Day 218: Realizations from Being with Children
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I got invited today as a potential candidate for an English pre-school to come in and play with the children for a few hours. This allowed me to meet the other staff members, get a good feel for the job to then be determined if I would be a good fit there.
While I was with these children, aged 1 1/2 to 3 years old, I had many realizations. Here are some I wrote down:
1) They're cute, but don't let that get to you.
I saw myself go into like the 'awww she's so cute' point, thinking that this little girl is perfectly sweet and nice. But then I observed how this sweet looking little girl actually caused some problems in the class, biting children, hitting them. So the girl's behavior was not aligned to an idea I had of her, and of course, this does not make her a ''bad girl'' -- she could have only picked up/acted on such behaviors from us (humanity, parents, caregivers, teachers, world).
So within this I realized the following: looks can be deceiving, and this even applies to our society and world in general, where in the media we can become so captivated by an actress or actor and think all these good things about them, but we really don't know the reality of them, just like how we have ideas of ourselves, perhaps thinking we are good people because we give to charity, but not realizing how we give to charity because it makes us ''feel better'' as a self-interest point instead of consideration that charities are simply band-aids and do not actually help the poor for the long-run, it only helps them temporarily. So basically I saw here how I need to stop easily assuming or interpreting how another is, based on how I ''think'' they are according to how they look.
2) The ''mine'' point:
I have seen instances of children saying the ''mine'' and not wanting to share with others. Even the word ''mine'' sounds like mind, lol.
I see this as where a child says ''mine'' as a form of fear because what I interpreted when I went over to this girl and asked her if her doll is sleeping she said ''mine'' and brought the doll closer to herself, so I wondered if maybe she thought I was going to take it from her, which also brings me to the point of survival of the fittest, how we fear losing money or things in our lives that can threaten our life. We are basically programmed to survive. I mean it's in our DNA in a way -- we must survive, because the world we live in today is built on competition and survival where we really cannot trust each other because our world is hostile, it is insecure, we do not have a secure monetary system based on consideration of all beings on the planet so that everyone, humans, animals even plants have all basic needs fulfilled to live on this planet, and because we don't have this, we don't have a secure world or monetary system -- we are insecure, we are in fear all the time, we must live based in survival, ''working to survive,'' essentially.
3) We need more education about how to work with children:
Some basic ''troublesome behaviors'' of 2-3 year olds are pulling hair, screaming, basically acting out in ways that make the environment stressful for others. What we usually do is say ''stop, don't do that'' and if the behavior continues, we put them in the time out chair. The problem I see within that is that we don't communicate to the children about their behavior, the consequences of it, how it effects the other person, and especially in the case of 2-3 year olds, this is very hard to communicate such things, to talk about consequences.
Their behaviors must then come from us, the caregivers, the parents, the teachers, because of how we exist within. For example, there is a blog from Leila on parenting and why babies throw temper tantrums, and it was pointed out that as a parent, when you really want to do something, but unable to and throw a tantrum about it in your mind, babies pick up on that and see how you accept and allow it, so then over time, babies then develop that temper tantrum tendency because of how we as parents or caregivers allowed it to exist in us.
We require more education on how to effectively work with children, and that does start with working with ourselves in understanding how we exist according to our minds because who we are/how we exist in the mind makes a big impact on our children.
Fortunately, as of late, there have been audio recordings on parenting and how to work with the mind so you as a parent, teacher or caregiver can learn how to become stable for your children. It's on EQAFE.com -- I definitely suggest you check it out.
Additional notes: I can see it for myself that when working with the young children it's important to remain as stable as possible because if you allow yourself to go into reaction, it will affect how you speak, how you move, and how you are, and children will see it and pick up on it -- they naturally look to us as examples so when we don't breathe and sort our reactions out but allow them to remain within us, the kids will assume that reacting and holding onto reactions is okay and will then develop that pattern. Such children I have met rarely hold onto grudges or emotions, they are more easily able to let things go, which is cool.
That is what I have for today. Thanks for reading.