I Bought the Fast Pass

Have you ever bought a fast pass at a waterpark? You know the ones, you pay a bit extra and you get to skip the queues. Everyone without one joins the longest queue, you don't have too.

It was half term this week and we went to a waterpark. It was a really hot day, the place was packed with kids and the queues for all the slides were pretty long. At the entrance I bought fast pass wristbands without really thinking about it and for most of the day we were absolutely delighted to have them.

Then in the afternoon a new ride opened. It was the biggest slide in the park and the whole morning kids all over the park were talking about it. There was already a queue of kids waiting who had got there before us. We walked straight past them and got on first because of our wristbands. It felt awkward for so many different reasons.

We have known from decades of research, going back to Albert Bandura's work on social learning theory in the 1970s, that children learn far more from what they see than from what they hear. And our teenagers are no exception, even when it really feels like they have stopped paying attention.

When we walked past those kids we all acknowledged that it didn't feel great. But we didn't let them go ahead. Without meaning to I had shown them that the queue is just a suggestion if you have the right wristband.

This isn't really about the fast pass. The fast pass is fine and we had a lovely day. It's about the fact that our teenagers are paying more attention than we think. And what they learn in small moments is often things we never meant to teach, like the moment you walk past a queue of kids who got there before you did.

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