Essential Questions

Are traffic lights reliable?
In the course of our daily lives, we have expectations about what is normal, and what is normative. Those things that are normal are those that we have come to expect to be a certain way. For example, I expect that the traffic lights are going to work on any given day when I walk out the door to go to the park. This expectation is a function of my experience. Since my earliest days I have found traffic lights to be reliable. That there are occasions every year or two that a traffic light does not work is abnormal; it further reinforces my sense that operational traffic lights are normal.

Had I grown up in Kampala, Uganda during the same time period, my sense of normal might be very different. Due to frequent power outages and unreliable wiring, it is just as likely to find traffic lights not working as working. If this was my consistent experience growing up, it would shape my sense of normal. In fact, to find that the traffic lights were operational every time I walked out the door would be abnormal.

What is normal?
The lens through which I make sense of the world and make my way in it is profoundly affected by my experiences of normal. In the United States, I breeze through a green light without thinking that there might be cross traffic that would not stop. In Kampala, I slow down even at a green light knowing that the cross traffic may not stop because they don’t expect the light to be working – or that there may even be greens in two directions! Our sense of normal is inseparable from the experience of making our way in the world.

What role to parents play?
It isn't difficult to see just how profoundly parents shape a child's experience of normal. For example, for my daughters, it is normal to have family dinner. Every evening we sit down together as a family at the table to eat. We talk about work and school, what we've read and people we've met. In this context, my daughters learns how to participate in a conversation. For them, this is normal. Another family chooses to have the television on during dinner every night. A child necessarily experiences this as "normal." The experiences - the daily repetition of routines - shape the way a child sees, understands, and participates in the world.

What are the experiences that shape your sense of normal which you treasure? What are your normal experiences that you wish were the exception? What can you do to establish routines that intentionally establish positive normal experiences?