Circle up ya'll it's story time!

    What seems like eons ago I taught Pre-School. It was one of the best, most life changing, self discovering times in my whole life. The best way to get to know who you really are and where you want to be in life, is to continuously get unsolicited advice and correction from a group of 4 year olds. I really mean that. I had some extremely good teachers alongside me in the role of guiding these tiny people and governing their days, Sending them off into public school with high hopes they stay kind and unique and amazing. One of the best groups of grown ups I have worked with and it felt more like a club. It's a harder job than I knew before living it.

   I miss it from time to time when I remember the fantastic things that happened. Last night I had one of those dreams where you relive an event accurately like it happened right then. With no strange additions or subtractions. Just a memory. I woke up so happy and had to blog it.

  There was a boy with the most perfectly round charlie brown head and a slight lisp. I won't post his name because you just never know (and also this is embarrassing stuff). This boy was a character and a half and I could usually count on him for the levity in my day when he was there. And when he wasn't there I missed him. You could say he was a favorite. I know I shouldn't have had favorites blah blah blah. Every teacher has them or they aren't human. It's just something you smile about later in life. Those are the children that a teacher hopes to someday have children like. I had several different ones I dreamed of having a perfect son made of. If that makes any sense. Anyhow, this particular kid left me speechless with his natural comic ability daily. And the joy of actual joys was that his mother was a kind saintly sweet lady that I could take aside at pick up time and tell her the funny of the day. And she would smile and cringe and sigh all at once. I looked forward to that expected and predictable reaction. She knew her son well and knew how much joy his antics brought me. We had just about the best teacher parent bond ever. Because she appreciated his spirit fully.

 Our class curriculum included drawing assignments for the letter we were studying. This boy had a love for building and jumping and playing. Not for drawing. He was clever and came up with what he thought to be a brilliant solution to his "have to get work done before I can go back to building towers" problem. He drew a nut. A single nut. For every flippin letter for a few weeks until I sat down and told him he HAD to be more creative. "This" pointing at his B drawing "is a brown nut". It was in fact a brown nut. But so were the other drawings. "But this" points at the S drawing " is a small nut. He was not wrong, it was smaller than the other ones. I was dying on the inside because his logic and defense were solid and his face so damn serious. Not a con. Totally legit. He agreed to drawing something else for his next letter assignment ( probably so he could get away from me as I was clearly wasting his outside time with talking) and I went on with my day. A week or so later we have the letter N on our board and I died. After a brown nut, a small nut, a round nut, and a large nut I felt like the stars had aligned for N to be one he had to get with the program on.

  He drew and drew and drew. Thoughtfully and with purpose. And when he handed in his art it was not colored in but just a simple pencil drawn man. But what? You ask. Man doesn't start with N. That's what I said as he hustled toward the back door putting his jacket on for playground time. And he completely innocently shouts over his shoulder as goes "Nope. It's a naked man".

( name has been blocked out for privacy but man I love the little kid handwriting I had to hide)

 It sure was.



  You bet your ass I saved this all those years!!! His mom and I had the most ruckus laughter filled talk that afternoon and she insisted I keep it but could I please make her a photocopy for his baby book. I have hung on to this folded up crudely drawn letter N drawing and pinned it near my work station at every job I have had since. Folded closed as not to offend anyone. But right there nearby all the time. So when I had a horrid day in a collections call center I would just see the purple paper ( yep, purple. I don't even know why but I love it) and smile to myself. I have this pinned next to my work bench in the garage now and it serves the same purpose it always has.


  Hands down the very best thing I still have from my teaching days. I constantly wonder how all my students are doing now and sometimes I am lucky enough to creep one or two out when the see me pick up my girl (crazy life gave me a stepkid the same age) because they remember me kinda sorta. I think this little guy moved far away but I have no doubt he is somebody wonderful. Though if I remember correctly, he reverted back to the nut drawing solution in our Private Kindergarten program the very next year.













 I have a couple more favorite kiddos I want to write about but need the okay from their mommas. But it's worth the wait and I think they will say yes because they want to relive the good times too.



You are welcome.

How to feel feelings

    Have you dug through your past lately? I know I have several boxes and an old beat up trunk that contain thousands upon thousands of memories, good and bad. I used to look through them while cursing my parents for being assholes. I would rummage for old photos of handsome ex boyfriends to cry on when I had yet another prince charming let me down. And I would later roll on the ground in painful peals laughter with roommates as we looked through yearbooks and my secret stash of love notes ( some written and never sent were the best outpourings). These treasures I carefully sorted in an effort to find diaries kept from my
super early teens. My girl and I had a few very powerful conversations about feelings this last weekend. I think sometimes I should be more grateful for the small separation we have due to the whole step mom and didn't actually give birth to her thing. It allows me to look at her life with different eyes. She has so many things going on in her world that I remember being just life altering at that age. The world was probably ending every week or so because tween-hood is insane. And it's hard when you feel like no one understands your voice. You aren't big and you're not small. Rough zone to dwell in even for a kid in a "traditional" household environment. Toss in some divorced parents and a step-package and it's just a party all the time.


   All the advice I can ever give has to do with who I hope she will get to be someday. Her. I encourage her to think her own thoughts. Speak her mind in respectful ways that still feel right and good. Stick up for her own beliefs and lead with her best intentions. All in all it's sort of frightening how logical and rational she is naturally and I really hope she hangs on to that through puberty. But, if that goes out the window, and all else fails, the best advice I feel like I have ever given another human is this: You do not have to be sorry or apologize for the way you feel. You do however have to acknowledge when your reactions to the way you feel begin to make others feel badly. You can't just be toxic when you are upset or angry because "you get to feel that way". By all means, feel it. Just remember that if you damage another persons day because yours sucks, you need to own up to it and apologize for that. The action, not the feelings. If she can harness that ability she will be further along and more socially well adjusted than most adults I know.

 I think that is fair advice. Felt pretty amazing after that. And I hope it resonates through the teenage hormonal nonsense we will no doubt encounter here in the next phase of this girl and her growing up. I do remember those years of mine very clearly. I wish someone had been there to tell me it's ok to have feelings. Took a lot of years to learn that on my own and a lot of arguments held in the battleground that was our family kitchen, most containing the sentence " you just don't understand how I feel". Hindsight is always 20/20 and frankly I was a brat. But, I had a Mom that did not in fact have time or patience for emotions other than her own. That can be rough for a young girl. I'd like my kiddo to have a sounding board ( or a few sounding boards, a diary and a therapist) for her personal validation.

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I just read a post by a cyber friend of mine and it falls into the sweet territory of pre-tween hood. It's nice sometimes to read that a sassy sarcastic and intelligent Mommy has moments like mine and I want to share her post with you all. It's a great read as it her blog in general.

 

http://lifewithladies.com/sometimes-i-do-ok-sometimes-i-dont/

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