Every month, our site director leads a “Courtyard Gathering”. The whole school comes together on the lawn in the middle of the campus (or the meeting hall in the church we rent space from), and she reads a story to the children and leads some kind of activity for them.
This month, the church’s meeting hall was decorated in pinks and reds, with heart-shaped plates bearing enough pieces of chalk for the whole school. We took our seats, and the music began. The children instantly began rocking and clapping to the music, some of them even standing up and really showing off their moves. The song in question, in fitting with our Friendship Day theme– not to be confused with Valentine’s Day, which Head Start does not celebrate– was “You’ve Got A Friend In Me”.
For her part, our director is a very charismatic person. When she leads an activity, she takes charge, infusing it with vibrancy and a sort of infectious energy that cannot be contained. The children respond to it in kind, but not all kids like that kind of noise. Most do, but one child in particular sat the whole time with his hands over his ears. I’ve never suspected any kind of sensory processing issue with him until now, but looking back on it, he does not do well in any kind of loud situation. I find it funny, with him being such an outgoing individual.
Anyway, hands over his ears. He sat there for maybe ten minutes as the children danced, and our director moved onto reading “Guess How Much I Love You” with equal gusto and sound. With the other children adding their claps and shouts, the volume slowly grew to a dull roar, which prompted him to walk over to me, head down, and crawl into my lap. For a four-year-old, he’s surprisingly big and heavy. I scooped him up and we sat together, for the whole half-hour length of the program, in quiet observance as our friends let loose.
I’m the kind of teacher that joins right into the cacophony, but I wasn’t always like that. I was very much like this child when I was younger, and to a degree, I still am. Loud noises make me anxious, and I can only take overstimulating environments such as shopping malls in small doses before I end up leaving. As I got older, I grew into knowing how to “be a child” (a concept I’ll make a post about later on), and found the fun in raucous– though safe– environments.
Were it not for the child on my lap, I’d be up and dancing with the rest of them, but he had come to me seeking shelter. I saw that he was having a hard time, but I didn’t go to him, knowing that if he needed me, he would come and find me. I find that in the field of child development, and the much larger world of parenting, there’s an unspoken but very prevalent push to get our kids to “grow up”. This idea of “growing up” says that we as adults are doing children a disservice by coddling them, by treating them as babies. There’s a drive to get them to mature as fast as possible, and indeed, faster than they’re ready. I’ve had conversations with my coworkers about our children’s self-comforting skills and what that term means.
I argue that the child made a very mature choice in coming to an adult when he was stressed. He knew what he needed to be comforted. He didn’t scream, or cry, or dash out of the room. He knew what was expected of him (to stay there), but he knew he was uncomfortable, and he knew what would make him feel better. Were I able to take him out of the room, I would have, but we had too many children present and for me to leave with just one would cause us to be out of ratio.
Children who have moved beyond their toddler years that come to us and want to be held, comforted or otherwise “babied” are, for the most part, acting according to their needs, but I see parents and early childhood professionals alike shoo them away, insisting they aren’t a baby anymore. The irony is, the more we push them away, the more they seek to cling. To shame them for deciding for themselves what they need emotionally only increases their anxiety, and their need for comfort becomes an obsession for attention. The insistence that this “coddling” will lead them to be babyish and spoiled later on is unfounded. I think a lot of the problems people have could have been prevented in early childhood by a little more genuine love. We just need to place ourselves in their shoes. What you see as clingy, they see as necessity. Breathe through it; we’re not crippling them. There will be plenty of time for them to distance themselves from their caretakers all on their own as they get older. For now, we build trust.
Counting To One 