I was sitting on the floor with some preschoolers, playing cars. It was time to clean up.
“I don’t want to clean up,” one cried.
I had two choices. I could take the typical approach, double down, and make sure he knew the expectation (a ridiculous concept — he clearly knew it, enough to be upset about it). I could enforce the rule above all and focus solely on compliance.
Or I could trust that I had nothing to prove, that we both knew I was the adult and that the toys needed to be picked up, and let him feel however he felt about it. Because let’s be real, the sadness and protest of a three-year-old child was in no way a threat to me or my well-being.
He wasn’t defiant. He was just sad. He needed an adult who would handle and let him process that sadness.
Across the room, the teacher was scolding some other kids for not moving fast enough. We had limited time, and I was acutely aware I was essentially the only present, regulated adult in the room.
I sat back from him. “That was so fun,” I said genuinely. “I liked playing with the cars with you.”
“No clean up,” he protested, getting frustrated, and in the back of my mind, I wondered if my approach was going to “work” in the sense of accomplishing the task we needed to accomplish. I needed it to work before the slight delay caught anyone’s notice. I realized I was 40+ years old and already feeling the pressure. This little guy was three.
“It’s really sad to have to stop,” I said. I let it be sad. To my surprise, he instantly melted into my arms.
I wish that in that moment, I had a timer running. I could picture it across the screen in my mind, like a NatGeo special. As I sat among the cars holding this child so shortly out of babyhood, I imagined it saying something like:
Elapsed time: 30 seconds.
Because that was how long it took. The moment itself felt longer. The reality was that it took hardly any time at all.
I patted his back and murmured soothing nonsense, with a couple of mild comments that tomorrow the cars would be there. I didn’t push or mention cleaning up. Together, we just grieved the tiny loss of saying goodbye to the cars.
Elapsed time: 60 seconds.
He hopped up. “I can clean up!” he declared. He began tossing the cars in the bin. I turned to another child to involve him, but the first child picked up everything.
Elapsed time: 1 minute, 30 seconds.
It seems like the common belief among many adults and school staff is that by even acknowledging the emotions of children, we are somehow giving in. To recognize that they have feelings is inherently dangerous or surrendering some type of authority.
Adult presence, attention, and basic human connection are viewed as just another reward that has to be earned. It’s one of many ways that the concept of rewards and consequences has utterly poisoned the way adults relate to children.
It is pervasive and toxic. I worry about the many ways kids are constantly given the message that their emotions are too big, too loud, or too meaningless to be heard. I worry about the ways adults overlook and diminish their humanity for the sake of accomplishing some task.
We ignore the fact that the kids are humans first. And so are we.
Sometimes, all it takes is a little bit of time, and my own willingness to see the kid in front of me as a complete human, with ideas and feelings and worries, and an existence that is bigger than me and bigger than any assignment we are working on. I can acknowledge them, their feelings, and experience, and we can usually still complete the work.
Years ago, I sat in a training on a weekday morning. Before we started, the instructor said she wanted to take time to acknowledge that everyone there had many other things they needed to be doing, and many other places they probably wanted to be.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. We thought about the places we could be, the places we needed to be, and we slowly adjusted to the idea of being there, in the class, instead. I sat and relished the fact that nobody expected anything of me in that moment at all.
That instructor gave us the gift of acknowledging that our lives were bigger than this one class, that we were people who mattered beyond accomplishing this task. It was something that I wasn’t experiencing anywhere else in my life at that time.
I thought about that moment one day as I sat with a seventh grader who was quietly crying, head down, as he logged into his computer for an assessment.
“I feel like garbage giving you a test on the Roman Empire right now,” I told him honestly. “You don’t know me at all, but if you need to talk, we can talk.” he shook his head, sniffled — “and if not, it’s totally fine. But we can take a minute. It’s been a tough day. None of this is life or death.”
I handed him a tissue. Waited. 30 seconds.
“Do you want me to read you the questions? The recording is really staticky.” He nodded.
We moved on to the Roman Empire. I read, he typed.
Elapsed time: 60 seconds.
I don’t know what he learned or what he will remember about the Roman Empire. I hope, if nothing else, he might have started to learn that he mattered more than his ability to take a test. That an adult could acknowledge his emotions without feeling threatened, without minimizing them, or without prying. Sometimes it’s just a tough day, but we can get things done. We had time for both. His humanity wasn’t at odds with the tasks we were doing.
