One of my coworkers asked us what we think causes adults to react the ways they do when kids cry.
One recognized he just wants it to stop. I see this person use distraction and whatever is necessary to get the kids to “ok” again, though he never raises his voice or ever seems less than calm.
The one that asked said he thought people more often choose their actions based on thinking about what the adults around them would think, which is pretty astute if you ask me.
You don’t want people thinking something if the kid won’t stop crying in public.
I think it’s easy - adults react to the level of their beliefs about the kid/kids and to their level of comfort with their own discomfort.
And then all the info they’ve collected on the basis of those assumptions.
I think humans are good, emotions are good/not bad, and people just need to be witnessed and not have their problems solved for them, including kids.
So most of the time I just watch.
I feel like this:
A languorous lioness, lying in the grass but attentive to the situation and prepared to act if it calls for it. I evoke this image a lot.
When I watch silently, I see the kids resolve 97+% of all their problems and disputes within seconds.
I see kids exploring this new world they live in and their expanding abilities to perceive and interact with it.
It is astonishing the number of calories a child must use each day both to grow a BODY, BIGGER than the one their currently have, CONSTANTLY, AND fuel their near-constant movement. Kids need so much protein and animal fat.
“It’s not a problem,” might as well be my call sign.
Jiu-Jitsu and body/energy work refined my ability to tell when something is an actual threat.
Personal reflection made me recognize when I’m simply uncomfortable with how someone is feeling. Their feeling is not the problem. I think there’s a problem because I don’t like feeling uncomfortable.
If you believe kids are dumb and intentionally troublesome, or you hate feeling your own feelings so nobody else is allowed to feel theirs lest you get uncomfortable, you’ll come to different conclusions.
If you just pause, you may realize that nearly everything kids do is fine, natural, and understandable. Our job is to keep kids safe and be there for them when needed, and then let them do the rest of the growing and figuring themselves.
How else will they learn conflict resolution, or if their play is at a point that others reject it, so they can learn to modulate AND push boundaries?
Don’t get me on forced sharing. Let the other kid deal with it and go find something else to do. Forced sharing teaches absolutely nothing good. It teaches that when you want something someone else will be forced to give it to you, which means it certainly could happen to you.
I’m lending books to my coworkers already.
Alfie Kohn - Beyond Discipline ripped me apart and put me back together again right when I was going to throw the book at a wall in exasperation wondering WTF we were supposed to do, then, if everything is indeed wrong, which it is.
Katy Bowman - Grow Wild is a book I bought specifically because of getting this job, and I’m lending it before I even read it because I know and trust Katy’s words as gold. If you want to believe it’s important to move, read Katy. Move Your DNA is the gateway to moving more, Movement Matters is what I wanted but couldn’t find to lend today, and this one is probably even more perfect. Katy cleanly describes how movement affects us and what we can do about it in laymen’s terms and prose.
I’m falling asleep so I’ll stop there.
But pause and watch kids sometime. It’s really cool.
-Sam