A Better Question Than “What’s Wrong With Kids?”
A practical resource folder for the adults trying to rebuild the conditions children need.
A few weeks ago, after I published another piece about what children seem to be missing right now, I started hearing the same thing from different kinds of people.
Parents said it. Teachers said it. A medical doctor said it. A trauma therapist said it. And school admin and grandparents said versions of it too.
The wording changed, but the basic message was the same: “This is what I’m seeing. I just haven’t known how to say it!”
That sentence names one of the hardest parts of this whole conversation. A lot of adults can feel that something has shifted in childhood. They see children melting down over tiny frustrations. They see kids struggling to join a group, solve an ordinary problem, tolerate boredom, recover from disappointment, or handle the kind of small social friction that used to be part of daily life. They see children who are bright, loved, capable, funny, and wonderful, but also strangely under-practiced at being uncomfortable, independent, patient, responsible, or socially brave.
And then everyone reaches for the explanations we already have.
Kids these days. Bad behavior. Bad parenting. Screens. COVID disruption. Weak discipline. Anxiety. School pressure. Too much structure. Not enough structure.
All of those may explain part of it in certain situations. I’m not interested in pretending the world is simple. But none of those explanations, by themselves, has felt big enough to me.
The question I keep coming back to is simpler and deeper:
What if many children are not broken, but missing inputs?
What if a lot of what we are seeing right now is what happens when children do not get enough ordinary practice in the things childhood used to provide more naturally: play, movement, boredom, risk, independence, conflict, contribution, mixed-age peer life, outdoor time, social negotiation, and real chances to recover from small bumps without an adult immediately smoothing the road?
That idea has become one of the main threads of my work.
Children do not build self-regulation because adults tell them to calm down enough times. They build it through experience. They lose a game, feel furious, survive it, and play again. They get left out, try another way in, feel the sting, recover, and learn something. They climb a little higher than feels comfortable. They carry something heavy. They help with something real. They make up a game and argue over the rules. They get bored long enough for an idea to appear. They try something that does not work and discover that failure is frustrating, but not fatal.
That is the stuff I think we have been quietly taking away while wondering why the capacities are not showing up on command.
So I finally made something practical for anyone like me who has had a hard time for years putting words to what is going on with kids and how we help fix it.
Today I’m releasing the Missing Inputs Resource Folder for paid subscribers.
The main piece is a 10-page Missing Inputs Conversation Tool Kit. It’s designed to help adults think through what children may need more chances to practice before we jump straight to blame, panic, punishment, or another intervention nobody has the energy to implement. It is not a diagnosis tool. It is not a medical tool. It is not a behavior plan. It is not a replacement for therapy, support, evaluation, or professional help when a child needs those things.
It is a conversation tool.
A reflection tool.
A way to help adults ask better questions.
The folder also includes a 45-minute audio walkthrough/breakdown on how to use the kit carefully. I wanted to include that because tools like this can be misused if we are not careful. I do not want “missing inputs” to become one more way adults quietly judge families, schools, or children. The whole point is to widen our compassion and sharpen our thinking. Humans are very talented at turning almost anything into a diagnostic on a clipboard. This is not that kind of tool.
I’m also including all of the comics and graphics from my Architecture of Childhood series, along with the high-resolution Architecture of Childhood poster in one place. A lot of readers have told me the visuals helped them understand the work faster than a whole essay could. One of you amazing pediatricians even printed out 500 of them in poster size to give away to fellow pediatricians! That blows my mind, but at the same time it makes total sense to me. Sometimes a picture can walk into a staff meeting, pediatric office, school administration conversation, or kitchen-table discussion faster than a 2,000-word essay can.
My hope is that this tool kit gives you something useful to hold onto.
If you are a parent, maybe it helps you think about your own child with a little more clarity and a little less panic.
If you are a teacher, maybe it helps you name what you are seeing without reducing children to “behavior problems.”
If you are a pediatrician, therapist, counselor, or school leader, maybe it gives you language and visuals that help other adults understand that child development is not just about removing harm. It is also about making sure children get enough of the experiences that build strength.
If you are someone who has been following this work and wondering how to talk about it with other people, maybe this gives you a place to start.
The folder includes:
The 10-page Missing Inputs Conversation Tool Kit
A 45-minute audio walkthrough on how to use it
A slide deck you can use to present this information to anyone you may need to
The comics from my Architecture of Childhood series
The high-resolution Architecture of Childhood poster
I want to say something plainly here too.
All of my essays are going to keep staying free and public.
That matters to me. I want these ideas to travel for the betterment of children. I want a teacher to send an essay to a principal showing how they can create a more humane school environment. I want a parent to send one to a grandparent. I want a pediatrician to send one to a family. I want school leaders, counselors, PTA parents, pastors, librarians, coaches, and neighbors to have access to the basic argument without any important concept sitting behind a paywall.
But I also want this work to be sustainable.
I am building this in the margins of a very full life: teaching third grade, family with two daughters, EdD and dissertation work, contributing to the New York Post, maintaining six school garden beds, running Play Clubs, and all of the ordinary human stuff like laundry and trying to remember where I left my credit card (spoiler: I left it at Red Bowl in Greenville last night before the Underoath concert and had to drive an hour and a half today to retrieve it). Anyway…paid subscriptions really help create the margin for this work to keep going in a HUGE way.
So if this work has helped you see children differently, talk about childhood differently, understand your students differently, understand your own child differently, or feel less alone in what you are noticing, becoming a paid subscriber is one direct way to support it.
And I want that support to come with something genuinely useful.
I do not want paid subscribers to get filler. I do not want to make “bonus content” just because that is what the internet tells writers to do. I want to build resources that help this work move from essays into real conversations.
This folder is the first real step in that direction.
If you are already a paid subscriber, thank you. I mean that deeply. This exists because your support helped give me the push to make it.
If you are a free subscriber and you have been thinking about supporting the work, today would be a really meaningful time to do that. You will help keep the public writing going, and you will receive the full Missing Inputs Resource Folder right away.
Thank you for reading this work. Thank you for sharing it. Thank you for sending me your stories, questions, encouragement, and “yes, this is what I’m seeing too” messages.
Those notes have helped me understand that this is not just a personal obsession I developed after watching too many third graders crumble over broken crayons.
This is a real conversation.
And I’m so grateful you’re along for the journey.