things I've learned working with kids

Think of this as Part II in what may become a "things I've learned..." series.  I've been a nanny for a wonderful family for the past year and a half, and though thoroughly enjoying it I have always been aware that it is a filler job for me.  I don't plan on making a career out of it and on the surface, it doesn't seem to have much of a connection to what I do plan on pursuing professionally.  So, I have spent a lot of time justifying why being a nanny has been relevant to my life and this list of things I have learned is what I came up with.



1.) Patience seriously is a virtue: I know I said a version of this in "things I've learned from my dog", but I am repeating it to stress how highly I regard patient people.  As someone who is quick to anger, patience is something I struggle to hold onto.  But over time I have realized anger and worry never get you anywhere.  I've never changed the outcome of something or altered someone else's behavior by stressing about it or getting mad because of it.  Patience leads to calm, and when you're able to stay calm, regardless of the situation, you will always see things more clearly.  If you're thinking clearly, the likely outcome will almost always be favorable to the alternative.

2.) Expect the Unexpected: One of the best things about working with kids is you can and should do something different with them every day.  It helps stimulate their minds, and in my opinion they behave better if you stay active doing different things.  The downside of going to public places with kids and being active is that you are exposing them to more dangers and increasing your potential to lose them.  This in no way means you shouldn't do these things, but it does mean you need to take some precautions.  I try to prepare for every situation I can think of when we're leaving the house-- an allergy attack, a fall on the playground, dehydration, hunger, the need to go to the bathroom, boogers, dirty hands & faces, etc.  Learning to be mega-aware of your surroundings and thinking on your feet when faced with a crisis, minor or major, is important and a totally underrated skill.  Being a nanny I have realized parents really do have super powers, especially stay-at-home parents (as these are the subjects I have had the most interactions with).  When I say powers, I am obviously talking about a set of special skills you can only acquire once you are charged with taking care of children.  There are certain things you have to learn by doing--in my opinion, anything involving kids follows this rule.  Being around children makes us better people because it forces us to examine our own behavior--why do I react this way in similar situations? What would I say if someone told me what I just told her?  This kind of self-awareness or self-examination is productive if it is then turned into a useful outcome like self-improvement of some kind.  Because actions speak louder than words after all.

3.) Anger only gets you so far: I have never seen anger get me anywhere with a child.  Anytime I've lost my temper and screamed at one I am only met with silence and a blank stare.  Anger is a completely unproductive emotion.  It never makes a situation better.  It never makes you feel any better.  The best thing any of us can do with anger is let go of it as quickly as possible.  And there's no set way of how to do this because anger is so different in everyone.  All we can do is find what works for us and be patient with it.  Don't worry.  Be happy :).  

4.) Keep It Simple: Kids don't take anything too seriously.  You get the occasional drama queen, but for the most part they brush off a dead pet or even a relative like they would a skinned knee or a fight over a toy.  They laugh when they do something funny.  They cry when something is sad.  They don't complicate the truth.  They don't complicate love (until you do something wrong and they hate you until they love you again).  It's always easy for me to tell when a kid is lying-- there's an uneasiness in their expression, they can't quite look you in the eye, there may even be a twitch of a smile on their face.  They know they're doing something wrong.  You're either wrong or you're right.  You're good or you're bad.  We could get into a philosophical debate that there is good and bad in everyone and you can't have one without the other.  This may be true, but there's an inherent beauty in the simple way a child looks at the world.  They take things at face value, accept them for what they are and move on.  We're all told you have to grow up someday, but once in a while I don't think it could hurt to remember what was so great about being a kid and embrace that innocent simplicity in our grown up lives.

5.) The small things matter too: Maybe it's because kids change so quickly and grow up so fast, but I have found myself really enjoying the small moments with them.  The absurd things that come out of their mouths that make you laugh hours later when thinking about it. Baking cookies on a rainy day together.  Catching butterflies in the backyard.  Singing along to the radio in the car.  It's these small moments that make up the meat of your personal relationships.  They're the things you hold onto after a person is gone.  These small pieces of time end up being some of the most important moments in your life.

Hope you enjoyed and agree how important some of these life lessons can be!

things I've learned from my dog...

Bowman

I have had my dog, Bo, for over three years and it has been both the most rewarding and most challenging time in my life.  I love being a dog owner though, and I thought I'd share some of the things I've learned along the way.

1.) Patience is a virtue. Dogs are a lot like children--they rarely do what you want them to when you want them to do it.  Being consistent with punishment and reward while having the patience to stick with it is not easy!  But training a dog has taught me a lot about just how important patience is in keeping one's sanity.

2.) Live in the moment. I've been told dogs have no concept of time; it's why they get so excited to see us when we get home.  They have no idea how long we've been gone!  For some reason, I think this helps Bo live in the moment--he has no idea how long it's gonna last.  He takes advantage of every second someone's paying attention to him.  Every walk is just as exciting as the last one.  The only time he's aware of is the moment he's living in right then, so he makes the most of it.  We could all learn something from dogs about living in the present if you ask me :).

3.) How to put someone else first.  Until I got a dog, the only person I had to make decisions for was me.  I used to hate people who treated their dogs like children, but there are definite similarities in this regard.  All of a sudden, someone else depends on you for everything.  My dog wouldn't eat, exercise or go to the bathroom without me.  I have to take him into account with every major decision I make.  I can't go away for the weekend at the last minute or even go out for drinks after work without first taking care of Bo.  I think you become a much more conscientious, understanding person after you assume this level of responsibility over someone else's life.  Yes, I know Bo's just a dog, but he still depends on me!  I'm still nowhere near ready to take on the responsibility of a child emotionally or financially, but I'm much more prepared since getting Bo.  In my opinion, anyone who wants to have children should own a pet first.  If nothing else, it never hurts to do a test run...

4.) If you're gonna love someone, do it unconditionally.  Bo could care less what I look like, what I do for a living or how much money I have.  The only thing he cares about is that I come home every night and that I love him.  And in return, he loves me unconditionally.  Dogs may be way ahead of us on this front--all humans do is complicate love.

5.) Appreciate the small things in life.  It doesn't take much to please Bo.  Give him a treat, a new toy or take him on a long walk and he's a happy camper.  When did we get so hard to please?  If we all just appreciated the little things more like a great meal, good conversation or a beautiful sunset, we might all be a lot happier.

6.) The importance of a good support system.  I bear the financial burden of dog ownership, but life with Bo would be a lot harder without the support of my family and roommates.  They are constantly helping me whether it be taking him for walks, feeding him dinner, or even cleaning up after him if he gets sick.  And they put up with his fur on absolutely everything they own, his chewing, and his constant begging for food.  Despite those things, Bo's a pretty easy dog to love and I know they wouldn't offer to help if they didn't want to, but I appreciate it immensely nonetheless.  I recognize that everyone needs a little backup now and then.  I'm just lucky I have such a good team behind me.

the problem with our generation

I have been meaning to write something similar to this for a few years now.  I envision it being the introduction to a book I one day hope to write.  I hope it strikes a chord!

            I was raised to be a productive, successful citizen of the world.  My parents invested in my education early on and I was always involved in extracurricular activities like sports, art and music.  My future was never in question.  I went to an expensive boarding school for high school and then on to a reputable, private university.  I never questioned the "reach for the stars", "the sky's the limit", "you can be whatever you want to be" mantras I was fed growing up until I graduated from college and was dumped in the real world.  No one out there was invested in my success; it was all up to me and for the first time I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

           My generation is the generation of the internet.  We were the first kids to grow up with computers in our homes and a wealth of information at our fingertips.  Instant gratification was the name of the game.  It made it easier to keep in touch with loved ones, school projects got better, and boredom was harder to come by.  But this great technological advance also made us lazier and more impatient.  We came to expect that everything was as easy and quick as googling it.  So, when our parents promised us the world we didn't doubt it because everything else had come relatively easily to us already.  But in all this preparation, our generation missed the memo on the value of hard work.  Everything had been handed to us so far.  We expected the same to happen with money, our dream jobs, and a happily ever after.  Well, the joke's on us because life had other plans.

            I graduated from college in 2009, in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression.  Jobs were scarce and for the first time the future seemed uncertain for kids like me.  But I'm a white girl from the upper-middle class.  What did the economic crisis mean for kids who grew up in poverty and weren't made the same promises I was growing up?

           My first encounter with real poverty occurred in the spring of 2007 when I traveled to New Orleans to assist with post-Katrina rebuilding efforts on an Alternative Spring Break.  Even then, what I saw only scratched the surface of what was really going on down there though.  I fell in love with the city and its people, and went back on another Alternative Spring Break trip during my college years.  By the time my senior year rolled around I had decided to apply to Teach for America and put New Orleans at the top of my list for cities I'd like to be sent to.  New Orleans was considered a high need area for teachers, so when I was accepted that is where I was placed.  I arrived in June of 2009 to be met with oppressive heat and a cockroach outside my dorm room at Tulane.  I was completely unprepared for what awaited me.  Idealism, a desire to reform the failing New Orleans education system, and my Northern naivety had gotten me there, but they weren't going to help me much anymore.

           One of our first days of orientation, my fellow TFAers and I were introduced to some harrowing statistics:

• Every year close to 12 million students reach their senior year in high school not knowing how to read.
• About 44 million adults in the United States cannot read.
• The United States Justice Department uses the results of third grade reading diagnostics to determine how many beds we will need in prisons in the next ten years.
• The state of Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate of the industrialized world.

Hearing these disturbing facts just motivated me even more to make a difference at the time, and that was the intention.  But once I was actually in a classroom responsible for the education of young minds it was a completely different story.  In my first week, I saw a second grader get beaten with a yard stick for not listening.  An eighth grader called me a bitch and told me to go fuck myself when I asked him why he wasn't in class. A seventh grade boy was dealing drugs because he figured it would get him farther than school since he was already fifteen and couldn't read. And my paraprofessional told me to just hit him back when one of my violent students continually punched me.  I was lead teacher in a severe-profound classroom, a position I really had no business having, but it shows the desperation of the New Orleans school system at the time.  All my students had severe disabilities--- autism, cerebral palsy, and mental retardation.  The irony is that if they had been born into wealthier families like mine they would have received more early intervention & care and have been much higher functioning.  But what I quickly learned was that poor African American children are taught life will fail you.  There were no "reach for the stars" speeches in my students' homes.  Education wasn't an avenue to success for them, it was a failed venture.  Their parents didn't see the value in education because the system had failed them too, so the importance of doing well in school wasn't instilled in them like it was in me.

              It was really easy for me to get angry about the discrepancy between my childhood and my students--- the achievement gap it's called.  It is a term most of us are probably familiar with at this point.  When a rich kid and a poor kid both start kindergarten they are most likely around the same level, but for each year that passes they will grow farther and farther apart.  In a just world, every child would receive the same quality education regardless of race, class or geography.  In fact, it seems like it would be in our economy's best interest to have a better educated workforce.  Wouldn't we be competing better in a global economy?  Wouldn't we all be better off financially if there were a more level playing field?  This is all rhetoric we've been hearing a lot lately, especially with the upcoming election.  But I would like to take the argument one step further and propose that the way I grew up isn't right either.

            Don't get me wrong, I am grateful my parents made my education a priority, but I'm mad as hell that not all parents in this country are able to do the same.  You should be too!  I don't want to live in a world where the realities in which I grew up and the ones in which my students were raised both exist.  And kids like me shouldn't grow up ignorant to the fact that not everyone is as lucky as them. Call me naive, call me idealistic, but in my mind there is no social or economic justification for it.  And after witnessing what I did in New Orleans, I'm happy to still be idealistic.

         I lasted seven months in my Teach for America placement.  Since the required commitment to the program is two years I'm not proud I quit.  I take full responsibility for my actions, but the truth is that I got overwhelmed in a position TFA never should have put me in and I burned out too quickly.  I didn't make the impact I envisioned when I applied, all wide-eyed and eager to make a difference, but I'm done with the guilt that has been plaguing me for the past two and a half years.  What hasn't wavered is my desire to change things, and nothing changes until we demand that it does.

          So, this is my call to action.  We all need to educate ourselves on the inequalities and injustices that exist right under our noses.  We need to demand that our government and our country do better.  And we all need to be the changes we wish to see because things are bound to get a whole lot worse before they get any better.  It's true that ignorance is bliss, so let's stop being ignorant, recognize the system needs to change, and together we can figure out what to do about it.  I can't turn back knowing what I know and now you know it too...