Invisible barriers (part 2)
When you are struggling to learn something, there may be an obstacle that you can avoid.
The last article was about removing the fear of drowning, in order to unlock the ability to learn how to swim. In other words, removing a mental barrier that was blocking physical progress.
But the opposite can happen too: sometimes, a physical barrier can be blocking mental progress. That’s what I discovered while playing a new game with my son.
I grew up in a family where games were a big deal. We played a lot. One of the popular games was Rummy.
Rummy has many variants, but the fundamentals of Rummy are always the same: you have lots of cards in your hands, and you need to trade them one by one in order to reach a precise combination of runs (3 consecutive cards of the same suit) and sets (3 cards of the same rank).
As I became a father, I naturally introduced a lot of games to my children. My professional obsession for simplicity gave me the idea to take complex adult games, and simplify their rules so that young kids could enjoy them. With that approach, we were able to play games like Chess, Carcassonne, Poker, Awale, Backgammon, or Splendor.
Not Rummy, because I couldn’t find a way to simplify it without losing its essence. In general, most cards games felt too complex for them.
This summer, though, something funny happened. With a couple of adults, we were playing a variant of Rummy called Rummikub. Instead of cards, you play with tiles, that are sitting on a rack — very similar to a Scrabble rack.
My son was watching us play, and he started to whisper advice to his grandmother. Pointing out a potential set that she hadn’t seen. Suggesting to throw a tile that wasn’t useful.
Every time, his advice was spot on.
I was surprised, because I didn’t believe that the brain of a 4-year old boy could handle the complexity of options that a Rummikub game exposes you to. Intrigued, I offered him to take a seat and play with us. He blended in perfectly. I observed him, and that’s when I understood my mistake.
I had misunderstood his learning barrier. He didn’t have a mental barrier, but a physical one. He had the full mental capacity to play Rummy-type games — it’s just that his hands were too tiny to hold more than a couple of cards. The Rummikub rack was removing this physical barrier. With the rack holding his tiles, he could see them all at once, and easily organize them in sets and runs.
Since then, Rummikub joined the list of the games we play together.
Here’s a modest conclusion about this topic. In a learning process, it seems like there are two ways to address barriers. When you face a barrier, you can attack it, or avoid it.
Example 1: Learn how to swim.
Barrier = fear of drowning.
Attack the barrier = become comfortable under water
Avoid the barrier = wear armbands
Example 2: Play Rummy.
Barrier = holding many cards in your hands
Attack the barrier = improve hand dexterity
Avoid the barrier = use a rack to hold your tiles
Attacking the barrier is harder at first, but deals with the problem entirely.
Avoiding the barrier helps you make progress faster, but the barrier is still there. (You may need to come back to it later on.)
Does this way of looking at learning difficulties resonate with you? If yes, I’d be curious to hear about an example of yours.
Thank you to Charles Loumeau, Sara Dufour, Timothé Frin, Laurent Memmi, Diane Sempéré, Nicolas Baltzer, Lina Hamed, Eduardo Rocha, and Ayça Sevkal-Guyot for reading early drafts of this article.
P.S.: My favorite Rummy variant is called Shanghai Rummy. It beats the other variants I played for two reasons. First, the objective of each round evolves over time, forcing you to adjusting your tactics as the game progresses. Second, you have the opportunity to steal someone else’s turn if you see a great card available, which means you need to stay focused even when it’s not your turn to play.