Children at Play

For the most part, watching children at play is enjoyable.

Yesterday I had one of those days where it felt like kids were bickering and picking on one child in particular. It was the negative moments that resonated within me long after the day was done.

There is always an underdog. One child that is a bit quieter or sensative and is easily bugged or hurt. Why do kids hone in on this trait some days (yet other days they all play just fine)?

Growing up is painful at times. There are ages and stages that none of us would like to return to. That stage (it seems it happens more at school) where there is that 'shift of power' and someone is being bugged and someone is doing the bugging. There is a dynamic that develops among the kids here, that is very much like a sibling relationship. That love/hate feeling where they are best of buddies one moment and at war, the next.

I was reading a book and a small part of it was on the sibling relationships. There was a paragraph of note in this particular book: "Anyway, that's what brothers and sisters are for - to make each other's lives as difficult as possible as they grow up. It forms a great basis for life, toughens you up."

It immediately made me think of the dynamics of the personalities I have here. Yes. There are 'those days' where you really wonder why kids must be like that. For the most part, they really aren't cruel (no name calling and the behaviours that seem to come with school) ... but when they hone in on someone's sensitivity and prey on it, it is frustrating and hurtful.

I had put a tape recorder in the living room (to see if I could find a way to download this onto the computer to share the 'voices' of the day on my daycare blog) and recorded about 2, 10 minute spans of time in the day. When I replayed it last night, what I heard were kids playing. They were all involved (a definate leader though) and everyone was getting along. It was noisy ... but they were having fun at no one's expense.

Why is it that at the end of the day, I felt the entirety of the day was the scenario of the one little boy feeling hurt at the expense of the others?

Unfinished business. That is always what rises to the top. What needs attention, gets attention.

So today, I shall face the day with a renewed attitude and try to listen in on where this begins and see if we can nip it in the bud. We have a different set of personalities here today so that could change the entire dynamic. It usually does.

But my goal for myself today is to focus on what is positive in our day. We definately have much more good than bad happen in a day. The key is to savor that and often that diminishes the negative.

Children at play. Childhood should be a time of innocense. But it seems the lessons we all must learn in life start at birth. Life isn't perfect. The social interactions that happen while the kids are in my care are only a small piece of what is coming when they head off to school. I guess this is a place where I can start to provide some of the tools and coping mechanisms to deal with it (and try to make the dominant personalities realize how they are making another person feel).

Life is really a learning curve. It never ends.