- I wondered about environments that were rich with play.

Like I, you know, the difference between living in a house with a backyard or a community park nearby versus living in a high rise with 700 families.

- The child who has the experience of living in an apartment building has other trade-offs.

Right?

Other things that are positive in their lives that maybe we didn't measure.

- Hmm.

- And so this idea of what emerged is called the deficit model.

And in fact, any kid growing up in New York City would tell you about all the things that are incredibly enriching in their lives.

Yeah.

I remember being schooled by one of my students when I was teaching at Brown and I was saying, well, let's think about Head Start and let's think about kids who are, who don't have a lot of opportunities to go to preschool before they start kindergarten.

And how do we develop interventions to support, you know, kids from low income communities who don't have that access.

And I remember I had a student raise her hand and she's like, professor Am So, I grew up dancing the samba with my grandmother and making delicious food in the kitchen.

And I don't wouldn't trade that time for any preschool in the world.

Right?

And maybe it wasn't exactly the right way to prep for American Public School kindergarten.

But the thing is that just because one thing is missing doesn't mean 10 things don't take its place that are substantially enriching.