The Popular (Preschool) Vote

It's never too early to instill the value of voting. Rallying around the privilege of voting is the purest individual power. I was recently remembering how as a kid the sacred nature of voting meant that we kids had to hang around outside the curtain while mom voted. It was that secret. Now I love the ease of voting by mail, but I do wonder about the absence of my kind of voting nostalgia for young kids in my state. So it was that I knew even my three-year-old preschool class needed the right to vote on something to honor this Election Day.

Isn't being heard what every person wants at heart? Kids, especially young kids, want that unceasingly! I wasn't about to pass up the chance to rally around the voting privilege at preschool. The trick was to identify something that kids really had a choice about and would provide an immediate experience. That was the real key – to offer a voting choice that the kids really could have control over. There's nothing worse than offering someone a choice they don't really have. I believe there would be a whole lot less confusion and frustration in young children's lives if adults offered them more direct and available choices than framing them for disappointment with fake choices. Asking a kid if he is ready to leave when he clearly is not means you better be prepared to honor his choice to stay once you offer it. Asking a child if she wants to help with something when she clearly does not have a choice grants a false sense of power and ultimately undermines confidence in her voice. There's plenty of room to fail from poor decision-making as one grows up; we grown-ups need to do our part to offer kids choices they really can have.

A couple of choices came to mind that would be fun to vote on but wouldn't really serve the kids well: playing outside first instead of at the end of day would really inconvenience the parent teachers who get to clean up the school; voting on a snack item would be interesting but not equally impacting for everyone since so many kids self-select what they will eat at snack-time. Keeping everyone interested in the vote also seemed important. We'd need something out of the ordinary but agreeable – we'd vote on whether or not the lights would be on or off at school for playtime! It would be unusual to have extended play in the dark, something that would be interesting and within the grasp of imagination.

Our polling station was short and sweet and didn't command much of a wait. On each of two trays was a card; one card said “Lights On for Playtime” with a simple drawing of a light bulb shining, and one card said “Lights Off for Playtime” with a simple drawing of a light bulb crossed out. We identified the choices as a group. Votes were cast by depositing one's name card on the way to open play time. The votes came in steadily and confidently. A couple of lingering kids helped me count and recount the cards. I did not predict the results - it was a tie! As I went around to each of our three classrooms to announce the voting results, I explained that the same amount of kids who wanted the lights off wanted the lights on. Everyone would get some of what they wanted! All the lights went off for the first half of play time, and then they were turned on again.

The preschool vote was a success. Not only did everyone get a return on their heart's desire, they got a real-time affirmation of the power of making a choice and casting a vote. How sweet it was that everyone got something they wanted; even the child who was not happy about playing without the lights on was reassured to know when the lights would be on again, that life as he knew it would resume. The power of a true choice worked for all.