Wednesday, October 22, 2008

A Kid Person?

When I was a young girl I often thought that I would be a teacher. I was inspired by the creativity, the authority and the courage of my own teachers. As I grew older I started to develop more interest in art, graphic design and less child oriented activities. In fact I have often wondered if I am not a "kid person".

I have kids of my own, I love them very much and enjoy spending time with them ... but it is different with your own offspring. I don't feel that natural with other people's children. I have spent some time being a substitute teacher for a junior high/high school art class at a local private school and I enjoyed it, but always felt a little out of my element. Today, however, I discovered that maybe little kids feel comfortable with me.

My daughter goes to preschool and it is school picture time. I was asked to help the photographer with things like collecting kids for their photos to be taken, combing their hair, and writing down photo numbers. The infants and toddlers went first which means we got the screamers out of the way before moving onto the older kids. I spent a lot of time trying to console upset little ones and carrying them to and from the nursery. I was able to comfort a few.

There were some kids who really took to me. They wanted to hold my hand, they easily followed me to the picture trailer, they talked to me. But one thing that made me feel so nice was a little girl who had already had her picture taken, she came up to me and hugged me. She wanted to go with me. She looked at me with her big blue eyes and they pleaded to take her with me. I didn't know this girl prior to today, but I felt like she naturally trusted me.

I feel like I learned something about myself today: maybe I don't always know if I am good with little kids ... but maybe that doesn't matter if they like me anyway.

3 comments:

heather said...

What a sweet post. Good conclusion.

PeePaw said...

With the kindness you have they are sure to like and trust you. Young people have a way of knowing good people and believe me you are one good person ... and I am not (OK maybe a little) biased at all whatsoever!!!

Kelly said...

Thank you, Heather!

Dad, yeah I am not biased about my own kids either! Not at all whatsoever!!!