121: What if Children Designed Cities? with Mara Mintzer
What if our cities were designed with children participating in the process? What they would prioritize might surprise us all! My guest, Mara Mintzer, did a TEDx talk on the topic of including children in the city planning process, and she’s been involved in this kind of unique child-friendly endeavor in Boulder, Colorado, as the co-founder and Executive Director of Growing Up Boulder. Join us as we take a look at this topic!
Show Highlights:
Mara’s background and current role in Boulder, CO
Public spaces aren’t often designed for children (and mothers).
The United Nations guidelines for human rights for those under 18 years of age
Wisdom from the tiniest voices about slowing down, enjoying the world around us, and noticing our experiences on life’s journey
The Nature Everywhere Initiative in cities across the US
Are we supporting kids’ development with our public spaces?
The value in having culturally relevant third spaces for kids
What would a teen-friendly park look like?
Hearing the voices of many diverse groups that have been traditionally excluded
Feedback from people about what they want in their communities
Promoting involvement from kids to understand their issues and craft workable solutions
A few unexpected things that kids want in their spaces
The dilemma for parents in kid-friendly restaurants with “adult food” AND “kid food”
More relaxed parenting in other countries and better work-life balance
Resources and Links:
Connect with Mara Mintzer: Growing Up Boulder
Mentioned in this episode: The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook
Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning
We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.
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KC Davis 0:00
Hello, you sentient balls of stardust. Welcome to struggle. Care. I'm your host, KC Davis, and today we're going to talk about designing cities with children in mind, but not just about designing them with children in mind, but actually designing them with children participating in the process of design. I'm here with Mara Mintzer, and I just recently watched her TED talk about this idea of including children in the design of cities. And Merrick, tell me who you are, and then let's talk about this, because you have actually done this in Boulder involved children in the planning process. So tell me a little bit of your background, absolutely.
Mara Mintzer 0:41
And I'll tell you my background, and I'll also say that when I first heard about child friendly cities, I also thought it was designing cities that would support young people, it didn't occur to me that it was with them. So I even had a learning curve. But My name is Mara Mintzer, and I am a co founder and executive director of growing up Boulder, we are now a nonprofit program. We were originally based at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and what we do is we elevate the voices of young people to make our communities more equitable and sustainable for everybody. For my career, I have been running programs for and with underserved young people. They are caregivers and parents for many years, both in New York City and in California, before I moved to Colorado. And when I moved to Colorado, I did some networking, and I heard this idea of child friendly cities, which I'd never heard of before. And I said, this has my name written all over it. I want to be a part of that. The
KC Davis 1:39
reason why this topic is so interesting to me is I had this experience probably about a year ago. My daughter was attending a preschool at the time, and I had gone to some parent involved thing, and she had to go the bathroom. So I went into the bathroom with her, and I noticed that all the sinks were really low and all of the little potties were really low, because it was like a preschool. And I was like, That's so clever. Of course, they would do that in the preschool. And I watched her independently go to the bathroom and wash her hands and get paper towels and do this whole routine that I didn't even know she could do independently. Because every time we go somewhere, I have to help her with it. I have to physically pick her up. You know, she gets water all over her clothes because she can't reach the sink. And after that, I started noticing all the places that we went. And it never occurred to me before that even the places that were made for children didn't have these features. Like, we were at the Children's Museum, we were at the zoo, we were at, you know, public parks with playgrounds. But I started noticing like, huh, isn't it interesting that even when they make something for children, designing for children in mind, doesn't reach the bathroom. And so that kind of opened me up to this thinking about how we don't really design public spaces to be hospitable for children, and in turn, they're not hospitable for mothers and parents. And when I talk about this on the internet, you know, you get this huge surge of parents kind of agreeing with me, but then you get this, like, kind of minority but vocal section of adults that are like, well, I don't want to have to look at children. And it's just an interesting you know, children really are a marginalized group, and I think it's so interesting that your approach is including them. So how did that even come about? Because that would not occur to me, I'm sad to say,
Mara Mintzer 3:31
Yeah, well, I mean, and you know, children are, and have always been, and will always be, a part of our society, and some societies are much more open to just having kids integrated and everything. So for instance, when I lived in Argentina, kids would come out to dinner, they would participate. There weren't adult and Kid activities. And so part of it is a mind shift of like there being kid things and adult things, when, in fact, that's really an artificial boundary that I think we create, but yeah, so the way I first learned about this concept was I met this professor, Willem von fleet, in at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and he had founded this children youth and Environment Center. And he explained that there were these child friendly city initiatives around the world. And if you take a step back, and this is going to get a little intellectual, but I think it's actually really important for us to know. So the United Nations has this treaty that's been signed by all the countries in the United Nations, except for the United States, but this treaty has been signed that says there are certain human rights that we need to respect for anyone under the age of 18, and they're different, like some are the same, but some are different from the human rights we think about for adults, like, for instance, the right to schooling, the right to assemble with your friends. You know, things that are not a given everywhere and all these cities work with UNICEF to create these child for. Family cities, and a way to do this is with the young people themselves. That's a key part, is youth participation and child participation. And I actually hadn't specifically done that before, but when we started this program in Boulder, it turns out there are so many ways we can be including young people, and we often think of only teens as being able to be included, but we've worked with preschool kids. Like, one of my favorite stories that always makes people chuckle is we wanted to hear from preschoolers about the transportation master plan for our city so that, like, why go to preschool or care about that? But what we wanted to understand is like, how do they get around, and what do they need to get around safely? And so we put GoPros on their heads, and the preschool classes went out with their teachers, and the teachers are Reggio Emilia trained teachers, which means that they take careful notes and observations of the children. And what we learned from those videos and the notes from the teachers is that the kids felt really unsafe trying to cross the street, even where there was a crosswalk, the cars were just going too fast and they weren't seeing the kids. And so that leads us to think about, well, what are some interventions we can do for areas where there are high levels of children to really slow down traffic and really make it safer to cross the road. And we learned that from, you know, two to four year olds. So it's really, it's eye opening, and it's so beautiful. Yeah,
KC Davis 6:30
I was going to ask, you know, along those lines, like, what were some of the things? Because I know in your talk, you talk about a park and including all these different ages in how this park was going to get redesigned. And I loved the comment you made about noticing that toddlers wanted to stop and look at the leaves in the ditch. And I'm just curious from those littlest voices, like, what were some things that surprised you? Because I think as adults, we think, Oh, they're going to really love the slide. They're going to really love this, like, the features that we think they're really going to love, and it's not like they don't love slides, but what were some of the things that were kind of aha moments for you from some of those littlest voices?
Mara Mintzer 7:08
Yeah, definitely the slowing down. Like I always say that toddlers are our Zen masters, if we will listen, they force you to slow down and just again, think about that journey. And what are you seeing on that journey, and what are you experiencing? You know, kids bodies. They kids breathe more quickly than adults do, and so they're actually taking in more of the air around us, and so air pollution is much more concentrated for them. So just thinking about like, if they're having tons of cars come by and there's no green barrier between the little kids and the road, they're inhaling all of that. And not only is it not good for them, but it's really unpleasant and much less joyful. But what if we create those green barriers between the sidewalk and the road, and then even have cycling there too, so you're even farther from the cars? Those sorts of things came from, you know, there's research about it, but also just the observations. They also taught us to kind of look for the really interesting things along the way. We were doing a walking field trip with a group of second grade English language learner students, and they noticed things that we adults never would have noticed there were little dinosaurs, like plastic dinosaurs hidden under a giant pine tree that we didn't notice, but they found right away because they were closer to the ground. And so when we designed a little walking route that was child friendly, it had all these joyful elements that we adults had completely missed, and it was just delightful.
KC Davis 8:46
I love that. I also love it because I think that the idea of remodeling a park or turning a green space into, you know, a park, it seems like it would be a very expensive endeavor, and I'm sure it is, but it also seems like our heads go right to, okay, we need play structures that you know are probably going to be very expensive, and we need, you know, very manicured spaces, and we think about having to kind of, like, equip the space. And it sounds like, you know, these kids are more interested in just an opportunity to be where they are
Mara Mintzer 9:23
absolutely and I am so lucky because I am working with an amazing team of parks planners at the City of Boulder right now, and we have a pretty unified vision of bringing well. And it's also with the National League of Cities, and it's called the nature everywhere initiative that the National League of Cities there children cities, connecting children to Nature Network is rolling out in different cities. But what we are doing is we are looking to include nature play and nature experiences and nature learning all over the city. And to get to your point, Casey. Right? It doesn't have to be that expensive. For instance, one area that we were looking at right now, there's something that's kind of falling apart. It was a first attempt at nature play well, what we figured out is, if we put just like a very loose fence around that area, and then ask the parks department, you know, don't mow the grass inside, right? They won't mind that, because it's less area to mow, let's let the grass go really tall and wild. We'll put in a few nature plate elements just to update them and make sure they are really safe. And then we're also going to put in things that allows kids who might be using a wheelchair to access the spaces as well, so that there are multiple ways for multiple kids to engage. This will likely not be very expensive. It's much cheaper than buying ready made, plastic and metal pieces, and it can hold children's attention for so much longer because it's free play. It's imaginative, and this is what we need more of. Yeah,
KC Davis 10:56
you know, when I had the first place that we lived, when we moved here in Houston, there was a park near us that was, you know, obviously everything here is, like wooded before you bulldoze it down. But instead of leveling all the trees, and like building this really manicured Park, they had just gone through and bulldozed a path through the trees. And that was literally the only thing in this park, and it was my kids favorite park. And it had me reflecting on, gosh, we do so much for the average park where we have to put in, we make it like a lawn, right? Like a Suburban Lawn, like grass that has to be watered and, you know, maybe some play equipment, and this, that and the other. And here was this spot of land, and I think, you know, they had even sort of named a nature reserves that nobody could bulldoze it down, but it literally had nothing else in it. And not only did my kids like it better, but it was also just more family friendly. First of all, we're in Houston, there was shade. You could go when it was windy, you could go when it was hot, you could even go if it was sprinkling a little bit. And they just never ran out of things to do. And they eventually added a few things here and there about, I think there was, like, a QR code that you could scan to hear about, like, what kinds of birds typically were there. That was one of the points for me that really got me thinking about looking at the spaces that I was visiting with my kids. And I think it's interesting we think about that section of the population that's like, well, I don't like sharing a space with kids, and I think a big part of that is just being a curmudgeon, right? But another part of it is when you have to force kids to be in a space that does not accommodate them, they are going to act and behave in ways that are not going to be, you know, like they're going to be more disruptive, they're going to be more energetic, they're going to be more frustrating and impatient. It's like, that's not just, oh, I don't like kids. That's there's not a way for a child to be in a restaurant where anyone's thinking about their needs. And so do you not like kids, or do you not like how we've designed these spaces to exclude children? That's
Mara Mintzer 13:05
exactly right. And in fact, an example of that is right. So some cities, over time, have used these really high pitched noise makers that only teenagers can hear. We can't hear them, and it tries to stop teenagers from loitering. And it's often in front of, like a store, it's some area that they feel like the kids are engaging in anti social behavior. But I like to turn that around and think, what aren't we offering to our young people as ways that are supportive of their development? So you know, a lot of the behaviors, I think, that we find annoying, as you said are just we're not creating those outlets, that space for them to do what they're supposed to do. And so what is a teenager supposed to do? They're supposed to be social. They're hanging out with their peers. They like to see and be seen just a little bit and be up a little bit higher and watch everything. If we build those spaces, they also want thrill seeking, right? Like, thrill seeking is a part of that age. That's why younger people are sort of more prone to fights or those other pieces. They do have this piece of them that needs an outlet. But like, what if we design spaces that allow that thrill seeking, that adrenaline rush, in a pro social way, and that teens have helped create, that they're then going to go to. Can you imagine what a decline there would be in, you know, graffiti, where we don't want it, and just behaviors that as a society, we've said we do not want, and it's because we're not creating those opportunities for them
KC Davis 14:35
well. And you know, you hear people complaining about, oh, these, you know, kids going into Sephora, and they're too young, and they're into tumblers, and it's, I think there's a big thing about this to talk about when we talk about the absence of third places for adults, but I find that as I've grown it's the absence of third places for teenagers that I think are hit hardest, because, like, when I was growing up, we had malls. Yeah. Even if you didn't have money to buy things, like you would go to the mall, and your friends would be the mall, and there'd be a safe place to walk around. There would be things to look at, there would be things to you know, a couple of things that you could do. And like, malls are dying, right? And think about it like you try to loiter in in front of a store in the way we used to loiter in the mall, and, like you said, they're turning on high pitch noises to get you to leave and then, and I still remember, even with parks, you know, when we would go to parks as teenagers, there was always kind of this side eye of like, this is for little children. You must be doing nefarious things here, and that's kind of where you get this, okay, we're all driving around aimlessly looking for, I guess, someone's house to go, whose parents aren't home. And the very few places, you know, where there was maybe a skate park or something, where that was a little more oriented to teenagers, even when I was a teenager, those were hard to find. And it does make you sort of reflect on, you know, when we find ourselves frustrated by the way teenagers or children behave. It's like some of that we just need to get over, because we've all been children, right? It's important for them to go through those phases. But how much of that are we creating by not treating them like full citizens that have the right to gather and have places to go and just exist. Because, you know, I think I would want my kids socializing in public, instead of driving in them into these private nooks and crannies that they're finding where nobody's watching, nobody's around,
Mara Mintzer 16:38
completely and and, you know, the other thing is, when we think about spaces having culturally relevant third spaces, so one of my colleagues here in Boulder, I just love his vision, but he has this vision for a youth center where it would be created by a variety of nonprofits. So it's not just one nonprofit, but it's a space where there's a place for performances, there's a place for art making, there's a place for group work. There's a place for individual like therapy or coaching. It's staffed by people from the community, for the community, and also it's celebrating these amazing cultures that we're lucky to have in our communities, instead of sort of only showing one version of what a culture and age is supposed to look like. Can you imagine if you're being seen like that and having these spaces where there are other adults that you can work with or be mentored by? I think that would just make such a difference to every teen. What were
KC Davis 17:39
some of the insights that the teenagers had that surprised you about like, what they how they experience spaces?
Mara Mintzer 17:49
Yeah, well, it shouldn't have surprised me, but it similar to what you were saying. We did this project on what would a teen friendly Park look like, and it came out of one of my colleagues when her son was about 10 or 11, he started getting yelled at by the mothers on the playground, being like, get off the equipment. You know, you're too old to be here. You're scaring our little kids. And he said, like, where am I supposed to go? What am I still want to play? And actually, I see this in our middle schools all of the time, and it's heartbreaking. And I actually remember experiencing this. So our kids go from being in elementary school, we get recessed once or twice a day, and there's stuff to play with, and you have free time, and suddenly in middle school, there's nothing to play on. And it turns out that developmentally, they still want to play. They really do and so, but it's this sadness of like everything kind of closes down for these middle school aged kids. And so it was a reminder to me of that need to play. Still, I didn't know that that was normal and part of development, and when I experienced it myself, I was kind of ashamed of like, Oh, I'm 11. I'm not supposed to play. Actually, you are. And so like, we need to bring that back out into the open. We need to give our kids more free time to be able to play and meet without adults hovering over them and choosing all their activities for them and just being unstructured. And that really goes across the ages. And Jonathan heights new book The anxious generation, which I'm sure many of your listeners, and maybe you have read it was, it was heartbreaking and it was exciting, because when I read it, I said every single thing he's talking about in this book is what growing up older my nonprofit does. We have been addressing this for 15 years, and now people are starting to understand why it matters. And before we would talk about it, and people didn't really understand it, but now they're really getting it, and so I think there's an opportunity right now to change things. Yeah, I
KC Davis 19:46
hadn't even really thought about this until now, but I mean, when I think back to middle school, when we had recess, it was like, post like, right after lunch, they did just send us out to the football field, like we weren't going to the. Playground anymore. We were going to the football field, where we were either sitting on the bleachers talking, maybe some boys were running around, and we might have had, like, Foursquare, like, maybe a few balls, but it's interesting, right? Because you're right, we didn't stop playing. We would go home and play. You know, you still invite your friends over and play mermaids in the pool, but you just there really aren't those spaces for those kinds of kids. I thought it was interesting. One of the things that you mentioned in your TED talk that you got from the kids is separating the walking paths and the biking paths. My husband always gripes about the people that like to bike in our neighborhood because it slows down traffic so much. And he asked me one time, like, why don't they bike on the sidewalk? And I was like, well, interesting fact that I just happen to know that bikes are more dangerous to pedestrians than cars are to bikes, which is why bikes legally are supposed to be riding on the road. But in a lot of our parks around here, we have these big, wide concrete kind of like trails, for lack of a better term, and you are allowed to bike on them. But as someone who now has kids who like to walk and sometimes run, you can't really take children on a path that has bikes on them, and so I thought it was so interesting to hear them talk about wanting to separate, you know, where people were riding and where people were walking. But even so, you know, okay, bikes are supposed to be on the road. What about children? My children know how to ride bikes now, and I don't want them to ride in the road. Where do I take them to ride bicycles and things like that. And I just think this is such an interesting concept, because as much, and you know, you what I love that you say at the end of your TED talk is that, you know, this is just the beginning, and when we learn to listen to children, it has a broader implication to listening to people of color, to listening to people who are indigenous, to the space, to listening to people who are disabled, that it's not just about children, it's about including those voices who previously haven't been included. And I love that phrase, you know, nothing about us, without us, and it just really got me thinking about how we don't consider children marginalized, and how the marginalization of children is so connected to even the marginalization of women and mothers still. But I'd love to hear from you also like, how have you seen that ripple effect, like when you center children, how has that rippled in the community, or even in the design to better listening to all kinds of voices.
Mara Mintzer 22:21
What we often see is that the same approaches, the same techniques we use for listening to kids, work really well for listening to groups that have been excluded in the past. So I'll just give you an example, and I learned this somewhat through trial and error. At one point earlier on in growing up boulders history, we tried to create a youth group, and we would have the kids come to us, and we were going to create all these things together. And I reached out to all these organizations, and I was so excited. And who showed up, but only the adult representatives, not one teenager showed up. And so it was a moment to think about, okay, well, what isn't working here? And the answer was we needed to go to them instead of them coming to us in our university towers where they maybe weren't familiar or comfortable. And so instead, we started going to after school programs, or we went to school classrooms that were set up in a way that our programs could work, that changed everything because it was on their territory, they already felt comfortable, and then we could ask good questions, and if we were good listeners, get really insightful information. That same thing works for hearing from adults. And so we've been working to become a recognized, UNICEF, child friendly city, which is a multi year process which ends in official recognition. And one of the pieces of that is called community conversations, and that really is having conversations with our community. Well, what's so exciting is we partnered with over 30 nonprofits, government programs for kids, all sorts of spaces where young people and their parents were and we said, look, this is our goal. We want to hear certain things, but what? And here are a few different ways that you might approach this. Choose what works for your community. So in one of our partner nonprofits that works primarily with Latinx families, they wanted to use storytelling. Right? Instead of filling out a survey, they wanted to do storytelling, and so it was facilitated by their own leader in Spanish using a storytelling method, and the data and information we got from that was so rich and so useful, and that was primarily adults we were hearing from, but we were doing it in a way that worked for them, and really honoring what the community was telling us. And if we take the time to do that, we can create such better spaces and policies, but it does take more time. And so again, it's a really different way of approaching engaging with children or adults. And so, you know, it's a whole change, but I think it's worth the time and energy. And
KC Davis 24:56
you didn't just like, ask people questions, like. So there were some really cool things that you did about the park that you talked about in your TED Talk, where it wasn't just like asking kids questions like you. I mean, these kids were holding clipboards like these kids were walking through parks and taking pictures of the things that interested them and the things that they thought were problems, and even like really young kids, you know, we're making model, you know, model parks out of, you know, Ed cartons and candy and things like that. And talking about these things, can you talk a little bit about how much we are perhaps underestimating children's ability to understand issues and come up with creative solutions.
Mara Mintzer 25:43
I mean, the kids never cease to amaze me with their insights. I was just at a meeting that we ran two nights ago where a group of teenagers, you know, maybe 13 to 18 were they were running the whole meeting. They were so amazing. And by the end of the meeting, they had typed up an entire plan for and divided up. Okay, everyone's reaching out to three organizations. Here's your name and here's what you're committing to. Because, again, they're experts on their own lives. They knew which organizations they could reach out to to get a variety of demographics to come to a meeting that we're having no The other thing we do with young people is, when they were at that civic area Park in my TEDx talk, they were using their five senses, right? And so we weren't just asking them visually what to do, but like, what do you want to experience with your body, with your sense of smell, your taste? And so all of that then feeds into how you design a space like, for instance, we've heard from kids over time they've wanted sort of edible gardens, and I mean, and forests. And I'm really excited. I think this is more coincidental, but our open space department is looking to design some forests now that are have all sorts of edible plants in them. And so kids really are thinking outside the box when they're creating their spaces.
KC Davis 27:08
Would you say that there were things that you went into that project, or any projects you've done, like, what are some of the things that you went in thinking, like, Oh, this is going to be perfect for kids, that when you actually brought kids into the conversation, you realize, like, Oh, this is actually not something that, like is the best thing to do here. Because I feel like we often have in and I mean, even as a parent, you're like, Oh, they're gonna love this. And then they're like, No, we really, like, she said, like we wanted to stare at leaves in the gutter. Like, were there any of those kind of surprises about like things that you assumed children would be most drawn to in public spaces or in parks and playgrounds that you were kind of surprised to hear? They weren't.
Mara Mintzer 27:52
You know, it's been so long now that I don't, I can't think of anything because, and there might have been at one point, but the themes, actually, that kids are asking for now are pretty similar most times. And actually, when I've compared it across cultures and looked at other countries, it actually is somewhat similar, although the way that they might roll it out for a specific space changes. So they constantly want interaction with water, play with water. They want nature and beauty and flowers and color around them.
KC Davis 28:24
It's like the opposite of most parks. Most parks are a big, open green field, maybe a playground,
Mara Mintzer 28:31
yeah. And, you know, I think of sort of the also the junkyard type spaces, like in in Wales, where they have the land, or in New York City, where they've got on governance island that kind of wild and free and Dangerous play with like hammers and fire and all this. And really, that is what kids often prefers, this messy play, and not the neat, manicured play that we create and parks, there's like one little surprising thing, but it wasn't. It wasn't so surprising. We were working with second grade students on a bus route, like looking at a bus route and how to make it more child friendly. And so the two things that they came up with were, one, they were really kind of bored and disengaged when they were waiting for the bus and on the bus. So they designed playful sort of signs for all the busses inside the bus that it was count the number of bunnies, hidden bunnies. And so the kids had actually drawn the artwork, and then for other kids to have something to play with and do while they were on the bus, to make taking public transit more fun. So I thought that was so clever. And the other piece was they get really tired when they were waiting for the bus to come, so they installed a bench there. And of course, I've been noticing around town how frequently adults and kids will use benches if you put them there. So I hadn't thought of that, and it really made a lot of sense when the kids raised those ideas.
KC Davis 29:56
I really love the note about like being bored at the bus stop, because I. Like a lot of adults would hear that quote, unquote complaint and be like, Okay, we'll get over it. Parts of life are boring, like, you don't need to be entertained all the time. Yada yada ya, right. However, when I think about adult design, I think about and I notice how much boredom is taken as a real issue that deserves to be addressed. Like when I'm sitting in a waiting room waiting for my oil to be changed, there is always a TV. There are always magazines on the table when I am waiting at the doctor's office, again, there are always magazines on the table. Like these are things that we dismiss in children that I don't think we realize we design around as legitimate needs for adults. I've never been I really like wait in a place where someone hasn't given one at least one thought to what can I do to entertain myself? And now we all have phones, but even so, like there aren't a lot of waiting places for children that, unless it's specifically a pediatrician that are thinking, how can we help children wait here
Mara Mintzer 31:09
Absolutely and you know, sometimes we think that these things have to be a certain way, but they're all human designed. These are not things that have always existed. So there's no reason to say that having something interesting for adults to look at is more important than having kids have something to look at or to do. And again, that goes back to that adults who don't want kids around, if we are designing spaces that are keeping kids in mind, it really changes it. And so like when I lived in Australia, there were all these cafes that had sections set up for kids. You know, there were chalkboards they could write on. They had toys there, and so then you could spend many hours eating and drinking at this cafe with your kid also having great opportunities for socialization. It's not that hard to do, but it's a different mind. You Yeah.
KC Davis 32:04
Like, one of my biggest if I could, like, wave a magic wand as a parent and get is that, like, it's not that there aren't restaurants that are accommodating children. It's that the food is never good at those restaurants. Like, it's fine. But, like, I'm not thinking, like, you know what, I would love to go, man, it would just be so great to go and have a sit down meal at Wendy's, right? Like this, just, you know, there's, we have one restaurant in my neighborhood that has an out gated outdoor play area with some playground equipment. And they even do like, a bouncy house on the weekends. And we go there all the time, because when my kids can run around and expend some energy, they don't mind waiting. It's easier for them to sit down and eat. And they'll even do the thing where they'll eat a little pop up, go play. Eat a little pop up, go play. And there's also some TVs on the sports for parents. And so you have a more relaxing experience, and you never really have despite the fact that kids are running around even more chaotically because of the play place. You almost never see child parent conflict. You never see anyone being disrupted at their other tables, even though the kids are running around because it is designed for them and the food sucks. It sucks so bad. And, you know, if I want that experience of being able to sit down and eat a meal and not have to worry about, you know, my kids ability to sit for, you know, 3040, minutes. You know, those are the kind of places we want to go. I have always yearned because I spent some time in Guatemala City when I was in my early 20s. And there was this one restaurant that my friends who had kids would always take me, and it had, like, kind of an old school McDonald's esque, like indoor playground. But the restaurant was like, a la Madeleine, like, that's the closest I can think to it. And we would it like it was an adult restaurant with a child's play place, and this is where all of these mothers would go to actually sit down and have a conversation, actually sit down and do a book club. And again, there was very little conflict between patrons and children. And I just ever since, and I've always noticed that like restaurants that accommodate or cater to children are like you said they're like, children specific, they're not also trying to make a good adult experience, and so that we have that separation of like, oh, we have adult restaurants and children's restaurants, versus just like a restaurant where anyone could go, where everyone might be accommodated. And I just wish that there were more places like that, I completely agree,
Mara Mintzer 34:41
and there's absolutely no need for that dichotomy. Actually, one of the things I feel really strongly about also is actually in terms of food. So when we think about again the way our American society works, we think of adults food versus kids' food, when, in fact, if you look at cultures all over the world. There's no need for that. Like you don't have kids in other parts of the world saying, I'm not going to eat this. I'm only going to eat chicken nuggets. No, if you eat antelope for dinner and your parents eat that, that's what you eat too. And so you know, what? If there were restaurants that had just kid sized portions of the same adult food, and then things that kids could do again, that could give them a break, or have other ways of being at dinner, we could really transform the way our society works. And the other benefit is it would reduce stress and anxiety for parents. Because again, you know this is sort of the hot topic now, and I know our Surgeon General just talked about this crisis in parenting and in the US, how stressful parenting is, and it is absolutely true. There was a great book I read that looked at parenting in Denmark and how much more relaxing it is, and the reasons for that are the following. One, they have universal child care and after school programs so that it doesn't matter what your income is there, that is just a given that you will have that time. There is better parental leave. There's also a better work life balance, right? Like you're not working as many hours. And then there's the expectation that adults and kids have other activities they engage in. And so when each when the parents and the children are getting to be seen as whole people, and there are supports in place, and the kids are also expected to help out at home, it's just what you do, you set the table, and no one asks questions about it, it reduces stress so much for parents, and it's more enjoyable. And so I think there is a possibility for us to do this, but we have to really change the systems around us and also our own expectations and beliefs and what we think kids can do like they can do so much more than we allow them to do, and that's another change I'd love to see in our country. Yeah,
KC Davis 36:55
it reminds me, you know, full circle to like watching my tiny little preschooler do like, a full independent bathtub routine, and it was like this whole time, it's not that she wasn't capable of doing it, it's that she had never been in a space that had empowered her to do it on her own. And how many parents are overloaded with how much we have to do for our kids, especially out in public, when, like, half the problem is that there just aren't spaces that are thinking about how a child could exist in those space and she has it, there's a psychology aspect to it, right? Like, when it is accessible to my kids, they feel like they feel more of a responsibility to do it, as opposed to, well, you know, I can't pick me up. Like there's kind of this challenge to them that they sense in the environment of, oh, I'm expected to do this. And I think that matters. I also think that some of the things that I've heard my kids voice, it's not the big things, right? Like, some of the things you've talked about are kind of big, like, big parks and bus stops and things like that. But like, I'll never forget my daughter like commenting to me one time, like, I wish more restaurants got the crayons that didn't roll away, because there's a couple of restaurants around us that have crayons that are, like, hexagonal, if that makes sense, like they have flat sides, so they're their triangle, so that when they're coloring on the table, they don't roll off the table. And that's always stuck with me about like, what a small thing that if we were listening to children, we would hear, you know, I am more engaged in a restaurant when I have something to color, but more than that, because that's what parent with, what adults think, right? Oh, well, give them something to color, but it's specific to when my crayons don't run away.
Mara Mintzer 38:38
Yeah, you know, Allison gopnik is a professor who does work around child development, and one of the research studies she's done has to do with children actually being better problem solvers than adults, even. And these are, I think, young children, maybe like four or five, and what happens is, the reason they can be better problem solvers is that as we get older, we have frameworks that help us understand the world, because there is so much information out there, and it makes sense that we have to have some way of wrestling all this information into submission and to be usable. But kids don't yet have those restrictions, and so they can look at a problem and actually solve it more quickly or more creatively, because they just are literally thinking without such rigid framework. The crayon example is a great idea. Maybe there are other things we haven't even thought of. If we brought kids in for our randd team to help come up with answers, yeah.
KC Davis 39:37
And then the other short one that I'll share with you before we end our time is, you know, one of my daughters is four, and what's really difficult for her we go on airplanes is she kicks the seat in front of her, and we spend the whole flight really kind of managing that. Now, part of that is, you know, she's neuro divergent, and she's, you know, kind of squiggly wiggly, but a big part of it is that she doesn't fit. Sit in the seat, and so she's constantly pushing on the seat in front of her to push her body back up in to the seat, because where her knees hit the seat, she can't really sit comfortably. So she's always kind of like slowly sliding down. And that's like, one of the biggest complaints that people have on airplanes, ah, Kid kick in the back of my seat, and it's like, okay, well, some of that is okay, yeah, kids are restless. They want to swing their feet and they're not as aware. That's fine, but some of that is, and I can say this as a short person who also, like, my knees genuinely hurt when I sit on long flights, like, there's nowhere to prop my feet up, and that has to do with, like my body being comfortable and aligned. And how many of these kids, you know, how simple would it be to think about, where are kids legs and feet hitting in an airplane seat, and is there a simple way for them to put have a foot rest, to put their feet on something, to have a booster seat or something kind of built in. And again, you would think, Oh, look, this is so much. But like, I don't know, they just unveiled that, like, brand new Southwest Airlines, you like, whatever. And like, part of it is like, there's TVs in the back that we thought about people's entertainment. And the other part is, like, that little part of the headrest that kind of folds forward to support your head if you want to sleep. That's not necessary. That's luxury. Like, that's not like, we could have just told adults, like, get over it. It's a flight. It's not supposed to be comfortable. But we didn't. We thought about, how do we make people be able to watch TV on flights easier? How do we support their heads so they're more comfortable? Why can't we think, why is where a child's knees and feet hit on the seat, not as valid as you wanting to rest your head again, like it's just kind of something to think about. You're very
Mara Mintzer 41:51
welcome. No, I was gonna say the thing is, right, the kids aren't the ones with the wallets and voters, and I think that is why they so often get ignored, is that they're not seen as constituents. But in fact, I think we should be. And I love your example, it wouldn't be that hard of a fix, but if we have to start thinking about it first,
KC Davis 42:10
yeah, well, thank you so much. And where can people go to learn more about your organization and the cool things that you've done there?
Mara Mintzer 42:18
Absolutely so they can go to our website, which is growing up, Boulder, B, O, U, L, D, E, r.org, and if they want to support us, there's opportunities for donation. There are also ways to support with skills that they have, and all the resources that we've discussed are on there, and we've written a book, and there's my TED Talk. So there are a variety of ways, if you want to learn more and take some of this into your own communities. Our goal is for others to be doing this as well and then teach us while we go along. Awesome.
KC Davis 42:51
Thank you so much. Thanks. you.