build a home life that makes all that clear to our offspring, then everything else we do is just delicious icing. But when that sense of being loved and safe is not established, a falling domino path of less-than-ideal ramifications can ensue far into adulthood.

So, much as I would like to unveil the next of the educational supplements that I have been designing in my state of the art educational r&d laboratory, I am going to suggest we take today off, put our parental educational lab coats away.

Instead, we can put in some extra time addressing that prime directive. And when I suggest ‘we’, I most of all mean ‘me’. Modern life is so often just trying to keep all the plates spinning, and I know I am guilty of getting caught up in the spinning and losing sight of what is most important.

Just two nights ago, my wife, kids, and I were all on the same sectional couch together, each doing our own thing, when it hit me that, much as I love simple moments of togetherness like that, it had been months since we had managed such a similar moment. How does that keep happening?

Love and safety. That will be today’s effort. The family is getting a strong dose from me, possibly to the point they will think all my loving and positivity creepy. Well, so be it. Better to err on the side of too much of what is most essential.

I will close this post with a feel-good moment that I think could be the text book example of feeding that primal need for a sense of love and safety landing just right and having the desired effect.

It was years ago, and I was a sitting on the floor of our kitchen, talking with a three-year-old boy. The boy was technically a foster child, but that label doesn’t do the relationship justice, as he and his siblings were in our hearts and minds kin. 

I don’t remember how we had ended up on the floor or what we were up to. Possibly playing with pots and pans.

What I clearly remember is feeling such love for that little dude, to the point of having that sort of fluttering feeling going up my spine, the tangible feeling of love when you almost can’t contain it. 

(This feeling is often also inspired by infants, or, for those who have used MDMA in their wild youth, it is that blissed out feeling in which love feels like it is coming out your fingers).

Amidst that feeling, I was inspired to catalogue all his fantastic little three-year-old qualities, both to express how I felt but also because, as a three-year-old in foster care, he had already experienced some bumps in his development.

The catalogue went something like: you know, I just have to say that you really are are just so so smart, and so funny, and so thoughtful, sand o strong, and so handsome, and your such a good dancer, and such a good athlete, and such a good brother, and really, honestly, truly, just such a wonderful, lovable person.

The little boy took that all in. 

He tilted his head in consideration of all I had said. 

Then looked up with a smile and said: simply: do it again.

No amount of educational innovation can rival moments like that for supporting successful child development.

Not that I’m not going to keep trying, returning in a couple days with an intriguing new recommendation for bringing a bit of intelligent disruption to your child’s learning.

In the meantime, love and safety to you.