One of my favorite ways to get inspired is to look through any magazine. The colorful, glossy pages are visually stimulating on their own. But they’re also home to a great deal of high-quality photos, a stimulating mix of models, product placement, copywriting, and digital editing. I’ll often cut out a photo of someone in a rather interesting pose and see how I can recontextualize the photo with a little bit of my own creativity.
The above picture started with a photo of a child looking for bugs in the grass. I didn’t find it in a magazine at your local grocery checkout. I found it in the middle of a thick manual for a training session in desperate competition for redefining the limits of boredom.
Since we were also talking about healthy relationships and how we, as teachers and educators, interact with our students, I couldn’t help but think something we’ve been told often but often forget: that children notice far more than we ever give them credit for. Even from a very young age, they have a pulse on our temperament, sometimes in a way that outpaces our own ability to recognize it.
Any place that is home to a child – be it an actual suburban home or a school in the heart of the city – will be endlessly observed and scrutinized. The child will recognize the power dynamics. The child will know who to go to when something is needed. The child will know who to avoid. The child will always, always be watching far more than credit is given for.
And it’s not something to be scared of. I’m not trying to suggest that it’s only a matter of time before Blumhouse Productions contracts the kids in your neighborhood to be the real-life production of the next Purge movie sequel. Instead, it’s an opportunity to let our actions be our words. To let ourselves be observed in a way that pushes us closer to who we really want to be.
True, that. But there’s another layer sometimes in that if the person (the child in your scenario) seeking another to interact with has a specific, unusual, or even “darker” reason for doing so.
For example, the child may be so used to negative attention that she simply cannot experience joy from what we might characterize as praise. Or a child from a sufficiently different culture might misinterpret the motives behind an adult’s reactions. Perhaps in that case, smiling adults are actually angry shaming adults, so there’s some trick waiting behind the mask. And finally, there are children who experience their own mental illnesses or personality disorders. A child who is driven only by needs she cannot name or describe will never be able to react in other than some semi-instinctual level unless she watches and learns to mimic her “normal” peers. (And, oh, the danger that scenario brings!)
All of these are rare exceptions to the norm that you brought up in your post. You’re right to think that watching the adults to whom the children gravitate will give you a lot of information. But there are always exceptions to any rule, and those are usually way more interesting.
Oh, for sure! Those exceptions are also harder for people (who are unaware or uneducated of it) to empathize with, and that leads to a pushing to the margins that benefits no one. Knowing the norm is only helpful when we’re at least aware of the exceptions, too.