Paper airplanes

My younger daughter had a paper airplane contest at school the next day. She wanted to win it.

Her first sail down our long hallway did a tight spiral number, bounced off the left wall, and hit the ground bending the long, sharp nose.

We straightened it out and spent quality time the rest of the evening trying different throws.

Quick push, wrist snap, windup throw.

I know a little bit about paper airplane engineering. I was roughly her age when I went through the same drill. Make airplane, throw it until it’s beat silly, make another, repeat.

But I kept noticing how excited she was to figure it out on her own.

The obvious move, the efficient one, was to just tell her. Here’s the fold that works. Here’s the throw. Do it like this. You’ll win. All of my years of trial and error distilled into one lesson after school.

Then she could go to school the next day and win that baby.

But something stopped me.

There’s a version of help that’s really just theft. You take the struggle away, and with it goes the discovery. She doesn’t learn how the throw changes the flight. She learns that Dad knows things and will eventually tell her.

There’s no neural pathway being built through the agitation that drives learning.

So I offered just one piece of advice: “It’s not just the airplane. It’s the throwing too.” Then I stepped back and watched her test it.

She adjusted her grip. Tried a harder release, then a softer one. Started to see the relationship between the plane and the hand that sends it.

Somewhere in the middle of it, she said she loves daddy-daughter time.

I think what she loves is being trusted to figure it out.