What to Do About the Extinction of Childhood
My six-year-old son brought a little treasure chest to the breakfast table one morning. He keeps it next to his bed and fills it with his favorite treasures — crystals, bent pieces of metal, and a collection of seashells and rocks. He presented it to me like an offering and asked me a question:
“Daddy, how much is this worth?”
It was the kind of moment that modern parenting often turns into a teachable one.
I could’ve told him the going rate for quartz and bolts. It would’ve been true — a nice first step into financial literacy. But what he was really asking had nothing to do with money.
So, I took a sip of coffee, leaned forward in my chair, looked him in the eyes and told him just how valuable it was — but not how you might think.
I Thought Myself a Sculptor
For the first few years of my son’s life, I believed my job as a parent was to be a sculptor
Shape this miraculous lump of clay with discipline and challenge.
Paint this blank canvas with information and truth.
I believed that if he could do something, then he should do it. Regardless of whether or not he wanted to do it. I found myself connecting with him the way dads often do: with skill-acquisition.
We prioritized early literacy and academics. We worked on hitting those milestones.
We bought books like Blockchain for Babies and wonderless stories about appropriate behavior and beliefs. If we exposed him to the adult world early enough, I believed, he’d thrive and start to think for himself once he got there.
It’s where a lot of parenting culture trends.
We love our kids. We care about their future. And most importantly — we want to connect.
So we sculpt them in ways that we connect with as adults, in the language of grown-ups, for a world run by grown-ups. And the kids love it.
The justification? It gives them more of us.
They think: “if I want to connect with mom and dad, I’ll love the things they love.”
We think: “what little boy doesn’t want more time with his father?”
We optimize childhood in preparation for adulthood and to feel connected to our children in ways adults understand.
Teach them. Train them. Test them. Not on creativity, intuition, or thinking for themselves —
but on skills that track well in school, score points on the field, and reassure us that they’re on the right path.
Somewhere along the way, I noticed my son’s light was dimming.
Where once he’d sing and dance and howl at the moon, now he wanted to talk about earning money. He wanted to learn chess. He preferred adult conversation to silly voices at story time. He wasn’t even 5 years old yet.
And it was quiet. He was trading “Daddy, what if…” for “Daddy, what is…”
Soon I realized — I hadn’t been stewarding his world. I had hardly recognized that he had a world to steward.
Instead, I was colonizing it with my own.
The Vanishing World of Childhood
It seems completely unproductive to an adult.
In reality, Childhood as an inner world is a landscape where play, emotion, creativity, and meaning develop freely — un-rushed, unmeasured, and unbroken by the demands of adult life.
You’ve seen it. You’ve read it. You’ve lived it.
It’s the children in The Chronicles of Narnia escaping the war in London to a realm where children rule as kings and queens among magical creatures. It’s Max taming, dancing with, and gaining the love of his inner “wild things.” All within a forest that grew in his room after being punished by his mother. It’s a world of foxes who speak in riddles, of pinecone potions, and cardboard castles — and it’s as real to your child as a warm dinner at the family table. It’s their training ground for wholeness.
Young children spend two-thirds of their waking hours in imaginative play.
Play is the vehicle they use to move through their world.
They pretend while they paint and world-build while cutting cardboard. They grow deep and unyielding loyalties to flowers and stones. Sticks become scepters and swords for lords of playground castles. Children re-enact hard things like crying at the dentist, feeling left out, being denied ice cream.
This world where kids have safe access to every sense and expression of their inner world is arguably the most formative stage in human development. It cultivates the architecture of their identity.
It’s where children learn:
Creative problem solving
Empathy and emotional resilience
Capacity for beauty, reverence, and awe
Relational and social dynamics
It’s growing the things that make life worth living. It’s growing their spirit.
Childhood is Going Extinct.
Children aren’t going extinct (though there’s a case to be made for declining fertility rates).
I’m talking about the developmentally essential experience of remaining in childhood as a child.
Today, children spend more time in school and daycare than ever before—often with shortened recess or none at all. They spend more time on screens, preferring electronic games to outdoor play. And parents, working longer hours, often opt for the safety of indoor activities when time is scarce.
Studies are showing declining rates of outdoor play:
American children spend 35% less time playing outside freely than their parents did.
American public schools have seen a steady decline in recess, despite an increased awareness of its importance — instead opting for test preparation and increased study.
Researchers now suggest that the steady rise in childhood anxiety and depression is closely tied to the decline in independent, unsupervised play.
If there was ever a time to see the effects of what life without the world of childhood is like, it’s now.
Three reasons childhood is going extinct:
Adultification — The erosion of a child’s play, unhurried pace, and access to feelings and expression under the weight of adult information, expectations, and preparation. It imposes adult values onto the child’s experience.
Outsourcing —Delegating a child’s innate drive to dream, create, imagine, explore, and make meaning to external inputs. They may occupy, support, and relieve parents— but they’re doing the imaginative and creative work for the child. Children become passive consumers of creativity instead of active developers of it.
Family Disconnection — When the emotional climate of the home is chronically strained or dysfunctional, children feel anxious and unsafe. They will abandon their own world and needs. They become helpers, achievers, or peacemakers—whatever it takes to create stasis in the system.
My New Job: Conservationist
By the time my second child was born, I realized I was in the wrong line of work.
My son was a bonsai tree I was shaping with wire — manipulating in my hands as I would a lump of clay. It took me a couple of years to realize I wasn’t dealing in raw material. I was dealing in seed and soil and growth.
Parenting isn’t primarily about shaping kids into who we think they should be. It’s about creating an environment where who they are has enough emotional and relational safety and nutrition to grow.
We are more gardeners than artists.
Sometimes that means providing a trellis. Sometimes it means pruning back, or re-potting. But it’s always about bringing forth from seed.
And if you look around at the anxiety, the addictions, the disconnection — the ever-present mental health crises—it’s clear: the seeds aren’t thriving.
It’s times like these that the gardener must become a conservationist.
Conservation Isn’t About Doing More
This isn’t happening because parents aren’t doing enough. Parents are overwhelmed, under-supported, and anxious. We’re overloaded with advice, carrying our own childhood wounds, and trying to parent in a world that never slows down.
The pace and pressure of it all is causing parental burnout and draining our family cultures of vital emotional vibrance and capacity.
So I get it—‘childhood conservation’ might sound like yet another lofty guilt-driven parenting trend. Allow me to ease your mind, though. This isn’t about doing more.
It’s about doing radically and uncomfortably less:
Conveniently re-locate the loud, broken, or overstimulating toys. Keep only the sacred revisited ones.
Scratch out obligations and extracurriculars until they’re outweighed by time together and in nature.
Prioritize quality of story and illustration over having countless options.
Stop re-narrating the news cycle within earshot of the kids.
Avoid the compulsive need to rush in to explain and inform. Just join in their experience.
Make boredom a part of your family culture
It’s about re-enchanting the life you’re already living:
Light a candle at dinner each night.
Make up stories at bedtime. Have characters and arcs that the kids anticipate and become attached to.
Create access to a craft bin: string, cardboard, paper, paints, beeswax, clay.
Create household lore: the sock gnome, the chronically opened drawer, the garden fairy.
Repair with your partner in front of your kids—especially if they witnessed the rupture.
These are just a few examples.
Conservation is about reducing emotional and psychological clutter and hurry.
It’s about enchanting and imbuing everyday life with wonder and magic — or at least getting out of the way while the kids do it themselves.
Here’s how this played out for my son’s treasure chest.
Treasuring the Chest
I held his treasure chest in my hands and made a conscious decision to withhold the lesson.
I, instead, chose to conserve the world of childhood.
What he was really after was the feeling that he— a bright eyed little boy— was in possession of something truly valuable.
I told him that if I was a pirate, and if his chest were hidden on a remote island, I would sail across the sea to it. I’d cut through jungle, cross crocodile-filled lakes, slide into a cave of vines and collapsing traps—and there, beneath the earth, I’d find this very box, resting on a golden pedestal.
“…and it would all be worth it! That’s how much it’s worth.”
His eyes widened and a gaping smile showed his missing front teeth. He’d forgotten about money and value altogether.
What he did next stunned me.
Without delay, he rallied his siblings together, ran outside, dug a hole, and spent the afternoon drawing treasure maps together for the chest.
I can’t help but wonder—what would have happened if I’d just given him a dollar amount?
They built a world together that day. One they already knew how to live in. That world—their world—is disappearing. Quietly. All around us.
A Movement, Not a Method
C.S. Lewis said it best:
“When I became a man I put away childish things,
including the fear of childishness
and the desire to be very grown up.”
We forget what it was like to live fully in the world of childhood. Maybe we remember, but we’ve learned to tuck it away—to trade wonder for responsibility, to avoid seeming childish in a world that demands we be grown-ups all the time. That disconnection comes at a cost, and our own children are paying the price.
Childhood is a fragile world. Not because it’s weak, but because it doesn’t defend itself. When we try to optimize it, we end up suspending it until adulthood, where it creates a slew of emotional and relational issues.
It doesn’t require an acceleration or upgrade.
It requires conservation.
We started a discussion group on Facebook for parents who want to do family differently.
** It’s not a course or a curriculum — it’s a place to connect and have real conversations about:
Cultivating emotionally healthy families
Building deep and meaningful legacies
Conserving the inner world of children
** If you’re looking for a community of parents who share these values — and who are actively working through challenges together with honesty and care — this is the group for you.
