Ep #61: What Is Developmental Movement? With Sukey Molloy

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

Amy: Sukey Malloy, we are so happy to have you on the show today. Thank you for joining us.

Sukey: Yeah, I’m really happy to be here. Thank you.

Amy: This is so fun because we chatted a little bit before we got on the show about music and play and movement and learning and how these things are connected. And I can’t wait to have this conversation because these are all things I’m actually personally passionate about and so let’s get into it. But before we get started, can you just tell me a little bit about you and how you got into this to begin with.

Sukey: Yeah, I was a professional modern dancer in New York City. I didn’t have a long career, but I was fortunate to actually be in a dance company and then I got injured. And I was older at the time already. So I began searching for what I might like to do. And I always had a sense I’d like to work with young children. So I looked around. I knew I didn’t want to teach dance. So I was searching for something related to movement and music because I play the piano and I sing.

So I went to a library and I found a book called Teaching Developmental Gymnastics by Garland O’Quinn. And he’s a PhD combined in movement and psychology for young children and I thought that’s it. So I called and lo and behold, the author answered the phone with a thick Texas accent. He said, “Hi, this is Gar.” So I brought him to New York three times for a week each so that I could train with him and that we could share these workshops with parents and teachers. So that’s how it all started.

And what Garland is the most interested in and brings is what he calls Developmental Movement. So I started my own program and actually a company, PlayMove&Sing Inc. And I began with the philosophy that Garland O’Quinn had shared with me. I started teaching my own classes from Mommy and Me and also preschools and kindergartens. And I began to add music because I play autoharp, it’s easier to carry around than a piano. And I do have a singing voice, which I hadn’t used, but that started to emerge and this all came naturally to include as I was trying to bring different movement and play activities for these locations.

And that also led to teaching workshops for teachers in this system that I kind of put together, and it was really just through discovery of trying things and what came naturally to me. And then someone said, “Well, will you please record some of those songs because I can play them at home?” And I said, “Sure, why not?” And I was introduced to Larry Alexander, who happens to live one town away, and he’s a Grammy winner and had recorded everybody Bruce Springsteen, Diana Ross, you name it. And he just happened to be close by, he’d never done anything with children.

So that came together and we made an album and then six albums later, we’re still [crosstalk]. And I also, in my classes I like to include play with felt art. So often, teachers and preschools use felt art where children can each come up and put a piece on the felt board in creating a story for instance or a song. But I began to get frustrated with the fact that everyone has to wait in line for their turn. So you have a whole bunch of children sitting which is not natural for them. So I made little felt boards, sort of 10 by 12. And then I would cut all these pieces so that every child could be having their own board and using their own felt.

Gar O’Quinn when he started, he was an Olympic gymnast and when he started his program, he had the same feeling that children were having to wait in line for their turn to go on every piece of equipment. He’s the one who really created the concept of an obstacle course and he did that once again, so that many children could be moving at the same time.

Amy: So is that one of the values maybe in music and dance for children is that they’re all getting to do it kind of at the same time and not waiting? When you create songs, does it kind of allow children to kind of all move together instead of having to take turns maybe?

Sukey: Yeah. So the first couple of albums, my songs were all about movement. So that we would be jumping or clapping hands or turning circles and that it’s something that we could all be doing together but each child having their own experience. And we were speaking earlier, Amy, that another aspect of this work that came from Garland O’Quinn is that the motivation to do something like clap hands or tap rhythm sticks together. But the motivation is, it serves the child best if it comes from his or her own inner self, because we can make the children do things. I can get in front of an audience of 500 people, I can make them do things.

And it looks like everyone’s jumping up and down and having a good time and perhaps they are. I won’t take away from that. But to invite participation is a very different pathway toward engagement. And if a child or a group of children, whether I’m in a room with 10 children and 10 parents or in a room with 15 preschoolers by myself or with kindergarteners, or on a big stage or a small stage. It’s my responsibility as someone who has agreed to go in front of these people, to make sure that we have a relationship, a real relationship.

And someone said to me once that working with children should never be a performance, you’ll never perform in front of children. What we’re really trying to do is to develop a relationship with the children in whatever the setting is so that they feel comfortable and their interest can come alive. And that no matter how they move or the way they move or when they move, and this isn’t to say there’s chaos, because I don’t do chaos but that it’s okay to move that way. It’s okay to sing that way and so their own inclinations are celebrated.

I’m giving permission and acknowledgement for the way that they move. And for parents listening, look, I have two children. I’ve been through it all. So I’ve learned a great deal that came to me after I had, for the most part, raised my children in their early years so it was painful for me to learn some of this later, but much of it also comes to me naturally.

But one thing I’ve discovered is parents and teachers, we all tend to, because we get excited and we’re always sort of looking toward the outcome. So we want something to go a certain way. If I hand a play material to a child, I already know what I want them to do and it’s not very [inaudible]. So here’s a case where I like to model some things and I’m fun to watch. It’s nice to look at me because I’m animated. And I kind of wait until everyone is locked into what I’m doing. It isn’t what I’m saying. I don’t talk much. And I look for that moment when they’re looking at what I’m doing and I can see that they want to do it.

So they’ve seen a picture of something. Now, they may or not be able to do that thing right away, but they’ve seen what it can look like and that I’m enjoying myself. And I’m making eye contact all the time with every child and parent in the room. If I’m on stage, it’s different, it’s just the same whole thing, but a lot bigger. And that’s okay, it can work. It was scary at first. I had the question of how big can I go and still have everybody’s attention?

And then there’s a parent who’s struggling or a teacher with the fact that their child or a particular child isn’t doing it. They haven’t picked up the material or they’re not trying the movement. But Gar O’Quinn always told me, “Sukey, observation is a form of participation.”

Amy: Yeah. So observation is a form of participation. I love that. I think you brought some really interesting elements in that I think one of the ways that we help children get invested or excited about it is showing that we have interest ourselves. I talk about this with some of the teachers that I talk to and that if we’re trying to be learning is fun and it’s exciting, but we’re not learning anything new, do we even remember that learning is fun and exciting? What have you gone to learn new lately?

And it’s hard because we’re adults and there’s so many things going on and who has time for that? But have you learned something new lately? Have you tried something new? Have you picked up, tried to learn a new language or learned a new skill or learned to cook something new or whatever? So I love that you talked about showing, I’m excited about this and they can tell the genuineness of it and that it’s not a performance, that this is real to you. I think kids pick up on that.

And I love that you’re giving them the opportunity to participate in their way and it doesn’t have to look a certain way. And I think that this is not only good for allowing them to have space to do it in a way that works with them developmentally, but also for building their creativity. And we had a neuroscientist on the show that was talking about that and just allowing space for them to create with that and make it their own.

And I have a daughter who’s really into dance. And so it’s kind of fun to get to talk to you about that. And she loves to create. And she didn’t always, I think, thrive in the environment of doing it the way that all the other ballerinas did. But she can do things that I haven’t seen done anywhere else and it is such her own unique thing. And it is humor dancing, I don’t know. It’s the funniest thing ever, but it’s just different and unique and beautiful.

And so I love that you talk about that and allowing space for that. And then that observation is a form of participation. I just want to put that on my wall and say that’s a step. They’re seeing it. That is the first part. And I think we do, we have kids that want to watch. And I was actually just, I volunteer with my school, my elementary school’s choir, our local school, and I play the piano for the choir.

And we had our concert this week and we had these two sixth grade boys that kind of sit on the end and it’s a large choir, it’s 60 kids. And they’re kind of rowdy and not necessarily always participating. They don’t always sing all the time. And our choir director’s phenomenal and just tries to include them. And anyway, so they got to do this little solo part together in one of the songs. And during the performance they just came out and just did so beautifully, even though they’ve kind of maybe been not fully participating all along. And so it’s just so neat to kind of see them have time to work through that and be able to participate and add.

Sukey: Also, we don’t want a three or four or five year old running around the room when we’re trying to do something. So the observation is a form of participation. In many cases, the child may seem to be not interested or fidgety or something, but if their eyes are on me, their eyes are on what I’m doing, they are participating. If they jumped up in and they’re running around the room, they’re not participating. Then we make decisions about that, because we don’t want to bring shame.

We don’t want children to feel shame. And we’ve all grown up under the influence of shame and it’s because everybody wants us to behave the same way, there’s a right way to behave. Well, there isn’t a right way to behave. There are ways to behave that help adults feel better or it’s less work for adults. But the real question is, well, one of the questions is, how as a parent, as a teacher, as a performer, how do I become a magnet for that child’s interest and attention?

Amy: And what do you find to be effective for that? Because I think all of us need that sometimes even as a parent, when I’m trying to get my kids to listen, if I’m trying to share something or teach them something new, and certainly teachers. How do we do that without becoming exhausted? How do you do that? What are your thoughts on that as a performer?

Sukey: Yeah. And teaching shouldn’t be exhausting. It is because, for instance, many people are trying to bring movement in a classroom, but they have no background in it. It’s scary to get 20 kids moving in front of you. It’s scary because you don’t know how to make them stop. So one thing I have learned is about tempo and change in tempo to attract the attention. The developing brain has got this sensory stuff going on all the time, all this processing. And it’s learning where the pathways are.

And that’s why electronic viewing and TV is so unfortunate before age five because it’s teaching pathways that aren’t necessary or useful for daily living. It’s a whole another universe that is disturbing the brain, actually, because it’s confusing the brain. The synapses grow and most of them grow, I think, in the first three years and up to the first five years. We can continue to grow them, but a huge amount of those happened very early. And movement and sensory play are totally significant to the growth of synapses.

So if we have children sitting and looking at something that’s moving in front of them, it’s not giving them anything even if they’re pushing some buttons and making the thing move. I always try to imagine for a developing brain, you’re looking at something, two little bears and they’re talking. And the next thing is the bears completely vanish and another image comes up and replaces them. The brain doesn’t have any idea what to do with that.

Amy: Yeah, it’s not what happens in the natural world.

Sukey: Yeah, the best TV is to go out in nature. That’s the best programming I ever saw.

Amy: So talk really quick, a little bit more about this idea of movement helping the growth of the synapses in the brain because I think that’s interesting for people. Because I think we know and we have this idea that movement’s important for healthy bodies or whatever. But I don’t think most people think movement’s important for brain development, so talk to me about that and why that’s relevant.

Sukey: Yes. And I’ll circle back around to this question of becoming a magnet. We have supposedly five senses, but we actually have six. Nobody knows this, but the sixth one is called proprioception. And that is the impressions that are going to the brain from how we move, whether we’re upright, we’re bending over, we’re moving forward, we’re moving back.

And one of the most important aspects that happen early is the vestibular system, which is this little fluid in the canals in the inner ear. And the fluid needs to slosh around a lot. There are little crystals inside and they need a lot of movement to tell the brain all kinds of things. And that’s why, when a child circles around or goes upside down, they giggle. And they giggle because it feels good and it’s because the brain is getting fed, it’s being nurtured.

In the first 10 years of life, the movement vocabulary that we have developed in the first 10 years of life, it’s pretty much what we’re going to take through the rest of life. Unless you’re an actor or a dancer or a gymnast or something, football player, whatever it is, you’ll have a much wider vocabulary of movement. But in our natural world, children naturally want to move and play. So if we’re telling them, “Don’t move, sit down, be quiet.” That’s not where they are. They’ll be able to do that later when it’s appropriate. But we want them to move, to have the sensation of this proprioception happening.

We want them to have the sensation of themselves alive in a body. And so much of what we’re doing is we’re kind of calling the child out of their own body and getting them interested in all kinds of other things that isn’t giving them an impression of themselves, that inner feeling of I am, I know I’m here. My aim is always that by becoming a magnet, I can then begin to direct the attention off of me and onto the child’s own experience.

And some of the ways of being a magnet, if children are all riled up or they’re too still, they don’t feel like moving or singing or playing an instrument or whatever it is we’re trying. And remembering that observation is a form of participation, so not everybody moves the same and often a child who observes will go home and do it because they’re watching, they’re watching.

But what I like to do is to build the energy and the excitement in an activity and let it come up. Let them be on their feet and jumping and singing. And then I have to bring them back down. That’s my responsibility is to bring them back down to that quiet place and let them experience where they just were before I try to attract them to something else. So I use quiet and loud and quiet, fast, slow, fast, slow.

Amy: That’s so interesting because I feel like I see that as an adult, if I go to a movement class, if I go to a fitness class or something and I think this is pretty normal. You warm up and then you do your exercise and then you cool down and slow down and stretch. And so I think that idea makes sense but what a neat idea to be able to do that. I think sometimes we just get really excited with kids and then we forget we have to kind of bring them back down to kind of help them naturally, come back down instead of just expecting them to be like, “Okay, we’re done having fun, now everyone be calm.”

Sukey: It’s a principle for me, even if I’m in front of a big audience, it’s the same principles always apply. Bring them up, bring them halfway back, bring them up again, bring them a little bit farther into the quiet. Bring them up, and then we end with something very gentle and serene. So, we’re not all going around leaving in this kind of hyped up state. And of course, that state’s fun and it’s good. You can get a big group of people to jump up and down and have a good time. I like that the good time we’re having is also helping to build skills.

Amy: Right. I was recording another episode earlier with a life coach and she was talking about helping children feel comfortable with all of their feelings. And I think you’re almost modeling that in a slightly different way but going up in highs and lows and just helping them kind of get comfortable in the range of different feelings. And that experiencing all of that is all good and it’s all healthy and we just can do it at different times.

And even helping children learn how to maybe get themselves from those more engaged states down to kind of more calm. Because sometimes we are more heightened and then we need to get ourselves back to calm. So learning how, or practicing doing that through music and movement with you, I think, is so valuable. So that they can then know how to do that later, in other contexts, when their feelings are going high, and then they need to be able to bring them back down.

Sukey: I agree with that absolutely. And it’s not that I’m there to teach. I’m not there to perform. I’m there so that we can be together and I can bring an experience or an idea that’s important to me to share. If we’re going to end a class, we perhaps talk about that well before we get to the end of it. And I’ve learned and I’ve seen this so many times how valuable it is, that it’s always better to ask a question than to tell something.

Amy: Yes. I think we could just put that in every classroom and in every home everywhere and it would not still be enough. That’s such a good point, yes.

Sukey: It’s so incredible, because the moment you get into the tone of asking, all of a sudden everybody’s like, “Oh”, because we asked.

Amy: You open it instead of just, I think it just makes them so much more receptive to thinking about and hearing about and discussing as opposed to just being told something where we maybe get defensive or kind of shut out a little bit and so I love that, so good.

Sukey: There’s something that kind of goes along with that, that Gar O’Quinn, he was my mentor. So I was able to bring a dance background and a music background and a creative background so that I took what I learned with him and just took it in another direction. But all the principles remain the same. So he would ask, let’s say it’s time for everyone to put on their coats and leave. That’s an activity. Every transition from one activity to another, transitions are a full blown activity. And parents suffer terribly, teachers suffer terribly about things like this, getting coats on because it’s time to go. Terrible, everybody’s stressed out.

So there are always ways, not bribery, but how to turn those things into a question. What’s important to you? What would you like to do before it’s time to put on our coats? So I ask this, get the whole group putting their coats on in different ways. And in the library programs I teach, we started having, it just occurred to me once, I always sing twinkle, twinkle little star at the end and then you are my sunshine, only the first verse, you are my sunshine. And it kind of brings everyone a little quieter and it’s familiar.

So then it occurred to me, why don’t we bring baskets of library books, little board books and stuff and bring them into the middle of the circle so that we’re the library, let’s include that. And I started singing, this is the way we look at a book, look at a book. So I tend to sing about and make songs about what we’re doing. I take a traditional melody like skip, skip, skip to my Lou. If I had sticks, what would I do? What would I do? What would I do? So I’ve set it up. I hand out sticks and now I’m going to help us find different ways to tap the sticks and sing and move.

So in that regard he always said, “Who am I to tell a child that they did a good job? Because if I don’t say you did a good job, what are they going to think? I didn’t do a good job.” So this was groundbreaking for me. He said, “You never give an opinion about what someone has done. You just say what they have done with enthusiasm.” “Wow, you just rang the bell.” And I’m showing my enthusiasm or I might say, “I wonder how you might ring that bell.” But I am never judging what anyone does.

Amy: Whether they did it well or not, that’s interesting.

Sukey: So I could say, “Wow, you ate all your carrots.”

Amy: Without assigning a value to it.

Sukey: “Or, “Wow, you don’t seem that interested in the carrots. What’s up?” So there’s no shame. There’s no judging. These are huge, little tidbits I’m sharing here.

Amy: I know. I’m liking this. I’m thinking through how I can use that one. I love this idea of asking questions, but I love what you’re bringing to your engagement with kids around talking about what they’re doing and acknowledging what they’re doing without adding judgment to it and adding a value to it. I think that’s beautiful.

Sukey: And of course, I can show enthusiasm or I can show less enthusiasm, but never criticism, never shaming. And there was something else that Gar, he would say, because some children are quick to engage others, they’re not even interested in what we’re trying. And they’re allowed to not be interested. We need to find a way to attract their interest. And that’s on me as the adult or to know, hey, this is not working, you’ve got to put this one aside and try something else.

So some parents and teachers feel conflicted when they’ve offered something and it isn’t happening or it’s time to put on a coat. Or the child who doesn’t want to come in the room because there are already a lot of people in the room and the child feels scared, shy, intimidated. Or the toys go in the basket. The toys go in the basket and so on. And there always is one child who will never put stuff in the basket, but after about three or four classes, they’re the first ones to run and put it in.

So a parent will bring their child, pick them up and then make their hand drop the thing, and it always breaks my heart because that’s one way. So this is when I share another thing that Gar O’Quinn said that you’ll need to repeat out loud. Do you know about the three T’s?

Amy: The three T’s, tell us about the three T’s.

Sukey: Things take time. And it’s so hard in the world we live in and it’s very hard for parents, because we’re trying to get somewhere, we have to get in the car, out of the car, take a bath, get dressed, eat. And we get all focused on trying to do those things instead of how are we doing them. What kind of relationship are we having while we’re doing these things together? And so the three T’s means that it probably takes 45 minutes to get from the house to the car, so plan.

Amy: So make sure that you’ve set that in your schedule. I have that time. I’ve loved what you talked about earlier. What is important to you to do before you get your coat on? You’re giving children so much power, but also giving a boundary of, we need to put our coat on. But what is important to do before that? I love that. That’s so beautiful. And making sure that you’re just allowing time to meet their need around that before they get their coat on, so it’s just beautiful.

Sukey: It’s respect. And they say, “Yeah, I need a lollipop before”, then you’ve got to do it. It can’t be candy this time, what else is there that you like, whatever?

Amy: What do you need? Sukey, thank you so much for coming and having this conversation with me today. I feel like I’ve gotten value out of it and I am guessing that our listeners have as well and so thank you so much for sharing. And where can they find you and your music?

Sukey: All my music and my storytelling about The Adventures of the Little Stubby, but there are, I think, six albums of music. So I’m of course, on Spotify and Pandora and iTunes and Amazon, all those places. And I’m on YouTube, of course, so people can subscribe to that channel. So I also create videos. I haven’t recently, but there was a while there where I did. And I have made circle time play and craft time play with felt and story time play. And I think they’re on YouTube, I can’t really remember, but all these things are on my website.

I don’t really approve very much of electronic viewing for very young children. But I did make video the way that I felt it should be with long stretches of running time so that a child’s brain doesn’t have to make those fast choices. It’s something it doesn’t understand about. So long stretches of running time with no edits and no ads, you can look for that. So all of these things on my website will be the easiest place to see anything that’s available. But if you Google me, all these things will come up. so it’s sukeymalloy.com.

Amy: And we will include a link to that in the show notes too so they don’t have to do any Googling, they can just click and go right to you. Thank you again for coming. It’s been so delightful to talk to you and I hope we get to chat again sometime soon.

Sukey: I would really love to, Amy. Thank you everyone for listening and thank you for having me.

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Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website planningplaytime.com. See you next week.