Veronica: "Kids teach you a lot about grownups"

7-9-08

This engage experience might not be equipping the Belizean kids with anything (I'm pretty sure it's not). However, I sure feel like it's honing a dull skill set of mine--kids. Working with kids for so many hours a day has given me some perspective on how to handle them.

I've definitely have had to keep them occupied, discipline them (kind of? more like fuss?), and play with them. It's like training as a parent, only I have a huge number of different types of kids to practice on.

Number one lesson I've learned: don't act as an authority figure around kids. While some kids respond to your authority favorably, a lot of kids despise this. A lot of kids try to rebel against this attitude and feed off of it. I almost feel like discipline and fussing is the weak man's way out. It works wonders in the short term for getting their attention and getting them to listen. I don't think it instills any values except fear though.

A much better strategy is to always 'be on the kid's team.' Rather than saying, "Don't ..." or even the milder, "Try not to ...," tell him, 'I don't want you to get in trouble with Ms. Shaw. You better ..." This approach gets much better results. Don't antagonize the kids. Of course there has to be some authority figure around the kids. That's what I'm still trying to figure out.

Working with kids has given me a newfound respect for mom and dad. They raised me perfectly without using discipline. Only infinite patience and love. Now I'm trying to find out how they did it. Maybe that's what draws me to kids....

I'm excited about becoming a parent, and feel like this experience will make me a better one.