During the course of any given day at my part-time job I have the opportunity to observe a lot of children, parents, and grandparents. I see some lovely examples of parenting, relating, and family life in general. I see more examples of less than desirable behavior though. That bothers me. It often bothers me enough that I feel compelled to make conversation with a child whose parent is an ignorant bully, or to simply say "Oh my!" in such a way as to signal to anyone who is paying attention that a particular child's behavior is shocking or noticeably plain bad.
I also take the time to comment to parents when their child or children are mannerly or well behaved. It's surprising how often a subsequent conversation leads to the knowledge that many of those kids are homeschooled. I'm not sure if there is a connection, but I do know that homeschooled kids are often different from their "peers."
A day or so ago I took the opportunity to eavesdrop on my nine year old's conversation with her grandmother. My daughter was relating respectfully to my 78 year old mother as an equal, as someone who was vital and interesting, and as someone whose opinions were valuable.
My mother was relating to my daughter respectfully as well and engaging her fully in conversation. It was interesting to hear their choice of subjects as well as their exchange of ideas. They sounded like two girlfriends with no regard to age or life experience.
In that moment I reflected just a bit on all the children I've taught either in public school or private lessons. I tried to superimpose some of my favorite students onto the conversation between my mother and my daughter, and I found I just couldn't do it. It's not that any of those students were inferior to my daughter. It is just that perhaps they had never been given the opportunity to travel through life without age barriers as they apply to relating to other humans.
There was a time when I would have considered children like mine odd. Whether they are or not isn't really the point. Or maybe it is. What I can say with certainty is that if they are odd, I welcome and embrace their differences.
1 day ago
2 comments:
"...travel through life without age barriers..."
That's part of it, isn't it? There's some kind of magic there.
love, Val
My son has done that thing where he listens in on conversations for a while and then adds his $.02 here and there, oh for a couple of years now. This is a normal kid thing that almost all kids I know start doing around 10-11. But I have noticed that a lot of adults react really badly to this behavior. Like, "who they heck do you think you are, trying to be part of the 'grownups' conversation?" I admit I've been irritated with this with some kids, because their comments are sometimes not valid or relevent to the conversation, or they continue on a topic when everyone else has moved on. But it's really a matter of experience, isn't it? How familiar they are with mature conversation. When you're surrounded by 10 year olds all day long, every day, it's kind of hard to get any practice in that area.
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