Next-Generation Design

Spoiler Alert!
We know it's tempting, but just because you can give your offspring everything doesn't mean you should. Why child-development experts now argue it's the little design touches (and not that $5,000 four-poster bed) that do the most to foster smarter, happier kids.

By Terri Trespicio

There's a reason the Advent School feels like a home, and that's because it once was. Nestled in Beacon Hill, this brick and brownstone school has been slowly taking over 15–17 Brimmer Street. As apartments were vacated and more students came in, administrators have added a wing here, a floor there.

Designed by Chris Genter and Mimi Love of Boston-based design firm Utile, the revamped school features warm, inviting spaces with plenty of windows and natural light, height-appropriate cubbies and coat hooks, and smart use of storage. Tackboards are filled with children's artwork, a fireplace turned crawlspace provides a place where kids can hide, and open rooms invite play and exploration. All of which combine to create an environment that stimulates learning, inspires creativity, and nurtures growth.

But what happens when children leave for the day? Or more to the point, how important is it for the home to do what a school setting is designed to do? The answer, in short: very. "There's a difference worth noting between a school or public area and the home," says Gail Sullivan, principal at Studio G Architects in Jamaica Plain. "And that is that a child will move on from one classroom to another, but will always return to the same house at night," making it even more vital that the home environment be flexible in order to support his or her development. Indeed, a study published in March in the Journal of Social Issues revealed that the effect of the home learning environment on young children was "over and above" what had been previously thought, that it exerts a "greater and independent influence on educational attainment" than a parent's education or socioeconomic status does. Cornell University professor Lorraine E. Maxwell uses the phrase to describe the influence that physical environment has on kids: She calls it the "third teacher."

In an era when getting your kid into a reputable preschool can feel akin to a Harvard acceptance, the pressure to create a perfect world for little ones starts early. And not coincidentally, in the past few years, there's been a surge in the number of stores offering children's lines, from custom-designed cribs to color-coordinated bed linens; 2006 saw a 5 percent increase in spending on children's furniture, with the top 20 companies racking up sales of more than $10 billion ($6 billion of which was credited to Wal-Mart, Target, and Babies "R" Us alone). Specialty outlets, meanwhile, are banking on parents' being willing to shell out the cash: At the online retailer PoshTots, $15,000 buys your child a Fantasy Carriage crib, with wheels the size of satellite dishes. After that, she can trade up to the full-blown Fantasy Coach for $47,000, which looks as if it rolled right out of a Disney movie, and is guaranteed to fascinate her for maybe a year or two.

But as the experts will tell you, over-the-top furniture and expensive décor is not necessarily better for kids. There's no guarantee it will make them smarter and happier—and in fact the only thing it might do is hyperstimulate. "Fulfilling every need is counterproductive," says Joanne Szamreta, a professor in education at Lesley University. "If everything is prescribed, the child can become bored or disengaged. It's the parent's job to give kids a leg up, but not all the answers." And that applies not just to homework, but to how you set up a child's bedroom.

Baby steps
While for most of us the term "design" may be synonymous with "décor" (fabrics, furnishings, window treatments), a look at the theories behind children's spaces leads us into considerably deeper territory. That's because you've got much more than a color palette to consider: The ideal environment is defined by what it helps kids to do—namely, to play, explore, create, and interact. "The first step is to answer who, what, when, where, and why," says Jan Ham, director of Learning by Design in Massachusetts, a Boston-based children's-design education program. "If the parents only ask ‘who,' then they miss part of the equation. When thinking about the child's surroundings, parents need to find themselves in their child's world as much as the child finds himself in theirs." Which means creating a space where adults want to spend time, too.

This is most relevant for the smallest children, those age three or younger, who are beginning to form relationships with adults, says Claire Hamilton, associate professor at the UMass School of Education. "Humans learn by imitating behaviors, so for small children, learning comes from watching parents and forming relationships," she says. "If the adults are uncomfortable because everything is scaled down, then the mom, dad, or caregiver may be reluctant to sit and play or read a book to the child. This leaves kids on their own at the very moment they need to begin interacting." Hamilton suggests keeping an adult-sized rocker or glider in the room for reading time, or making sure that the bed can easily seat a grownup. She also recommends using point lights that encourage reading (for older eyes), or focusing play in one small area of the room.

Of course, when it comes to kids, the tendency is to overdo it. (We're looking at you, $800 stroller.) A 1997 study by Zero to Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families found that a majority of parents thought more stimulation was better. But in fact, an overly ornate wall, lots of patterns, bright colors, and too much stuff can be very disorienting to someone who is still learning how to read the physical world. "When there's too much visual stimulation, kids have no way to use that information," says Joanne K. Guilfoil, author of Places and Spaces in Art: A Program of Activities on Architecture and Landscape Design. Add to the mix all the brightly colored toys that come in over the years, and the bedroom can become a visual circus.

"Some rooms are so crowded that it's disturbing to even go into them," says Ham. "You try to focus the child, but if you're lost in the visual stuff, how can you expect kids to fare any better? Attention is something you need to learn as a preschooler, to take time with one object." What's more, a busy room deprives kids of the space to create their own ideas. These days, most designers of children's rooms start with a neutral color palette, instead of bold hues that can compete for attention. At the Advent School, for instance, Genter and Love used off-white on classroom walls to "make the space lighter and brighter and let the children's artwork take center stage," says Love.

The organized toddler
Another big developmental goal for children, says Hamilton, is learning how to categorize the world—through language and through objects. Ditching the all-purpose toy box for smaller tilting bins, drawers, and containers with several compartments encourages children to find similarities and differences among their playthings and perfect the skill of sorting: Legos go in the Legos drawer, blocks go in the blocks bin.

Storage also presents an opportunity for kids to learn to create order out of chaos. "When there's a place for each thing, they know that's where it goes when playtime is over," says Sullivan. "In this way, the child learns he or she can control her environment." Herding toys into smaller compartments prevents kids from getting overwhelmed and frustrated, which often manifests itself in the child's dumping a box of random things on the floor and walking away. "Young kids can't organize their activities without a little help," says Ham. Plus, by rotating what's visible and usable, you not only keep a kid from being overwhelmed, but you can make old things new again. "New presents come, old ones go away, and just when they're getting bored, out comes a toy they'd forgotten all about," says Sullivan. "This is one of the greatest secrets to kids' design."

Bigger, better, more, more
A warning for McMansionites: When it comes to a kid's playroom or bedroom, there is absolutely such a thing as too big. According to Dan Butin, assistant dean at Cambridge College's School of Education, children need smaller spaces in order to focus. "Remember the open classrooms of the '60s? They were a disaster because the children were out of control," he says. "In the past few years, we've found that external structure allows internal freedom. Kids need well-defined spaces to be able to sit down and read a book or experiment with objects or play one-on-one."

When Ham designs "dream houses" with schoolchildren, she finds that kids younger than seven invariably prefer smaller spaces. "When they think of an activity, they think of a room—this is the reading room, this is the eating room, this is the hair-brushing room," she says. "They don't get that you can overlap spaces. So if you want them to draw, give them a drawing nook. If you want them to read, give them a designated space to read."

And then there's the pleasure of the unexpected nook—a window seat, a niche under a stairwell—that a child can transform. Diane Miller, founder of Miller Design in Medford, designs both commercial and residential spaces for kids, and was happy to discover that a 6-by-8-foot gap between her living room sofa and the wall was enough to constitute a play area for her kids. "Their sightlines are different, so to my daughter, it's a whole different room," she says.

"Kids are drawn naturally to the least-defined toys—pots and pans, spoons, toilet paper rolls," says Miller. "The same holds true for spatial design." An area that allows for a range of imaginative adventures, she says, is ideal for stimulating creativity. "They'd rather have a platform where they can create their own world around it, a blank slate."

Safety… last?
As counterintuitive as it may seem, there's also such a thing as an environment that's too safe. Studies show that kids build cognitive skills through physical activity. A safe ladder or loft—something they have to think about how to navigate—can help develop good motor skills and improve hand-eye coordination. And if you don't provide a channel for this need, "then they'll find one," says Miller, "even if it means scaling the bookshelves." One of the most active advocates of the "don't be too safe" maxim is Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, a weeklong camp in Montara, California, where kids "learn how to build things." In a 2007 lecture at a Technology Entertainment Design program, Tulley argued against what he called the new wave of overprotected kids by spelling out five dangerous things you should let them do, including play with fire. "I do put power tools into the hands of second-graders," he says. "We live in a world with ever more-stringent child-safety regulations. As the boundaries of what we determine as the safety zone grow smaller, we cut off our children from valuable opportunities to learn how to interact with the world around them." Tulley believes letting children explore the real world will help them grow up to be "creative, confident, and in control of their environment."

If letting your eight-year-old tussle with a band saw makes you a bit squeamish, there are variations built on Tulley's theories that can be put into practice with relatively low risk. The kitchen, for instance, is by definition a very adult-oriented environment, characterized by high countertops, hot stoves, sharp knives—not exactly the place where you'd want to give your kid free range. But experts are finding that by involving your child in these dangers, you teach the art of awareness early on. Including step stools in the design of the kitchen ensures that a child can be part of the household routine, says Miller.

"Kids should be experimenting with materials," adds Ham, who also encourages parents to do arts and crafts with their school-age children using glue guns and scissors. "If it's tied down, it's boring." And to foster that adventurous, give-it-a-try attitude, children's work, play, and sleep spaces should be made of resilient materials—like modular carpet squares instead of wall-to-wall carpeting, and upholstery with a lower natural-fiber content, which is more stainproof—so that nothing is too precious. "Our earliest memories are tied to the spaces we make for ourselves," says Ham. "So whatever the design, whatever the color, kids need to be able to make it their own."

Additional reporting by Rachel Levitt.

Go on to the next page to read about computer-friendly decor...