An interesting shift happened for me recently, around how I view certain YouTube personalities that my kids are drawn to. My children enjoy watching gamers play Minecraft and other games. A friend and Unschooling mom referred to these stars as her childrens’ teachers. What a wonderful new insight for me to process!
What I love about about this perspective is it encourages me to look through the world from my childrens’ eyes. I can better understand what they appreciate about a certain YouTuber, such as what styles of communicating are they drawn to. I have come up with better questions for them while we watch together, which gives me more insight on what they might be learning from watching.
Seeing who they like to learn from on the internet has had a big impact on how I see their learning process. Instead of thinking of their favorite shows, channels, and people online as their interests, I can take it one step further to acknowledge these are the characters my kids choose to learn from. It creates an understanding to treat their choices of learning as equally important to the societal preference to education in a classroom or a physical experience out in the world.
One thing I have learned from seven is how he is drawn to the relationships between the gamers. He likes talking about how well they get along, what their personalities are like, and how they have different styles of play. And five gets pure enjoyment out of the edits, sound effects, and the experience of sharing fun times with seven. They both giggle away, and five will often replay the funniest parts again and again. There’s a lot of learning going on, even when our kids are “just watching screens”.
