Adult Supremacy - With Dr. Casey Y. Myers

In this episode of Children Deserve Better, Dr. Jasmine Moses sits down with Dr. Casey Y. Myers—educator, researcher, and co-founder of Watershed Community School—to unpack adult supremacy and its impact on children’s lives. 

From classroom routines to state laws, we explore how unchecked adult power harms children—and what it takes to raise and teach with solidarity instead of control.

 Topics include:

• What Adult Supremacy is and it's impact
  
  
• The difference between guidance and control
  
  
  
• How everyday practices can uphold harmful power dynamics
  
  
  
• The long-term impact of adult dominance on children’s development
  
  
  
• What it means to treat children as full human beings

Find Dr. Myers Here: 

www.watershedcommunityschool.com 

https://www.instagram.com/watershed.community.school/

Purchase her book: 

https://www.routledge.com/Reframing-the-Everyday-in-Early-Childhood-Pedagogy-Conceptualising-the-Mundane/Myers-Smith-Hostler-Tesar/p/book/9781032335100?srsltid=AfmBOooc8rcHHwYy0ZKRyc-10KbSiXFPVIUrnS_IcfmwYwRIAZ0McmT2

A Zine on Adult Supremacy: 

https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1460

Transcript

Jasmine Moses (00:00)
Welcome back to Children Deserve Better. I am your host, Dr. Jasmine Moses, and today on the show, we are talking about adult supremacy. I am really looking forward to this episode because it's something we don't name nearly enough and it's long overdue. And if we're going to talk about justice, care, freedom, all of the above, then we have to talk about how power

operates in our relationships with children. Adult supremacy is embedded in every single system that touches children's lives from how classrooms are managed to how laws are written to how families are expected to even show up and function. And personally, I think it's high time that we talked about it because you can't scream liberation and freedom while ignoring the ways that we treat the youngest people within our communities.

With that, another reason that I am super excited about this show is that I have a very special guest that is joining me today. Dr. Casey Y. Myers is the founder of Watershed Community School, a progressive and sustainable early years center. She is currently the lead researcher at the Childhoods Research Collective, which focuses on young children's relationships within their socio-material landscape of neighborhoods.

Her professional interests include post-humanisms and research ethics within the field of early childhood education, as well the phenomena of schooling in relation to childhoods. In a career spanning 25 years, she has worked as a classroom therapist, professor, and researcher. Her work has received recognition from both the International Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education, or RECE, organization, and the American Educational Research Association.

Her most recent publications are featured in the Australian Environmental Education Journal and the Bloomsbury Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Early Childhood. She currently lives and works in Northeast Ohio with her partner and son, and not mentioned here, Dr. Myers is my mentor and friend. I first met her in undergrad and then had the opportunity to work alongside her as I taught pre-school.

she so graciously took the responsibility of being my advisor during my master's program and we have stayed connected ever since. So you all are in for a treat as I owe a great deal of who I am as an educator to Dr. Myers and I know that she will leave you with so many amazing thoughts and new understandings here today. So thank you so much for being here today,

Casey Myers (02:36)
Thank

you for having me. I'm super excited to be here. What a lovely introduction.

Jasmine Moses (02:40)
I'll dive into the first question. So who are you and how does your work make the world better for children?

Casey Myers (02:42)
Okay.

So ⁓ talk about things that weren't in that lovely introduction. I have to say hearing 25 years is rough. I know I wrote that, but that is rough. It's rough to hear. That seems like a long time to be in this field. I'm a mom, I'm a teacher, a researcher, an early childhood advocate. My work really centers around

children's everyday lives inside of school and outside of school and how adults can help children be valued members of their school and community. And over the course of my career, I've attempted to do that in lots of different ways and I've had many different roles right now. As you said, I'm currently helming the creation.

of a sustainable and progressive early years center in Akron, Ohio with my co-founder, Rochelle Hostler, who is an amazing early childhood advocate and teacher in her own right. The work that I try to do, whether it's researching or direct teaching with children, my goal is ultimately to be an adult that is an ally to children to try and place children's

ideas, voices, needs, wants at the forefront of my work is a goal of mine. That's a goal that's ongoing. I don't know that I ever actually achieve it, but I do, try to make the world a better place for children and for grownups, for everybody. I think that the world can be a better place when people who are in positions of power, like adults,

work on, you know, leveraging that power and privilege when they need to, to advocate on behalf of children and then also relinquishing that when they can to move to the side and give children space to advocate for themselves. And so I try to strike that balance in my work because I do ultimately aim to be in solidarity with children rather than

just be in position to advocate for them. I want to be in solidarity with them. That's my goal.

Jasmine Moses (04:48)
that

I think leads me into our next question, which is the phrase adult supremacy isn't always something that people name out loud, even if they are living or enforcing it. So I'm curious, when you hear the term adult supremacy, what does that bring up for you professionally or personally?

Casey Myers (05:10)
And so adult supremacy, you're right, is not a term that we hear a lot. Sometimes you'll hear the word adultism used in place of that, but even then it's not a mainstream idea. It's also not a new idea, adult supremacy. think it was first coined in 1903 or 1904 or something like that by a developmental psychologist. so adult supremacy is a range

of beliefs and practices that create an inequitable hierarchy between children and adults. And so we live in a society that's structured by adult supremacy. I would argue that pretty much every society that has been influenced by Eurocentrism through the spread of colonialism is influenced by adult supremacy.

that structures the way that children are treated in most aspects of life. So educationally, legally, medically is influenced by adult supremacy. And so adult supremacy relies on a false division. Like all oppressive ways of thinking, it relies on this strict division between adults and children where ⁓

Adults are seen as fully formed, as always right, as exceptional, and children are seen as deficient. Instead of seeing human development as this broad continuum where we're all learning and growing, no one is superior or fully developed regardless of age or stage in life, adult supremacy

really says, okay, if we're going to have a society where children need something from adults, particularly things sometimes called duty of care, so things like ⁓ community and family and legal obligations, if adults have to care for children, that gives them a right to have a say over everything in children's lives. adult supremacy kind of conflates those things.

of seeing them as something that aren't linked together, if that makes sense.

Jasmine Moses (07:20)
And you really are like speaking to a lot of my interests as an educator and a lot of the work that I do. I always say that we are supposed to be lifelong learners and we're supposed to model that.

children and when we forget that as adults and we pretend that adults have all the answers and that children then have nothing to teach us then we end up continuously replicating the same power dynamics that we claim we want to dismantle. And the fact you wouldn't treat another adult in the ways that you treat children and so I

glad that we're able to have this conversation. In your research and practice, where do you see adult supremacy showing up most often in early childhood settings?

Casey Myers (08:11)
It's everywhere. ⁓ Particularly because schools tend to be like adult produced and adult tailored systems. And so the imposition of ideas, values, schedules, so much of what's done in early childhood education

has very little to do with children's capacities and nurturing children's capacities, and is actually more about adult convenience, efficiency, and a lot of times cost effectiveness of processes than it does with what's actually best for adults and children as and grow together. And to be fair,

A lot of these structures are not necessarily determined by parents, caregivers, teachers. They're not always determined by the people interacting directly with children. A lot of times those are handed down by systems and institutions. So employers, school systems, a lot of times adults are participating in adult supremacy, not for malicious reasons, but simply because

Jasmine Moses (09:06)
.

Casey Myers (09:27)
and this is the way all systems of oppression work, these systems have become very convincing that this is just the way things are. This is just how things operate. This is just the way it is. And there's no other My colleagues and I recently put together an edited book. So it was myself, Kylie Smith, Mark Tessar, and Rochelle Hosler, who's with me at Watershed Community School. wrote an edited book about

Jasmine Moses (09:33)
Okay.

Casey Myers (09:51)
everyday

life in early childhood centers and about the things that happen everywhere like eating, napping, lining up, toileting, washing your hands. And we took a real critical look at how these things often take up most of children's day. We spend most of our day doing these transition rituals and routines. ⁓

And these are the spaces that often are the

Jasmine Moses (10:18)
All

Casey Myers (10:19)
most fraught with unnecessary adult control over children. so, you know, there are, of course, lots of things that you don't have a choice about doing in schools that are in place for like health and safety reasons, if I can give an example, washing your hands, right? And so,

if someone's trying to say, let's take a look at adult supremacy and control in these systems that we have in place in schools. No one with any good sense is going to say, well, children don't need to wash their hands after they go to the toilet. yes, they do. We all do. We all need to wash your hands after we go to the toilet. it's not optional. However, it doesn't mean that adults have to make that event about control and domination, right?

Jasmine Moses (10:48)
Right.

Casey Myers (10:59)
So, I'm a two-year-old child. I'm learning

how to go to the toilet. Please be gentle with me and how you help me to do this, right? Explain to me why. Like, can we strive to have this be an experience that's meaningful for me? Can you show me with your words and your actions what it looks like to cooperatively engage in a hygiene task that I'm not necessarily interested in?

Jasmine Moses (11:03)
.

Casey Myers (11:24)
it's lunchtime and yes, we have to sit at the table because it's not safe to run

around and eat your food, But I'm learning how to navigate my own body's hunger and thirst. Can you sit with me and help me engage in this experience in a positive way and not just tell me how many bites I need to take and assume that you know how hungry I am because you're an adult and I'm a child, you know?

Jasmine Moses (11:31)
.

Casey Myers (11:46)
walking down the hallway in a line. we do have to walk in a way that's safe to get from our classroom to the playground, but why do we have to be completely silent? Why do we have to be in a single file line necessarily? You know, if there's a good reason for it, please explain it to me. But can we really think about how we ask children to move through space? Because the only other time where people

are controlled in this kind of way without any choice, without any negotiation when someone is a prisoner. And so that should really tell us something about how we approach these everyday events in early childhood where we're really over managing children for the sake of efficiency or safety. But we could probably back off and make those

more about shared experience, more about meaningful connection and learning, and not just about obedience and control.

my bias is I study children's everyday life so I'm really tuned into these kind of everyday activities but in those everyday activities we see the way adult supremacy operates every day it's not necessarily that adults mean to harm children but just that it's really taken for granted that these are times where adult control

Jasmine Moses (12:49)
Okay.

Casey Myers (13:04)
and a lack of children's choice and voice has just become commonplace.

Jasmine Moses (13:10)
And I think too, it's all even connected to the ways we operate as a society, right? Like we're always in a rush. all, like there's always things that we feel like we have to do. a lot of these things that we're expecting children to do, rushing to finish their food and you need to eat.

a few more bites and like all of these things I think are rooted in adult comfort. Walking quietly in a line to the next space in a school rooted in adults not wanting to hear children their voices and different things like that and so why are we continuously forcing children into a box in order for us as adults to feel better and I think.

It really is connected into everything that we see and everything that we do. But I'm excited about this next question because I feel like unfortunately these two terms are used interchangeably in the field and they shouldn't be. So can you please tell us the difference between guidance and control when it comes to child development?

Casey Myers (14:14)
I'm gonna start with control because I think it's the easier one to define. So when we talk about control or even I would even say behavior management, that's a term that gets used a lot, and control is really about leveraging your power over another person so that they do what you want, when you want them to do it, how you want them to do it, regardless.

Jasmine Moses (14:24)
.

Casey Myers (14:37)
of what their own needs and desires might be or else they face some kind of negative repercussions. I think control

is easy to identify because it's something that nobody likes. Nobody likes to be on the receiving end of that. Every adult, I think, has had like a controlling boss or like a micromanaging supervisor.

or a coworker who oversteps their boundaries, or a family member who basically says, it's my way or the highway. You have to do it this way. And I don't care what you think. And I think if we just take a moment and reflect about those adult relationships, know that not having a say is

Jasmine Moses (15:01)
right.

Casey Myers (15:25)
not make for a healthy relationship.

I would ask do you still keep in contact with that boss that micromanaged you and controlled you, or do you think I never wanna see that person again? I hope I never interact with them again. It was not a good experience. So I think noticing control and recognizing how negative it can to adult.

easy.

with children, so adult-child relationships, happens when adults say to children, know, do this because I'm an adult and you're a child. Do this because I said so. And there's no room for negotiation or for the adult to even listen to the child's perspective. And this happens sometimes where adults because

They have information that children don't and they have responsibilities that children may not. That there are times, of course, where adults say, this is something that has to happen and there's no choice about it. It's just something that has to be done, like washing your hands, for example. But I think where we get into very controlling territory for adults is that not only do children not have a say about what's happening to them, but they're also not allowed to feel any kind of way about it.

So they're not allowed to cry about it or whine about it or else the adult kind of ramps up the control and gives them another negative consequence. So not only can you not do what you want to do, but you're not allowed to be mad about it. You're not allowed to whine about it, cry about it. And I'm using whining with like extreme air quotes, like, you know. ⁓ And so I think that kind of typifies a controlling relationship.

Jasmine Moses (17:01)
Mm hmm. ⁓

Casey Myers (17:10)
between

adults and children is when there's no negotiation, no listening, and even if things don't go your way, you better act like you're glad about it. You better not express any negative emotions about what's

and so guidance on the other hand, requires adults and children to work collaboratively and cooperatively and have relationships where there is some give and take. And very importantly, that there is efforts to repair their relationship after there's a conflict. I think guidance is trickier to conceptualize and to enact, because of adult supremacy, adults.

may think I don't need to have that kind of relationship with children. But also because children and adults are different. There are some biological and physiological differences between children and adults that can make cooperative relationships harder and more complicated. So children

do have less experience on this planet. So they may not be privy to experiences and information that adults have.

Jasmine Moses (18:08)
.

Casey Myers (18:15)
Children are dependent upon adults for things, food, shelter, protection, nurturance. Their brains are still developing and growing. They're learning how to communicate, how to read, how to write. So they need and are reliant upon adults for information, for explanation. Our communities aren't generally set up for safety and independence for children.

A lot of needs have to be met by adults in the society and communities that we live in. And so when you have that kind of reliance, often adults see that as permission.

to control. And so that's why I think guidance is so tricky to conceptualize what it might look like and actually enact it. Because if you're going to work from a place of guidance versus a place of control, you have to have a lot of care and intention to understand your role as an adult, not as someone who has unchecked power.

Jasmine Moses (18:50)
Okay.

Casey Myers (19:13)
over children, but instead have a great responsibility to apprentice children into our communities in a healthy way. So it's ⁓ a shift of I have power versus I have responsibility. And, you know, this is a practical dilemma of like, how do we treat children, but also, it's a very philosophical dilemma of

Like what kind of world do I want to live in now and in the future? What kind of world do I want for my child right now? What kind of world do I want them to grow up into? ⁓ Because I ultimately, think we shouldn't want a world where children are controlled unilaterally until they're, teenagers or maybe they're 18 or maybe they're 21. And then we turn them out on their own and we say, well, now you're a grownup.

Now you can do whatever you want. Good luck.

⁓ I don't think that's a world where children and former children can actually thrive being controlled for their entire childhood and then when we decide they're adults ⁓ then that control ends and they can do whatever they want.

This is where the advising part comes in. I think if you want to shift from a mindset of I have to make sure that I'm in control of interactions that I have with children versus I want to work on an orientation towards guidance.

Jasmine Moses (20:36)
.

Casey Myers (20:42)
Think about like what kind of relationship do I wanna have with children? What kind of world do I wanna live in? And let that kind of be the place that you start because I do think because we live in a world structured by adult supremacy that it takes a lot of

rethinking and reframing how you understand the world if you wanna do things differently.

Jasmine Moses (21:02)
And I think we as adults all have varying perspectives of this possibly in our own lives growing up maybe with colleagues or friends or things that we have heard their experiences of too and we know that there are impacts of growing up in this way of experiencing things in this way so

What are some of the long-term developmental impacts of growing up in these environments where children's autonomy isn't respected?

Casey Myers (21:33)
I think we can look at it the same way we look at any other kind of oppression, right? Long-term effects of growing and developing, feeling and experiencing oppression. feeling powerless, helpless, avoiding conflict.

or avoiding any kind of discomfort, ⁓ difficulty maintaining healthy relationships, not understanding or valuing consent.

becoming really withdrawn and hopeless, or kind of the opposite, really valuing anger and interpersonal control and domination. Those are all outcomes of loss of autonomy.

There are always exceptions that prove the rule. So things like, you know, there are children who grew up in very controlled, disrespected, maybe physically and emotionally abusive situations that decide, you know what, no, I'm not going to be that kind of teacher. I'm not going to be that kind of parent. I'm not going to be that kind of adult. I'm going to do it differently from what I experienced. However,

Anyone who has had that experience of saying, you know, I was over controlled as a child or my teachers didn't respect me or respect my autonomy and I'm going to do it differently. anyone who has had that experience will tell you that that is not easy. It requires a tremendous amount of work of interpersonal growth, reframing, re-parenting, and that work

lasts your whole lifetime trying to undo or break that kind of cycle. even though people can certainly rise above it, it'd be nice if you didn't have to, right? because, you know, for everyone, I think, and I would say this about any kind of oppression, whether you break that cycle or not, your potential is limited because you either

spend your life upholding an oppressive system, trying to dismantle an oppressive system, trying to recover from it. And you can't become the best or fullest version of yourself if that's how you're spending your energy, right? you can certainly rise above adult supremacy that you experienced as a child. But it would be nice if you didn't have to, if you could direct that energy somewhere else instead of

you know, spending time

⁓ grappling with these really harmful systems, Like you and I could be eating an ice cream cone right now instead of talking about this, right? Like life could be easier if we didn't have to do the work to undo those things.

Jasmine Moses (24:05)
If.

And so when we think about the fact that there is so much harm that happens in a lot of these cycles, who do you see as most at risk when adult supremacy goes unchallenged?

Casey Myers (24:32)
children being oppressed by adult supremacy, but children also don't stay children. I think we're all at at its very worst, unchallenged adult supremacy perpetuates cycles of abuse and violence. So when adults have

unchecked power over children, those children are being raised to become adults that in turn can cause harm with unchecked power and so on and so on. And so oppression really becomes common sense and just the way things are. if I

Jasmine Moses (24:51)
Okay.

Casey Myers (25:05)
can give an example of this, it's a very common example that we see least in American society, right?

we have lots of research that demonstrates very clearly that when adults use physical punishment on children, it causes harm.

Jasmine Moses (25:25)
Yep.

Casey Myers (25:27)
In the immediate and in the long term, it's harmful to children to spank them, to hit them, to use physical punishment.

all the research that we say, this is not good. It's not good for children. In the United States, there are many states where schools are allowed to use physical punishment on children. It's not illegal. And each state

varies on what the laws are at a school level. There are currently, as far as I'm aware, at the state level, there are no laws.

that say that parents aren't allowed to hit their children. it's considered legal discipline as long as that child is your, you can't hit somebody else's kid, they're not yours unless they're in school with you

and then they become your property and you can hit them apparently. an adult, can't hit another adult, that's assault. But if you are a parent, it's considered legal discipline.

Jasmine Moses (26:12)
Right.

Casey Myers (26:20)
to hit your child until it crosses some line and that line varies depending on what state you're in about what constitutes abuse. But it is not, it's not considered assault if an adult parent or caregiver, legal

guardian, hits a child. It's not immediately considered assault. It's considered legal discipline.

It is estimated that about 80 % of children have been hit by an adult in the US. Even though there's lots of evidence to say it's not good. But if you wade into any comment section online, and typically this happens if a celebrity is giving an interview in People magazine and they say, I spank my kids, I'm old school.

right? And you make the poor decision to wade into the comment section of that, right? It's a bad decision, but we all do it. You go to the comments

Jasmine Moses (27:09)
Right.

Casey Myers (27:15)
or if you talk, if you hear people talk at a coffee shop or if you talk to a lot of times members of extended family, you will hear over and over again, somebody say, I was spanked or beaten or hit by my parent and I turned out just fine.

Jasmine Moses (27:33)
Mm.

Casey Myers (27:35)
But I fear you did not turn out fine. You turned into an adult who thinks it's OK to hit children, right? As long as they're smaller and younger than you and it's technically legal and you can get away with it, it's OK to hit somebody. So I don't think you're fine, actually. And this perpetuates all kinds of things, Like colonialism and misogyny and species. You name it.

Jasmine Moses (27:40)
Okay.

Yeah.

Casey Myers (27:59)
This orientation in society that if I can get away with it, I'll take it. If I'm stronger than you, all that's important is that I win. If I want it, it's mine. Like this colonial attitude, like the burden of this is everywhere, right? almost every societal ill I can think of, war,

unchecked state powers, taking away people's civil rights, Violence, genocide, ecocide, stems from this attitude of might makes right. And I think that adult supremacy is this kind of everyday, common sense, commonplace kind of way to enact that kind of violence

Jasmine Moses (28:37)
Okay.

Casey Myers (28:45)
it destroys everything. know, like we become a culture and a society that just respects domination and power and not a culture that tends to the ethics of encountering another person.

of our moral, what is our moral responsibility when we come into contact with someone? it becomes about who walks away a winner versus, we are in a relationship or we had an interaction, we engaged with one another. Why can't we both come away from that better? Stronger, more whole versus,

seeing interactions and relationships is what can I take from you and how can I win? So I think that, you know, while

We can say, you know, obviously children are on the receiving end of oppression through adult supremacy. it's bad for everyone. we all suffer as a society because it shores up really violent attitudes and abusive cycles of behavior.

Jasmine Moses (29:51)
And again, I say, we wouldn't treat other adults this way. We couldn't. But we still decide to treat children in this way. And so I'm glad that we are having this conversation because I don't know.

Casey Myers (29:57)
Yeah.

Jasmine Moses (30:07)
that folks really understand the connections to a lot of the things that you just named. So what does it look like, in your opinion, to raise or teach children in a way that actually honors their full humanity?

Casey Myers (30:24)
I really believe that relationships with adults and relationships with children, will be different. However, the foundation for healthy relationships for adults and children, I don't think are different things. I think that we need to strive for cooperation.

listening, honesty, care. all the green flags, like kids say,

the green flags of being in a relationship with someone are hallmarks of adult-child relationships that are healthy as well. And so I think one of the reasons why people can push back on that when I say things like listening and mutual respect and cooperation and collaboration is

That does not mean that children get to do whatever they want. It doesn't mean that children always get their way, but it means that adults don't always get their way either. It doesn't mean that adults relinquish the responsibility that they have to raise children or teach children and apprentice them into the community. It doesn't mean that adults don't use their power to protect children from harm.

Jasmine Moses (31:13)
All

Casey Myers (31:37)
It just means that adults strive for mutual respect

and with children. For me, it means that I can see my seven-year-old or my students or the children who live in my neighborhood as human beings who, yes, we are at different stages in our lives, but nevertheless, we are ⁓

Jasmine Moses (31:49)
Mm hmm.

Casey Myers (32:03)
with one another and interdependency requires care

and not control. And so another thing this means for adults, and I think this also is difficult to do, but it means that adults have to work on decolonizing teaching and parenting beliefs and practices. We have to ask ourselves like, where did this come from?

Why am I doing this? Who told me that I have to treat children this way?

Look at some of the history about why we structure school the way we do. Why do we think infants need to be trained to sleep? Where does corporal punishment come from? And where did it originate and why did it spread through communities? The things we do and say in the name of parenting or teaching young children, it's not

just natural, it's not just the way that it is, it came from somewhere. They've been handed down to us and if we look at history, sociology, anthropology of children, childhood, schooling, parenting, it becomes really evident that a lot of the practices that we just accept as good and natural and have become normalized are in fact harmful.

Jasmine Moses (33:14)
Yep.

Casey Myers (33:16)
And they were implemented and popularized for reasons that aren't in the best interest of children or families. They were often in the best interests of colonizing forces, of state forces, of market forces and economic forces, but not necessarily the health and development of young children.

And so also have to,

Think very carefully about raising children not to listen and obey and be good, but we have to think about parenting and teaching as apprenticing children into the world that we want, for them and for us. Like it might not be the world that currently exists actually. we want the world to be fairer.

kinder, gentler, more equitable, more accessible. And it can be hard because the world doesn't feel that way, you know? And I recognize that that takes a lot of faith and hope that the way that we treat children really does make a difference now in their lives and in the future.

And maintaining that kind of faith and hope isn't easy. let me just say, two things can be true at the same time. In the same breath that I'm saying, we really need to decolonize our thinking as parents and teachers. I also need to say maintaining an attitude of

you and this child, we are remaking this world together. That's hard when you're exhausted and there are no systems in place that support children and families and teachers, and you're exhausted and you just want the child to go to sleep. Like that's a very heavy lift to be like, we're remaking this world together, you and I. I know that that requires a lot.

But I also just see it as part of the difficult work of parenting and teaching, is to hold both of those things at the same time. a practical level, this is really hard and exhausting. But at a philosophical level, I want the world to be better for both of us. And we have to try and bring those two things together. It requires a lot of...

hope and support resources, all those things.

Jasmine Moses (35:23)
Yeah, leaning into the fact that at times, and I think we talked about this a little bit before the show started, but it can be isolating to be trying to break a lot of these cycles and sit with these big feelings and hold these two things at the same time.

Casey Myers (35:35)
Thank you.

Thanks.

Jasmine Moses (35:45)
And I know just from a perspective of still being a very new parent, it's hard when society as a whole is telling you that these practices are right just because they've always been done, even when you know that they're wrong. And so if, just for people who are listening or also feeling that way, you are not alone in that sense. I think when we're doing this work,

it never was meant to be easy. Like rewriting systems and trying to figure out how to navigate the world that we're in will always be a really heavy lift, but it's so important for the children that are with us now and the ones that are even yet to be.

And even the ones that were, right? It's important for us to know that there are ways to reparent ourselves in this way and just sit with these feelings. And I just felt that really heavy. And I know that it's very true. It will take very intentional steps and work in order for us to get there. for folks who are listening and wondering about some

really powerful takeaways. If you could tell every adult raising or working with children one thing about power and relationships, what would it be?

Casey Myers (37:13)
That's a tricky one, Dr. Moses, because I like to give advice. But, in terms of something to hold onto and think about, if you're thinking about adult supremacy and it feels very large, I think anytime you become more aware of any kind of

systemic oppression in society, it can feel like, no, what do I do? Because it's structuring everything. But the advice I would give is to think about, if adult supremacy is about maintaining a hierarchy with adults at the top and children at the bottom,

Jasmine Moses (37:38)
Yeah

Casey Myers (37:54)
We got to think about ways to flatten that hierarchy. Let's stop envisioning and conceptualizing adults and children in that way. have our youngest children at the bottom of the ladder and adults at the top, but to think about ⁓ kind of like a flattened right? Where we're interrelated.

Jasmine Moses (38:05)
Yes. Yeah.

Casey Myers (38:14)
multiply connected in many different ways.

I think it helps to see, we are connected laterally. I'm not above you, I'm not better than you. I might be different than you. I'm 42 and you're seven. we do have differences. I like to think.

of young children as my comrades, and I mean that in the literal political sense. It's not a euphemism. take from that what you will

in this political climate, but I'm using the word comrades on purpose. I think it's really crucial. depend on each other. Adults and children depend on each other. We do. To sustain our cultures and communities right now and in the future.

We are engaged in a constant struggle for a better world, you know? And that means that we need

mutual care and understanding. And I think that anything that is worth anything comes from mutuality and interdependence. And so if we could start to see adults not just as authority figures and children as

these non-developed humans who just rely on us for everything and that gives us the right to control them. If we could shift that into saying, this person's my partner in life, they are my comrade. ⁓ Them needing me and relying on me is a gift and a responsibility to this world. It doesn't give me dominion over them.

Jasmine Moses (39:32)
Yeah.

Casey Myers (39:48)
Parenthood

or teaching young children or being in community with young children is an opportunity for solidarity. It's an opportunity to be comrades and partners with someone. I think that starting there and reframing our view of who children are in relationship to adults can be really powerful.

Jasmine Moses (40:12)
This has just been such a great conversation and I think powerful is the best word. And so I'm excited for the listeners to be able to take this information,

take those intentional steps in order to be better for children and to rethink and unlearn a lot of the practices that have been ingrained in us.

So thank you so much Dr. Myers for being here with us today and for sharing I know that there are folks who are going to want to stay connected to all

the amazing work that you and Rochelle Hostler, is another one of my mentors who I love so much, are doing. So, where can people find you?

Casey Myers (40:55)
Easiest way to find me right now is to find Watershed Community School online. www.watershedcommunityschool.com. That's the home for our early years center. You can also connect to the Childhoods Research Collective there and see most recent publications. Rochelle Hostler and I also...

offer consulting and professional development for schools and teachers, working in the early childhood space. And so if you're interested in any of those things, that's where you can find me. You can also find me at the Watershed Community School in Historic Highland Square in Akron, Ohio. Coming soon.

Jasmine Moses (41:37)
So excited, so so so very excited.

So thank you so much for listening in today and I will see you soon. Thank you, Dr. Myers.

Casey Myers (41:50)
Thank you.