Time with children is refreshing, inspiring, and—I hate to admit this—exhausting. This is something adults said about me when I was a kid. The ten-year-old version of Brad had much more energy than I could ever know how to manufacture. Ten-year-old Brad never understood why all those old people were so tired. Yet here I am, writing about being exhausted. Maybe my exhaustion qualifies me as an official grownup.

You see, according to the kids I spoke with, being tired is one of our main ingredients. I asked them to describe grownups, and tired was one of the most repeated responses. I could see why they would think this. I’ve seen our social media posts. Generally, adults are either talking about a time we were exhausted, currently exhausted, or preparing for something we know will leave us exhausted. Exhaustion is just part of the deal when you become an adult.

It’s a badge of honor: I haven’t slept in weeks.

It’s a generic response:

Grownup 1: How are you?

Grownup 2: Busy! Tired! You?

Exhaustion is also, if we’re not careful, a default setting. We can get stuck in it. I have. I’ve been stuck in exhaustion for far longer than is healthy. In fact, part of what led me to begin this Listening Tour was total and complete exhaustion. I was burned out. This was an extra-crispy kind of burnout. A heavy travel schedule, years of overwork, and a refusal to admit I’d taken on way too much led to my inability to do anything. As I mentioned, sometimes I would just find myself lying on the floor.

My loving wife was the first to notice things were not okay. She urged me to see a counselor. The counselor urged me to slow down my schedule. My slowed-down schedule led me to have a little extra time. Having a little extra time led me to begin responding to teachers’ requests that I visit their classrooms. Classroom visits led me to rediscovering the grownup I could become.

I’d become a tired grownup, and this only became more apparent as I spent more time in classrooms. I was surrounded by joy. Joy takes energy. I was reminded just how energetic children can be. Children love to play around. They love fun. They don’t need a reason. This came as no surprise. What did was the discovery of my own aversion to fun.

I thought I loved to have fun. I have always thought of myself as a very fun person. Before starting my Listening Tour, I’d thought I was still a very fun person. My time with children showed me otherwise. They would be laughing about something, and I would be the guy trying to calm everything down. I found great contrast in their ability to joke around and my inability to enjoy it. This wasn’t because I didn’t like them or didn’t want to have fun. It’s just that I wasn’t there to have fun. I was there to become a better grownup! I wasn’t there to play. The kids, though, seemed determined to undermine this very important quest of mine at every turn. There were moments of making faces at me, going way off topic, and sometimes responding to serious questions with animal noises. Yes, there were animal noises.

My first instinct was to think that the kids were trying to destroy my project. Actually, they were saving it and me from all the ways I’d grown old, serious, and seriously tired.

Of the top ingredients that make up adults, according to the students I spoke with, exhaustion was the fourth-most mentioned. Do you want to know what the top three were? Guess. You might think that kids said wise or brave or successful or cool. That’d be encouraging. Wise, brave, successful, and cool did come up, but mostly when students were describing the kind of grownup they wanted to be. No. The three words most used to describe the grownups in their lives were big, busy, and boring.

That’s what they think of us.

On a few occasions, I asked children to draw what grownups look like. They’d grab a blank sheet of paper, begin using crayons, markers, or colored pencils, and unleash the most hideous things I could’ve ever imagined. This had little to do with their artistic ability and everything to do with each artist’s intent. They would knowingly hold up their completed artwork in my direction with giant grins waiting to see my reaction. With just one simple prompt, the students had launched into a game of seeing who could create the grossest version of a grownup ever. Monstrous figures with exaggerated wrinkles. Raisin-faced people with hard edges around their eyes.

And that was just the beginning. They would gang up and begin adding to one another’s drawings:

“Add a cell phone!” they’d say.

“Give it fangs!”

“Put lots of hair on their legs.”

Yet when they were asked to draw someone specific, like a favorite grownup, their drawings were much more flattering. These featured parents and grandparents, neighbors and teachers. They would use cheerful colors and smiling faces. Clearly, not all grownups were disgusting monsters in their eyes. Still, their playful silliness revealed that somewhere inside them was a conflicted view of what it might mean to grow up. It was a conflict I felt along with them.

In her novel Joy for Beginners, author Erica Bauermeister has one of her characters say, “Adults need to have fun so children will want to grow up.” Yet is it even possible to be a responsible grownup and not make adulthood look terrible? Students often described adults as people who work a lot, talk about work a lot, complain about work a lot, and miss things because of work a lot. They would share this in a matter-of-fact way, as if it were no surprise to anyone. They would also share this with a spirit of confusion, as if to say, Why would a grownup choose to live this way?

My instinct was, of course, to defend my own kind. Children couldn’t possibly begin to grasp the weight we carry on our shoulders. We grownups have tons of responsibilities. We have family relationships and jobs to tend to. We wrestle with our existence and want our lives to have great meaning, but we also have to try to figure out how to fold a fitted sheet.

Folding a fitted sheet stands as the ultimate symbol of adulthood—it’s impossible and will end in tears. So, who are these children to think they can judge me? I mean, us . . . to judge us? What do they know about fitted sheets?!

The giant wake-up call came during a video visit with a classroom in Wyoming. It was early in the morning of what was to be a full day for me. As the screen lit up, students began waving. From the get-go I could tell something was off. The students seemed more distracted than usual. They were pointing and laughing. No matter what I did to refocus the conversation, giggling continued. Finally, I stopped and asked. This was when they let me know about the poor internet connection. Apparently, the screen had been mostly frozen the entire time, leaving behind a ghost image of my head. When the internet connection returned, it appeared as though I had two heads.

The more unfunny I found this, the more hilarious it became to the students. One boy received big laughs by shouting with great concern in his voice, “That man is multiplying!”

Instead of playing along, I’m embarrassed to say that I got impatient. Ten-year-old me would’ve played along. Grownup me—not so much. “Enough with the laughing!” Those are actual words I actually said. Enough with the laughing. That’s something Gargamel would’ve said to the Smurfs. It’s the kind of comment someone in authority says that only makes the situation worse—like an angry dad shouting to the backseat, “I’ll turn this car around!” As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized I probably looked and sounded just like one of those monstrous drawings of what kids think a grownup is. Ten-year-old me would’ve been severely disappointed.

I liked to believe that I was a more enlightened grownup. After all, I was embarking on a project that celebrated children. As I listened to them talk about big, boring, busy grownups, I never once thought I fell into that category. Yet there I was. I literally asked some children to stop laughing. This woke me up to the many times I’d asked my own children to quiet down. They weren’t being disrespectful or disruptive; they were just being kids. They were playing. All the pressures of being a new dad had clouded my ability to play. Even with this fun project of playfully listening to the hearts and minds of children, I’d found a way, against all odds, to make it not fun.

So is it possible to be a responsible adult and have fun? I am happy to report that the answer to this is a resounding yes. I discovered a better way to navigate the tensions between work and play, the secrets of which were found by watching teachers. Incredible, heroic teachers. While I’d assumed this project would put several inspiring children in my path, in equal measure I was introduced to grownups who truly showed me a better, brighter way of living. They weren’t irresponsible, but they weren’t afraid to play, either.

When Erica, an elementary teacher in the Midwest, invited me into her classroom, I immediately noticed a lack of chairs. She seemed surprised by my reaction, but I was used to seeing desks and tables and classic classroom decor. Instead she had created and designed this learning environment as a space maximized for play. There were beanbags and exercise balls. You would think she was a physical education teacher, but this was the spot where students explored math and science and reading. This was where critical thinking and problem solving were taught. My first thought was that this setup had all the makings of a very bad idea. What about all the bouncing?

Where do you keep the bandages? How would the students sit still? I discovered that was actually the point. She explained to me how she wanted them to move around. She’d found that by allowing her students to explore and work together as a group, they came to life and engaged more fully with the material. They responded well to the freedom. “They have fun and don’t realize we’re all learning together,” she said.

More than a dozen teachers told me about how they addressed fatigue in their classroom by instituting dance breaks throughout the school day. If they found that the students weren’t responding well or felt the lessons weren’t connecting, they would stop everything. Music would blast through a speaker, or a video would appear on a screen. At this moment, everyone in class had to be on their feet doing their most ridiculous dance—even the teacher.

One art instructor in Utah helped me see how play can spark creativity. To help break her students of perfectionism and meticulously stressing over every mark they made, she would walk them through a certain exercise. I even got to take part in it. We were all given a blank sheet of paper and told to scribble on it. “No thinking!” she said. “Just scribble! Have fun!”

When the time was up, we looked down at the erratic messes we’d all made. She then gleefully asked us to turn them into something else. Now we were forced to completely reimagine our spontaneous scribbles, yet in doing so we made things we otherwise never would have. These messes were transformed into clouds and car exhaust.

What were once careless scribbles became beautiful horses and elaborate pompadours. By allowing the students to play, she’d unlocked a world of invention.

A history teacher in Alabama found a really playful way to have her students learn about the American Revolution. Instead of just lecturing the students or forcing them to watch a several-decades-old documentary, she had the kids pretend they were actually in that time period—except now they also had access to social media. They were each given names of major figures in the American Revolution and asked to imagine what it was like to live in their shoes and tweet their lives. The students did not disappoint.

TWEET FROM GEORGE WASHINGTON:

So we riding in the boat to sneak up on these forts and Knox doing too much. Almost killed us his big tail making the boat tip. #BattleOfTrenton #CrossingTheDelaware #WeBoutDied

TWEET FROM SAM ADAMS TO GEORGE WASHINGTON:

@George do you got that info on that sugar act? #CantFixMyKool-Aid

TWEET FROM COLONIAL SOLDIER AT BATTLE OF SARATOGA:

It takes too long to load this musket. #ThisDoingTooMuch #AllForOneShot

TWEET FROM PAUL REVERE:

Man, I don’t even feel like yelling so y’all just share this. #BritishAreComing #WeFinnaDie

TWEET FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON TO JOHN HANCOCK AT THE SECOND CONTINENTAL CONGRESS:

@Johnhancock dude, I asked you to sign the line, not the whole page. #Font1000 #CantFitMyNameNowhereNow

She told me the idea came out of her own passion for history. She’d found that if students could imagine these historical figures as real human beings and not just answers for a quiz, it unlocked curiosity and even compassion. They had to think about what it was really like to load a musket, worry about sugar prices, or be upset that someone had signed their name too large on the Declaration of Independence. They saw history as a real thing that happened with real people who had real emotions. By playing around, the students were placed in an active role of exploring the material alongside the teacher. They weren’t sitting back and having the information fed to them. They were playfully engaged.

There was laughter and there was learning. That sparked an enthusiasm for learning more, which is precisely the hope of any teacher anywhere. Long after class was over, the students continued to think of things someone during that time might tweet. Some of the students even sought out additional reading to explore the personalities and the places beyond what was required. They were led into territory they never would’ve gone before had they not traveled playfully.

I grew up on a farm and remember my dad explaining the play of puppies as “practice.” For puppies, being aggressive with one another is a way of being social. It’s a way of play-acting real situations that might come up in the future for them. They’re practicing. I grew up to find that my father’s definition of play as “practice” was actually scientifically correct.

Stuart Brown, M.D., the founder of the National Institute of Play, has dedicated his life to researching what happens in our brains when we’re having fun. Much of Dr. Brown’s research in play wasn’t done where you’d think—by watching children. Instead, his discoveries were found in extremely unplayful places—like in the lives of grownups. One of the most shocking findings? The absence of play was a major factor in predicting criminal behavior.

While it’s commonly agreed that play helps humans develop socially, physically, and cognitively as children, the idea that it might continue to help us grow as adults is not exactly fully embraced. Yet when we are engaged in play, our brains light up. The neural connections that help us make decisions are the same connections that increase the more we play. It’s been proven that playful activities like dancing or doing crossword puzzles, or dancing while doing crossword puzzles, can improve memory. But it goes even beyond that. When we play, we become more alive. Maybe because it’s fun, we refuse to believe it’s actually good for us.

Play is a very serious thing. We need it. When there isn’t space for lightness, things can get far too heavy. When we don’t have room to scribble and create, we can become rigid and even destructive. Better grownups are not too big, busy, or boring to play. They are playfully engaged with the world.

The great Fred Rogers once said, “Play is really the work of childhood.” If Mister Rogers is right (and in my experience, he always is), I think play could also be the work of grownups. We’ll have to make room in our schedules for it, though. That’s one of the things I loved about the educators I met on my tour. They had made their work playful and built that spirit into their daily routines. As I visited classroom after classroom, I expected to meet teachers desperate for a break. I imagined my visits to their classroom would serve as a bit of downtime. Instead, I met deeply devoted educators who made learning—and growing up—look thrilling. They were right where they needed to be. I could see the joy on their faces. The students could, too.

After the incident with the two-headed image of me frozen on the classroom screen, everything changed. It made me realize how much I’d turned into a grumpy grownup who couldn’t take a joke, and that was not who I wanted to be. I began taking my cues from the carefree students and their playfully engaged teachers. No longer would I approach the Listening Tour like a scientific researcher, but instead I’d be more like a friend who’d been invited to play in the sandbox.

By allowing the project to be more fun, and allowing myself to have fun in the process, I became more of myself. I was not big, busy, boring me. I became the curious, caring, fun person I’d always been but had allowed time to hide. We played. I listened. They shared. I learned.

There’s another bit of important information about how kids see grownups that I need to share. For some of you it might be the most obvious, and for others, the most offensive. In addition to calling us big, busy, boring, and tired, kids don’t think we can dance. They loved talking about this. When I say loved, I mean that it came up in nearly every classroom. It’s one of their key points as to why grownups are boring.

It would go down like this: A student would speak up and share some story about their dad or grandma trying to do some dance. There would be a sea of eye rolls. Then the whole class would begin laughing. By the twentieth mention of this, I decided to speak up.

“Not all grownups are bad dancers,” I said confidently to a third grader, thus defending the honor of all adults everywhere.

“Oh really,” said the girl. “What about you? Can you dance?”

“Well, no. I mean, I dance, but not very well.”

The girl shot me a painfully unimpressed look.

“All I’m saying,” I responded, “is there are plenty of grownups who can dance.”

She continued to look unimpressed.

Now I know better. You cannot win an argument with a child without at least attempting to live as proof of it. If I wanted kids to know that you can grow up and do so joyfully, I would have to show them. We all do. We need better grownups to show future grownups what’s possible. To do this, we must risk the embarrassment and dance.

But just as there can be a tendency to villainize grownups and portray us as simply big, busy, boring weirdos who can’t dance, there can also be a tendency to idealize children and childhood. If we’re not careful, we can misremember that time in our lives as simple. We forget that it’s actually not easy to be little. As I visited classrooms, I began to remember how stressful it could be some days to make friends, follow all the rules, and remain seated in a chair. I remembered the struggles to fit in. I remembered the weight of wanting to make the grownups in my life proud. I remembered the deep feelings I had—but had yet to know how to even begin to articulate them.

Children have an ability to remain playful even with the barrage of pressures around them. Sometimes in the most serious moments, students would crack jokes. We could be in the midst of one of the silliest conversations, and a student would open up about deep sadness. One child would be telling me about unicorns and mermaids, only to switch gears and share how worried he was about something he’d heard on the news. I respect children’s tenacious exuberance now more than ever. Amid all they are going through—the developments and the challenges—they still find delight daily. Certainly, we can do the same, even if it happens while folding a fitted sheet.