Let Them Emerge
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
This old Joseph Campbell line came to mind recently and despite the layered interpretations attached to it, the core idea that discomfort is not just part of growth it is essential to it, resonates. It reminds me of something core to the Sudbury philosophy: discomfort isn’t a detour. It is the path.
The idea that challenges lead to transformation is baked into everything we do at Alpine Valley School. Children naturally challenge themselves. They do it physically like leaping from one boulder to another or emotionally and socially in countless other ways. Whether it is navigating a strained friendship or pushing through a day of boredom, the struggle is never without purpose. It is their own internal compass trying to grow stronger. Today, the challenges that are seen as more negative are the ones that seem to cause the most consternation at the individual-community boundary so I will focus on that herein.
Schools like Alpine Valley School don’t chase discomfort for its own sake but we don’t shield children from it either. Facing difficulty, ambiguity, boredom and social conflict is how people grow into themselves and find their place in a community. In my way of thinking, all of these difficulties are a form of discomfort and so I’ll use that term a lot. For the sake of argument, it is a broad term that encompasses a number of types of challenges.
Unprecedented developments have changed our relationship to discomfort. Lockdowns and the ubiquity of personal devices pushed us further into a disconnected kind of “freedom”, a version of life where interaction is optional and curated, and discomfort is something to scroll away from. Where freedom once encompassed both the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail, freedom has now become freedom from discomfort. The shift is not simply about a change in technology. We have been rewired emotionally. It trained us, slowly: fracturing our mental focus, becoming accustomed to comparing ourselves to highly refined images of our peers, and avoiding mundane interactions with strangers by ordering fast food delivery. We have also built a kind of digital family that is always present, always accessible, and largely frictionless. It offers affirmation without obligation and connection without the shared weight of time, place or consequences. The training and rewiring has taught us to treat discomfort as danger.
The consequences of this are well known and hardly disputed, especially for children. When we frame discomfort as a threat, we back away from the very challenges that help young people grow. Algorithms feed that impulse by nudging us toward distraction when what we really need is to sit with the discomfort. Avoiding discomfort cuts off one of the most humanizing, maturing parts of being alive, not just as an individual but also as a member of a community.
Sometimes, in my own life both professional and personal, I feel more over-stimulated than ever before in my life, and I only have a dumb phone! There is no one I’ve met who doesn’t feel this way. We’re surrounded by people and yet lonelier. We are flooded with information and yet less certain of what’s true. And everywhere we go, we carry devices designed to keep us just uncomfortable enough to keep clicking in the vain hope of feeling better by kicking the can of discomfort down the road.
At Alpine Valley School, our community is impacted by this new environment of uncertainty. This shows up as doubt casting shade on the children’s ability to be resilient. This then degrades the quality of the social dynamics. Regardless of where the doubt is coming from, the model is seen as failing when it is actually working. Functioning exactly as it always has: by making room for discomfort as part of real growth and allowing momentary agitation to mature into self-knowledge for the child and a richer experience for their society.
Living freely in isolation is an illusion but in some ways it is happening because of the compulsive withdrawal from discomfort and natural, necessary social friction. In today’s culture, even necessary discomfort can feel intolerable and is to be avoided. Not just for children, but for most of us too. Living freely in a community isn’t clean or simple. It’s messy. It’s hard. But it’s what we’re built for as human beings and there has to be a commitment made in oneself to remain and face the challenges.
Life here asks something of you as a child, something most systems train out of children as part of its objective;
It asks you to take initiative, even when no one’s watching.
It asks you to sit with ambiguity, even when it’s frustrating.
It asks that you weigh your self-interest against the needs of others.
It asks you to move through boredom without distraction.
It asks you to build your own life, not follow someone else’s script.
“Discomfort isn’t a detour. It is the path.”
When a student experiences the irritation of the natural growing pains of living, our job as staff, the adults in their community, isn’t to fix it. It’s to stand beside them. Respectfully. And let the moment breathe and let their true selves emerge. The actual doing of life, with all the false starts and daily dilemmas, is what shapes someone who is ready for the world. Adults in a community like ours have a deep understanding and respect for every child’s process of self-development. We are here for them and to be of support for them if we can on their terms. Over the course of years, children at Alpine Valley School get to learn how to trust themselves and others in their community in a way that respects their individuality and builds a strong and resilient community.
The Sudbury model has been practiced for nearly 60 years and for 30 years at Alpine Valley School. And we’ve seen what happens when students are allowed and encouraged to stay with it: they grow quietly, unevenly, deeply. They become resilient. Not because we protected them from their struggle, but because they learned how to move through them in their own time and their own way.
These are big asks for young people. But they’re at the heart of what we do.
Parents understandably get nervous. We hear questions like:
“Why aren’t there more scheduled activities?”
“Why isn’t someone organizing something?”
“Wouldn’t it be better if someone stepped in?”
Valid questions. But also questions that reveal a deeper assumption: Are children capable of shaping their own lives in a scaled down version of the larger society? Or do we believe they need adults to curate their next step? The distinction in this assumption might seem subtle, but the reality is that it shapes everything. If we believe children need adults to design and direct their days, then freedom feels risky and discomfort feels like failure. But if we believe that they are capable of building their own lives, with time, support and space, then those same moments of unease become signs of growth in progress.
That is the heart of it. The questions parents ask are not just about schedules, they are about trust. Trust in their child. Trust in the process.
It’s one thing to say, “I want more structure” and then wait for someone else. It’s another to build it yourself and to sustain it over time. That is the deeper work we invite children into. And it takes years, not months. It takes cycles of discomfort and resolution over and over again without the process being short circuited.
The expectation that a child will be self-directed after just a year at AVS is unlikely to be fulfilled. Consider how long it took you to grow into the person you are now. Hopefully, you’ll begin to see the glimmers of a child becoming attuned to their inner nature and slowly growing into their own person, without the constant imposition of a society that thinks it knows best. The discomfort a child feels doesn’t mean something’s wrong. It means they are doing the real work of becoming and forging their individuality.
Restlessness and confusion often signal something deeper. That’s when they start asking the big questions: What do I want? What am I ready for? What kind of life am I willing to build?
Children learn to express their voice alongside others. They come to understand that their voice matters and so do the voices of those around them. Sometimes they get their way. Sometimes they don’t. That is the reward of living in a long established community.
The staff at a school like ours continue to say to their fellow School Meeting Members, “I believe in you,” even when, especially when, the path is hard.
To offer something easier and more “certain” is a natural inclination for older, more experienced people. As one who is older, I reflect, “How did I learn the easier way?”. If I open the door for a child every time they struggle, what am I denying them? The most powerful thing we can do is to trust the child enough to let them struggle.
The cultural message today is to ease discomfort. But what we’ve seen, what we know, is that growth doesn’t come from avoidance. It comes from time, space, support, struggle and trust.
When a student says, “I’m bored,” or “This isn’t working,” staff and others in the community don’t sit idly by but they don’t fix it either.
“It makes sense that this feels hard.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Feeling lost isn’t wrong. It’s part of learning to listen to yourself.”
“If you’re bored, maybe something’s ready to shift.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing how you get through this.”
“No one hands out the map here. That’s scary.”
Behind every discomfort, there’s often a deeper question trying to surface. Let them emerge.
We’re in the business of giving young people time, space, and trust to ask those questions. We are not creating arbitrary schedules and providing them answers when they can do it themselves. We trust the dignity of their own process.
Discomfort isn’t a problem to solve. It’s part of the deal when you live in a real community. It’s not fast. It’s not easy. It won’t be neat. But it’s absolutely worth it.
The cave your child fears to enter may hold the treasure they are looking for.