Whether you are a professional or a parent, working with children is a labour of love. When we support and guide children, it comes from the heart (I know this sounds cheesy…but stay with me). In other words, our internal world shows up in the way we play with them, speak to them, and build relationship with them. There’s no denying it: our rawest wounds and our most nurtured parts are inevitably going to be woven into the fabric of our interactions with children…because we are working with them from our heart—not just our brain, education, or expertise exclusively. Our interactions are coming from our deeply personal inner world, an no amount of education or expertise can shut that out. If we were working with computers instead of people, perhaps we could just employ our brain and knowledge base. But this isn’t the case when we’re working with children. They call out for something more. They stand there—as their whole selves, asking us to show up with our whole selves, too.
Letting Go of the Things I Thought I Knew
When I started teaching young children, this reality surfaced very quickly. I just graduated from university, and felt like I knew all I needed to know to get started in my role as an educator. All the theory, textbooks, practice teaching, and lectures would prepare me for this next step. Everything seemed straightforward and clear. Until the day I walked through my classroom doors and was face-to-face with thirty bright-eyed 3, 4, and 5 year olds who looked up to me as their lead educator. Each child showed up with their own experiences, understandings, emotions, perspectives, and gifts. And they were going to be doing much more than just blindly following my directions and guidance. No way. They would be demanding me to also see and hear them, to truly understand them. And, to question my certainties and professional knowledge. They demanded I see them as individuals, to get to know their nuances and complexities.
And a lot of this challenged what I thought I knew. This caused me great discomfort at first. I wanted to lean-back and teach from a cozy place of assuredness. To employ all my professional understandings, and reap the positive benefits of a thriving, well-functioning group of students. And the more I tried to “stay comfortable” and lean into my assumptions, in other words, the more I tried to fit my work into a box, the more the children demanded I stop. I was taught that children will be fully engaged and attentive if I provide them with hands-on learning experiences, like play doh and some rolling pins. Seems simple enough. But, if that’s true, then why are they completely ignoring these materials and seem more fascinated with the garbage truck parked outside of our classroom window? I was also taught that if I have enstill consistent rules and boundaries with children, they will follow along without much push back. But if that’s true, then why are they shoving one another in the hallways and giggling instead of quietly walking in an orderly line? I mean, that’s the rule—and I state it over and over again. What am I doing wrong? The more I tried to control and place expectations on the children, the more they acted out.
Perhaps these examples from my early days in the field might remind you of interactions you’ve had with children—bringing to light a time when you decided you knew the “one way” that something should be, and the children in your life challenged these beliefs and asked you to dig a little deeper.
No Robots Found Here
At this point you might be thinking: but don’t children deserve the best version of us? If I let my guard down and truly do this work “from the heart”, won’t that expose my less-than-perfect parts of myself? And won’t that messy version of myself be damaging to children?
First off, you are right, coming into relationship with children with our whole selves can feel scary…and maybe a little irresponsible. Let me clarify. I’m not saying that we just forget about the responsibility we carry as the adults in children’s lives to protect them from harm. This is always front-and-center. But even the most well-intentioned adult will make mistakes because you are not a robot either, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to working with children. You might get frustrated at times, be distracted at times, lose sight of your values a bit at times, and so on. We can’t expect to do this flawlessly. And whether you try to work with children robotically and systematically or not, this will always be the case. You can have all the measures in place to “ensure success” and still fall short.
“Working from the heart” isn’t just letting ourselves run amuck and expecting positive results. The only way we can authentically show up as we are, as our truest and best version of ourselves, is to do so deliberately. I call this ‘Conscious Educating” or “Conscious Care”. In other words, we regularly reflect on our inner experiences and the relationship we have with ourselves. We nurture and become attuned to ourselves, so that we can continue to live-into our values and evolve as individuals. “Conscious Educating” or “Conscious Care” invites us to witness the way we engage with children, and then uncover the layers beneath what we’ve observed.
Here are some reflection questions to get you started on your journey to “Conscious Care”:
- What do I believe the children in my care deserve from me?
- Where do I notice my practice is aligning with what children deserve? Where am I not aligning with what children deserve?
- Select one of these areas where you feel you’re out of alignment. What might be underneath these moments? In other words, what assumptions, beliefs, or expectations (of yourself or them) might be fueling this misalignment?
- When you’ve identified the misalignment and might be creating it, consider what you need to enable you to shift your practice so it lives up to your beliefs about what children deserve.
