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A New Way of Seeing
Children
by Jan Hunt |
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| It was ten o'clock at night. Little Aaron, about five,
was ahead of me in a long line of people waiting to look through the
telescope at the Nature Center. His mother, I was happy to see, was
holding him and laughing with him about something he'd just said. But
soon Aaron became restless, as children will when they have spent a
late hour waiting in a long line, and was being warned to keep quiet. |
| At the first signs of impatience, his mother spoke kindly: "The
telescope won't go away. You'll get a chance to look through it."
However, she neglected to validate his feelings. She didn't say:
"It's so hard to wait for something you've looked forward to for
so long." Aaron began to play with his mother's nose, twisting it
this way and that, while making a sort of whooshing, humming noise
like a UFO hovering over us. As the nose attacks and sound effects
continued, his mother struggled to free herself and to quiet her son.
She tried reasoning with him: "For a child who loves space as
much as you do, you'd think you could be more patient to get to the
telescope!" Reasoning didn't work, and as is often the case with
children, it just made matters worse. Aaron screamed, "I hate the
stars! I want to go!" His mother became annoyed with him, and
began to react with anger: "Stop that, Aaron!" And soon:
"Stop that, right now!" and finally: "Do you want to
have any fun tomorrow?!" That took Aaron over the edge. He
started crying hard, and they left for home. A child who loved space
lost a chance to have a good look at it. |
Children are human
beings just as we are, and behave in accordance to how they are
treated, just as we do.
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| A child's rambunctiousness in public embarrasses
parents, because our society expects children to remain silent and to
behave as though they are mature adults - a most unrealistic and
uncaring expectation. Expecting the impossible can of course only lead
to disappointment and frustration for both parents and children. Just
like adults, children feel most cooperative when treated with
kindness, understanding, and faith in their inherent good intentions.
No adult feels cooperative when treated in a threatening, angry way by
a spouse, employer, or friend. In fact, we feel hurt and resentful
when treated that way, and far from cooperating, we often resist or
retaliate. Why then do we expect children to respond with good
behavior when treated with anger, threats, or punishment?
The deepest mystery of parenting is that we often miss the truth
about children's behavior, and yet it is so simple. Children are human
beings just as we are, and behave in accordance to how they are
treated, just as we do. We seldom stop to consider that this is simply
an inexperienced human being with real feelings, who is doing the best
he can do, given all the circumstances of his life up to that moment.
For how could he do any more? And why would he do any less?
Everything a child does makes sense if we look at things from his
point of view; there is a valid reason for everything a child does.
Aaron was understandably excited about this adventure, and if his
excitement had been more fully accepted and validated, would surely
have found the long wait less stressful. |
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Children deserve
our best efforts to give them love and understanding at all times.
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As a child advocate, what could I have said to Aaron's mother? I
might have validated Aaron's feelings and offered a solution to his
mother. To Aaron, I might have said, "It's so hard to wait when
you're looking forward to something!" To his mother, I could have
said "You know, airlines have the right idea; they always board
children first. Why don't I ask if you could go to the head of the
line?" I could have offered help: "It's so hard for children
to wait in long lines. If you'd like to take him for a walk, I'll be
glad to hold your place." Or I might simply have encouraged her:
"It's so hard for a child to be quiet and patient at the end of a
long day, waiting to do something exciting. I think he's doing really
well!" I could have said any of these things, if only I had
thought of them at the time. There is such a taboo against intervening
in one another's parenting that we often overlook ways in which we can
be helpful. |
| Children deserve our best efforts to give them love and
understanding at all times, even when - especially when - they are not
behaving as we would wish. If we can show them compassion and
understanding at those times, we can teach them by example some of the
most essential ingredients of a happy life: the capacity to love
others unconditionally, the willingness to offer help and express
empathy at all times, and not just at those times when others are
making life easy for us. If we can teach this to our children, we have
given our child a priceless gift, one that will continue through the
generations.
As Rick Lahrson, Director of the Portland, Oregon Kids Project,
once wrote, "Misbehavior in children is an attempt to
communicate, when all else has failed. Children have a drive to love
other people and to be a contribution to the people around them. It is
time for all children to be recognized as the magnificent people they
are, and accorded the dignity and respect that is due every human
being. We must establish a new way of seeing children."
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Jan Hunt, M.Sc., offers telephone counseling
worldwide, with a focus on parenting, unschooling, and personal matters. She
is the Director of The Natural Child
Project and author of The Natural Child: Parenting
from the Heart and A Gift for Baby.
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| More articles by Jan Hunt |
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