I have worked at a preschool for three years, and at a daycare for a year. Working with young children is not easy, and often you leave feeling exhausted. However throughout the stress of chasing around children all day and cleaning up mess after mess, small moments of joy ensue.
I work with children aged two through five at the preschool and from infants to six year olds at the daycare. I've learned throughout the years how amazingly insightful young children can be at an age as early as a year old. I've seen one year olds understand sadness, as they flock to comfort their friends who fell and got a scraped knee, or are just crying because they miss a parent.They have the ability to express complex emotion, share, and understand others. So often children will teach each other how to use scissors, draw a picture, or write letters. I see them using techniques of teachers on their peers, and it makes all the lessons and explanations worthwhile.
It also is in the moments when you know you have impacted them. Recently a parent approached me and told me that one day her daughter (my student) and her were drawing at the kitchen table and her daughter told her that one day she hopes to be as good of a drawer as Miss Emma. When her mom told me this story I nearly shed a tear because it means that I have, in some small way, influenced that child's creativity. At the daycare, I cannot express how happy I was when I would arrive each morning and see my class light up and shout my name when they saw me enter the room. A child's ability to have this enthusiasm everyday is something we grow out of as adults, and something we take for granted. Kids have a remarkable talent finding happiness in the simplest things. I wish that I had the same enthusiasm for life that toddlers have when you break out the bubbles.
The benefits of working in childcare are also in the things you do not influence, but the unprompted insight kids have. My favorite moment was when a little girl approached me and without prompting told me "girls can marry girls and boys can marry boys, and sometimes you don't have to marry anyone as long as you are happy." This simple yet amazingly progressive insight gives me hope for our future. With the political climate in turmoil and intolerance still so prevalent it is inspiring to see that as time continues on problems we may currently face could be obsolete. If all parents are able to teach their children ideas like this, imagine where we would be.
Moments like these are why I continue to love working with children, and hope to continue this throughout my life in both my career and as a mother. Not to be cliche, but these young minds are our future, and hopefully they will make it bright.
