Christmas is here, whether you’re ready or not, and that means that there are likely still a few last-minute things that you’re feeling stressed about finishing before Thursday.
And while a little stress around the holidays is normal, I hope none of the stress you’re feeling comes from the prospect of having your kids home for the next couple of weeks.
A lot of parents see the break as a chance to finally get to live life the way they want to—no rigid schedules, more family time, a slower pace of life with a focus on the things that really matter—but for some parents, school breaks carry a stress all their own that doesn’t have anything to do with getting the right gift, or prepping the house for a Christmas party.
For some parents, breaks in school bring with them a worry about falling behind, a loss of motivation and momentum, and getting “off track” in ways that could cause harm to the future well-being of their kids.
Of course, schools feed that fear by drumming home messaging about “keeping rhythms” and sending loads of work home to be completed over the break. It’s like they can’t stand the idea of not being the center of a family’s attention at all times.
Anything to keep themselves relevant, I suppose.
The worry parents feel about their kids “falling behind” shows up most clearly when they start to think about homeschooling.
I’ve talked to countless moms and dads who like the idea in theory but hesitate for one main reason: they’re afraid their kids won’t keep up. They worry they won’t replicate school well enough at home. They imagine gaps forming, momentum being lost, and doors to a happy and prosperous future quietly closing.
And that fear makes sense.
If school is treated as the benchmark for learning.
I happen to be of the belief that schooling isn’t even in the same universe as learning, but I know that’s still a pretty minority view.
Over time, most of the population (including loving, involved, intelligent parents) has internalized the idea that education is a system you either stay on pace with or fall behind in. There’s an anxiety around the idea that lessons move forward whether a child is ready or not; that breaks in the school year are interruptions, and unstructured time is a liability.
So when Christmas break arrives, the instinct is often to compensate. Worksheets get printed, strict schedules get enforced, and home starts to look suspiciously like school—just with fewer resources and more stress.
The good news is that all that worry actually rests on a faulty assumption.
Learning doesn’t actually require constant structure, professional oversight, or a carefully engineered environment. In fact, some of the most impactful learning happens when those things are absent.
During breaks like this, kids spend more time talking with adults. They help with real tasks, they ask questions that don’t fit neatly into a lesson plan, and conversations get the chance to wander. Because of that, ideas get challenged, cause and effect get learned in tangible ways, and although none of it looks like school, thinking (learning!) is happening the whole time.
There’s even research that backs this up.
A study published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine looked at the factors that most strongly influence healthy cognitive development in children. The researchers didn’t find that tools, techniques, or instructional models were the primary drivers. What stood out instead was the quality of a child’s relationships with the adults in their life.
Parents, siblings, grandparents, and extended family aren’t secondary influences in the process of raising high-achieving thinkers. It turns out they’re central to it.
Researchers even included this gem in their findings:
“In order to develop normally, a child requires progressively more complex joint activity with one or more adults who have an irrational emotional relationship with the child. Somebody’s got to be crazy about that kid. That’s number one. First, last and always.”—Urie Bronfenbrenner
It turns out children’s brains aren’t shaped only by what they’re taught, but by how adults talk to them, how questions are engaged with, how responsibility is modeled, and whether curiosity is nurtured and encouraged, or simply “managed” out of them. A child who is listened to develops differently from one who is constantly rushed or corrected. A child who is trusted to think grows differently from one who is merely guided through tasks.
This creates a very different way of looking at Christmas break, or any other so-called interruption to the “norm”.
Time at home isn’t a pause in learning unless learning is defined narrowly. It’s not lost ground unless progress is measured only by keeping pace with a system (a system that becomes less and less relevant with each passing study, and each passing year). Because learning is really about understanding the world, developing judgment, and gaining the ability to think and reason clearly, time spent in real conversation with thoughtful adults is not a setback at all.
It’s actually the thing that gives kids the biggest advantage in education.
This is one of the reasons we’ve always put so much emphasis on families in the work we do at Tuttle Twins.
Our books aren’t meant to replace parents or recreate classrooms; they’re meant to support conversations that already belong in the home. The learning that happens when parents use our resources isn’t because they’re replicating school, it’s because they’re engaging ideas together as a family. They’re asking questions, disagreeing, and thinking things through, all with the people who have the most investment in each other's success and well-being.
The truth that the top-down social engineers and big-gov bureaucrats don’t want you to know is that education isn’t something that has to be constantly engineered to work. It’s actually something that happens naturally when kids spend time with adults who are deeply invested in them, and who care the most about who they become.
Adults who are “crazy” about them.
This year, with Christmas break stretching out in front of you, I hope you’ll consider the liberating idea that there’s actually no need to turn your home into a classroom or worry about staying on schedule.
Because it turns out, just doing everyday life together isn’t a break from the more important work. According to science, it’s where real learning actually happens.
Merry Christmas, from my family to yours.
I hope you enjoy every minute of it.
— Connor
