"I've Tried Everything." You Haven't. None of Us Have.

For every educator who's ever said, "I already do that," and didn't recognize it as giving up

Here’s a sentence I would never say to a four-year-old:

“You’ve done enough learning. You’re finished. There’s nothing left for you to figure out.”

And yet I hear the adult version of that sentence from educators all the time.

I was at a conference recently, sharing strategies I’ve spent years refining in real classrooms. A few people walked up to me afterward and said some version of the same thing:

“Oh, I already do this.”

“I’ve taken all the workshops.”

“I’ve read all the books.”

“I’ve hit the highest level of our QRIS. I’m good.”

I smiled. I nodded. But inside, I was thinking the same thing I want to say to you now:

No, you don’t. And no, you’re not.

Child painting at an easel. Image source: Canva

The contradiction at the heart of our field

Picture a four-year-old at the easel. She’s trying to paint something specific, a dog, maybe, or her mom, and it’s not coming out the way she sees it in her head. She slumps. She says, “I can’t do it.”

How do you respond?

“Keep trying.”

“What if you tried a different brush?”

“What were you hoping it would look like?”

We coach her through frustration because we want her to learn that mistakes are information, that challenges are how we grow, and that being stuck is temporary.

We want her to develop a growth mindset.

We would never look at that child and say, “You’re right. You can’t. Stop trying.”

We would never look at a child who just finished a puzzle and say, “Congratulations. That’s the last thing you’ll ever learn.”

We would never tell a child she has reached her maximum capacity.

So why do we say it to ourselves?

When I first started teaching, I thought I needed to control everything. Where the children played, what they could play with, how long they could play in certain centers.

I knew this was how educators operate because that’s how I was taught. And my education classes didn’t teach me a different way. So that’s what I did, too.

Only it didn’t work.

The children did not like being told where they could play, when they had to rotate, or what toys they could use. They rebelled. Not so much with words, but in their actions.

They ignored my hand claps and singing when I determined it was time for everyone to rotate. They got bored when I limited the toys they could use. They started nudging each other, wiggling and falling out of their chairs. A few children went so far as to get up and wander around the room, or push their way into another group of children.

But I was convinced that this was the right way. It was the only thing I knew. I taught like this for two years, and became increasingly frustrated.

And then a colleague shared a new strategy with me. She said, “Try letting children choose where they want to play. Let them choose what materials to play with.”

That can’t be right. That was not in my college textbooks. I never observed another teacher doing this. This definitely won’t work.

“Just try it for a week,” she said. “Trust me.”

So I did. I had nothing to lose. I was already frustrated. The children weren’t listening to me. My lesson plans were flopping more than succeeding.

By the end of that first week, I started noticing a shift. Cleanup was a little easier. Children were engaged and on-task longer. They were happier, less nudgy. It wasn’t perfect. But it was better. After three weeks of this experiment, I was happier. The room was calmer, the children more cooperative.

Who knew something as simple as giving children options and allowing them to make choices and have agency over their play would make such a difference?!

Why the rules cannot be different for us

If you work in early childhood education, your entire job is built on the belief that children are capable of growth, that curiosity matters, that mistakes are how learning happens, that no one is ever “done.”

And then some of us walk out of the classroom and subconsciously decide that none of that applies to us.

We say we’ve taken the workshops. We’ve read the books. We’ve climbed the QRIS ladder. We have the certificates on the wall. So we’re done.

But here’s what a fixed mindset sounds like in an adult, dressed up in professional language:

“I already do that.” (Without curiosity about whether the strategy being offered is actually the same one you’re using.)

“I’ve tried everything.” (You haven’t. None of us have.)

“That won’t work with my children.” (Said before reading a single page.)

An open stance sounds different. It sounds like, “I’ve tried X and Y — is what you’re offering different?” It sounds like, “Tell me more.” It sounds like a question, not a wall.

How our fixed mindset impacts children

Here’s the part that bothers me most.

The strategies that worked for you last year may not work this year. Not because you’ve lost your touch, but because you have new children. And even if you have the same children, those children have grown. They are not who they were in September.

Children change. The research changes. The strategies that meet their needs have to change, too.

When we decide we’re “done” learning, we don’t freeze in place. We fall behind. And the gap between what the children in front of us actually need and what we’re still offering them gets wider every year.

When smartphones and tablets became babysitters for children, we began to notice a decline in fine motor skills. So what did most early childhood educators do? We found more creative ways to build fine motor skills. We spent more time with clay. We used beads and laces. We spent more time digging in the dirt.

We didn’t give up. We didn’t stick with “we’ve always done it this way.” We found strategies to meet children where they are.

When the pandemic hit, everyone scrambled to figure out what to do. The educators who continued to use the same strategies they’d always used suddenly found those strategies no longer worked. The rest of us went through a long phase of trial and error.

Modify this strategy. Try something different. Try it again. Try something else. Keep trying until you find the combination of strategies that works most of the time. And keep modifying that combination to meet children where they are. Every day. Every week. Every month. Every year.

A harder question

If a child in your classroom said, “I can’t learn anything else. I’ve done enough,” you would gently, lovingly, refuse to accept it. You would believe in more for them than they could believe in for themselves in that moment.

Can you do the same for yourself?

Not in a punishing way. Not in a “you’re not enough” way. In the same warm, curious, capable way you offer the children in your care.

You are allowed to still be growing. You are supposed to be still growing. That’s the job.

How has a fixed mindset shown up in your work?

I want to hear from you on this one, because I know I’m not the only one who has noticed it.

Have you caught yourself saying any version of “I already know this” lately? Or — and this one is harder — have you been on the receiving end of it from a colleague or a leader?

Drop a comment. Tell me what you’re still learning. Tell me what you thought you were done with and turned out you weren’t. Tell me where you’re stuck.

When we embrace a growth mindset and a path of continuous learning, we become more flexible. It shows up in how we plan, in the materials we share, and in the strategies we use. That’s exactly what children need from us.