“I can hang by my knees! I was holding on with my hands, and my knees said to me ‘We’re strong enough. We can do it.” So, I let go with my hands, and I did it!”

Rose has been coveting the monkey bars for years.

The ones at the park were way too high, too spread out. We would practice hang and drop. Sometimes she’d do it by herself while I took David down the slide. Sometimes, I’d sit in the woodchips nursing David and be her cheerleader. Sometimes I’d put her on my shoulders and walk under the bars while she went hand-to-hand.

But when she was four we switched to a new pre-school. She loved it immediately for the her sized bars. By the second week, she had me out on the playground watching her swing across.

Then we discovered a new park with just a bit higher, just a bit farther bars. It was magic to see her attack it: swing her legs, let go with one hand, propel herself to safety, and let go again.

At her new school, Rose rather wistfully showed me another girl who could skip a bar. Then we had the big disaster when she made it across but couldn’t stick the landing and ended in a heap in the woodchips.

“I’m a bad monkey bar person,” she said.

I solved the problem by getting the snack she so obviously needed. She solved the problem by walking on the rocks and announcing this was something difficult and special that nobody else could do.

Every day after school, she shows me her new monkey bar spectaculars—going all the way across, going all the way across and coming down the pole, and, of course, hanging by her knees.

This is how I want all of Rose’s education to be: self-chosen, challenging, achievable, joyful. Nothing else at her school comes close.