1KHO 871: Children Shouldn’t Have To Wait To Move Their Bodies | Mike Huber, Embracing Rough-and-Tumble Play

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Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast.
I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And I have just read a phenomenal book. It is called Embracing Rough and Tumble Play, Teaching with the Body and Mind. I took so many notes. Author Mike Huber is here. Welcome, Mike. Wow.

**Mike Huber** (1:17)
Thanks. It's good to be here.

**Ginny** (1:20)
Okay. I would love if you would talk about the part of your story where you're working with kids and you say that you knew they needed to move. So even right there, that's something that's exceptional.
Of course, we're setting up childhood now that's very sedentary. Kids are in the classroom a lot and you start off with the basis of knowing these kids have to move. But you said you were in some ways limiting it because you're like, well, you can take your rough and tumble play. You can take all that rolling around. Just do that when we go outside. But then you changed your perspective. Can you talk about that change?

**Mike Huber** (1:58)
Sure.
This is bringing me back a ways. But I remember there was a year or so I taught in a preschool room in a very small childcare center, but I had 10 older preschoolers and me. I had a year where there were nine boys and one girl. Rough and Tumble Play is not just a boy thing, but also if you put nine boys in a room. And so I kept trying to tell them, wait till we get outside, wait till we get outside. And the stress level I had in just trying to do my job, trying to do it the way I had done it years before, just wasn't working. And I got to a point where I thought, this is the last year I'm going to do this. Like I can't keep teaching young children. I had no idea that's what I would do with my life. And now year 35 started with this career. And I guess it's what I'm doing.
But at the time, I was just like, I can't do it. It's too stressful. And then I decided, well, maybe I should learn more about kids' need for movement. And I started going to workshops and finding experts and reading other books. And I'm the type of person who is going to then try to contact the author. I guess you are the same, right?

**Ginny** (3:13)
Yes, yes.

**Mike Huber** (3:14)
I didn't have a podcast at the time to do this with, but still, I just kept asking. And then I learned a lot. And the funny thing is, so I wrote the book you're talking about, and then three years later, I had the same exact nine boys, one girl, and it was the best year of teaching.
Because I knew, oh, if I just stop worrying about when is it okay to move and when is it not, and just think of it as, oh, kids need to move. Then suddenly I've seen the personality of the children, and there's this level of trust or connection that I didn't have when I kept telling them to stop.

**Ginny** (3:51)
Yeah.
It changed for everyone. The kids have a better year, you have a better year. Yeah, this is so uncommon. When I read about in your book and you're talking about how teachers will purposely set up the room so there aren't these large open spaces because if there are, the kids are going to run.