Working with children

Yesterday, at work, a child that I've grown a little attached to who has a very rough home life (her mom is actually living in the shelter), was having a very hard time going down for a nap. I had already tried disciplining her, but that didn't really phase her. As I helped another child get to sleep, she would walk around, not really making noise, but definitely braking the rules. Finally, another teacher came in and starting trying to help her. We're fairly certain this child has fetal alcohol syndrome. Anytime she gets worked up about anything, it's very difficult to calm her down. She doesn't know how to soothe herself. Anyway, so the other teacher was trying to help her sleep without forcing a temper tantrum. At that point, my teacher, the one actually in charge of the classroom, comes back from lunch and sees that she's not asleep. After a long while of being patient and trying to get her to lay down, they began using force as a last effort. They held down her arms and feet, hoping she'd calm down, but that just made things a lot worse. She began screaming hysterically. They tried talking to her and singing to her, anything they could to calm her down, but she wasn't having it. I was just observing at this point. As I walked over there, she reached out to me with a hopeful look in her eyes. I didn't want to interfere, so I walked away and she continued to scream. 2 year olds can sleep through a lot, but after 5-10 minutes of her screaming, the rest of the class were all starting to squirm. I figured, I'd try to see if I could help. As soon as I went over there, she jumped into my arms and wrapped her whole body around me. I sat down with her and she quickly calmed down and put her head on my shoulder. I held her like that for 5 minutes or so as she fell asleep and then she woke up a little and climbed onto her mat to get comfortable. That was it. She just wanted to be held.

As I was holding her, I marveled at how much love I could feel for this little one. I thought of her life, what it must be like. I thought of what kind of teenager she is going to be, and how many of her actions will really be her fault. It really made me stop for a moment and realize that we can't judge people. We have no idea where they've come from. At 2 years old, I can already tell the difference between children that are getting what they need at home and children that call me "mom" because I seem to fit the description better than anyone else in their life. If that difference is so distinct at 2, I can't help but think that as teenagers and adults it'll be even more pronounced. Which means, I can't even blame the parents for everything that's going on. Maybe they are doing the best they can.

Maybe people are just trying to do the best with what they have. For that little girl, her mom came to the shelter, which means she came to get help. That's probably the best decision she could've made for her children, and hopefully she'll continue to make good decisions that could make the difference in the lives of her girls.

Anyway, I know that this was a long entry, but I was in a thoughtful mood. Hug a child close to you when you can, and just love them, because they need it.