My dd12 is working this week as an assistant in a two year old camp run by an adult. Her friend has the job for the summer but asked her if she could stand in for her when she’s away, so she agreed. She likes working with kids – is great with her siblings and kids that she babysits for, and had a great time as an assistant at a camp for 6 year old girls a couple of years ago. Dd told me yesterday she hopes the woman doesn’t want her to continue, because she’s not enjoying the job at all, but knowing my dd (who is not only really good with kids but conscientious and a hard worker), I told her that was unlikely to happen. And anyways, I told her, it would be a terrible feeling to do a job so badly that someone felt the need to tell you that. I was right, since today she came home and told me the woman offered her a regular job for every day next year, in addition to wanting her to continue for the rest of the summer. Smart woman. But dd has adamantly told me she’s not continuing. And she already has another job offer (being a mother’s helper, basically) with someone else who will also teach her in shaitel construction/repair.
So what is it she doesn’t like about it, if she enjoys working with kids? She finds it boring and feels unproductive. She told me she thinks it’s very sad, to see two year olds crying for their parents and the parents pushing them to go in, instead of responding to them. Every day this week she has spent hours holding a child (different each day) who doesn’t want to be there and is crying for their parent. I don’t know what it is about her, but kids get attached to her very quickly and then refuse to go to anyone else. The first day, she spent all of her time holding a crying toddler, and when the older sister came to pick her up, the little girl didn’t want to leave my dd!
Some parents work and have no choice but to put their child in a camp or playgroup (this one is well run by a very responsible and caring woman). But many mothers are at home and really believe that their child needs to be in a group setting so that they can get that elusive ‘socialization’. I don’t know why people believe that children magically learn good social skills from being around other same age children who have never learned the prerequisite skills, either. We live in an age when children are seriously unparented and we keep justifying how wonderful that is by saying they’ll do better being around their peers all day. Why don’t we just look at the evidence in front of us, and see what has happened to a generation with parents who have very much faded into the background of their lives, from the time they are infants and through adulthood? Is our society a more loving and kind place? Are people happier? More emotionally stable?
I met someone in the store a couple of days ago who told me that an educator she very much respects told her that young children need to be in school to have negative experiences, since that is part of life. According to this argument, if they spend more time with loving and caring adults who actually guide them in learning new skills, they’ll be unprepared to effectively live in the adult world. I always find it ironic when people can’t defend sending children to school for positive reasons, all of a sudden the negative aspects turn into virtues. Saying something like this is a defense for school more than an intelligently determined position, which becomes quickly evident in even a short conversation.
I have to seriously challenge the presumption that kids best learn how to deal with unpleasant situations by being left on their own to figure it out. It’s like saying the best way to swim is by throwing a person into the deep end of the pool. Most parents wouldn’t teach their child to swim like that but I find to be very common for parents to support their choice to send to school by making the above argument.
My first question to a person saying this would be to ask, how does being in a bad situation benefit a child? To which they say that kids have to learn to deal with unpleasant situations to be prepared for life. My next question is, what does a child learn from being in that situation? (They unquestionably are learning something, but is that the positive lesson you want them to learn?) And how is the child going to learn when they don’t have any experience to deal with what they’re encountering? Yes, they can figure something out, but the likelihood that their response will consistenly be the healthy one is unlikely.
Wouldn’t children benefit from having a caring adult to help them navigate these challenging social situations? Adults who have had life experience in dealing with lots of things, who can actively guide them and help them develop healthy responses to the challenges? Remember, this argument about preparing kids for the harsh realities of life is made about very young kids through teenagers.
How much social maturity can you expect of a two year old, or five year old? Or even a fifteen year old (assuming he’s been in a peer dominated environment all his life)? In my experience, not much. And I think it’s cruel to purposely put children in a situation that they don’t have the skills to cope with and expect them to figure it out on their own.
Avivah
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