The Finding Place

08/18/2026

Kind of long but so true.

Why are children the only people expected to be good at everything?

Adults don’t need to be. Someone can be a visionary architect but completely useless in the kitchen. A brilliant chef who couldn’t tell you the first thing about physics. A software engineer with terrible handwriting. A musician who hates sport. An accountant who can barely draw a stick figure.

Nobody worries about these people. Nobody says, “Yes, she’s doing incredibly well as a surgeon, but we really need to bring her poetry up to standard.” Nobody gives the successful business owner extra homework because his understanding of medieval history is below where we’d expect it to be for his age.

We just accept that adults are good at some things and not others.

In fact, we celebrate it. We talk about people finding their thing. Playing to their strengths. Developing expertise. Going deep. Building a career around what they’re good at while happily outsourcing, avoiding, or being completely mediocre at a hundred other things.

But children? No, sorry, we have different rules for you. We’re going to need you to do absolutely everything, and show us you can do it all well. And when you can’t, we’re going to get very hung up on the bits you’re struggling with. A ‘well-rounded’ child is a good child, right.

Good at reading. Good at writing. Good at maths. Good at science. Good at sport. Organised and tidy. Social. Creative. Focused. Resilient. Articulate. Independent. Cooperative. And preferably progressing through all of it at roughly the same speed as everyone else their age.

If you think about what that does to the balance of childhood, it’s crazy. We deliberately hunt out the things children aren’t very good at, expose their weaknesses, then spend years making sure those weaknesses get lots of attention. Usually at the cost of spending more time on what they naturally lean towards.

Then adulthood arrives and...we tell people the exact opposite.

Find your strengths. Explore them at depth. Specialise. Build on what you’re good at. Build on what interests you. Stop trying to be everything to everyone.

Oh. Ok.

So...can someone tell me why we don’t just say that from the start?

08/15/2026

If your child’s not ready or you’re not ready or your school is not ready, The Finding Place is ready!! We meet the kids where they are. We meet their needs socially emotionally and academically!!

We’re quite happy asking whether a five year old is ready for school. But...nobody ever seems to ask whether school is ready for the five year old.

Think about what she’s expected to be able to do before her first day. Separate from you and stay in this new place without you. Sit still and listen. Wait her turn. Line up. Follow instructions with multiple steps. Manage her feelings in front of 25 other children. Ask for help from an adult she barely knows. Patiently wait when that adult is busy helping somebody else. Manage her things, her lunch. Stop what she’s doing and move on when she’s told. Cope with a day full of noise, waiting, stopping and starting.

There are whole school-readiness checklists built around this stuff.

But where’s the other checklist? You know - the one that gets handed to the school, and asks:

Will this classroom work for a child who thinks best while moving around, or being outside? Can it cope with a child who takes a long time to feel safe around unfamiliar adults, struggles to make herself understood when she’s upset, gets overwhelmed by noise, or needs far more reassurance than the child sitting beside her?

What about a child who needs longer to process what she’s been asked to do or needs to watch others for a while before she joins in? Or a child who needs regular space from others?

Will it work for a child who isn’t developmentally ready to read or write yet?

Is the school ready for HER?

Because children like her are not unexpected exceptions. You find that out pretty quickly when you put a bunch of them together in a room.

So when there’s an obvious gap between what this particular child can comfortably do and what this particular institution requires of her, there’s only one place left to put the problem.

On her.

When we see enough of these readiness lists, it’s easy to think they represent a normal developmental benchmark every five year old should have reached. They don’t. Not even close.

Which begs the question - should being ready fall on the young child, or the school?

08/14/2026

08/12/2026

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZnyXDmyAOJ/?igsh=cmFjeTl4MXN3c3Ew

08/10/2026

Less directing. More discovering. 🌱

08/09/2026

You still have time! 🌿 School starts the day after Labor Day, and we’re still scheduling tours!

Schedule your tour today! 💛
https://thefinding.place/

08/05/2026

“For children to learn, they need to pay attention, in order to pay attention, we need to let them move.” — Angela Hanscom.

Playing outside is the best place for children to work on large-muscle motor development. Physical development has its own domain within DAP!

When kids climb they are learning how much space their bodies occupy. Strengthening their ability to navigate their bodies through space AND associating gross-motor movements with directional understanding.

08/05/2026

Summer reading club! We’re learning about onomatopoeia so we’re going on a listening walk!

08/04/2026

Just because a child CAN…

✔️ recognize letters

✔️ count

✔️ memorize sight words

…doesn’t mean they’re ready to sit still all day.

Developmental readiness is about so much more than academics.

08/04/2026

I’ve noticed something after spending decades with young children…

Many children can do the academic work long before they’re developmentally ready for the expectations that come with it.

A four-year-old may be able to memorize sight words.
A five-year-old may be able to add numbers.
A young child may even begin reading.

But that same child may not yet be ready to:
• Sit and focus for long periods.
• Wait patiently.
• Control the urge to talk.
• Manage big emotions.
• Stay with a task when it becomes difficult.

And that’s not because anything is wrong with them.

It’s because they’re still wonderfully, beautifully immature.

Childhood has a natural timeline. We can’t rush the parts of the brain responsible for self-control, attention, and emotional regulation any more than we can rush a flower to bloom.

At The Finding Place, we don’t separate childhood from learning. We protect it.

We play.
We climb.
We dig.
We imagine.
We wonder.
We solve problems.
We build friendships.

Because when children are developmentally ready, learning becomes joyful instead of stressful.

Sometimes slowing down is actually the fastest way to build a lifelong love of learning. 🌿