I have been an employee of my local government’s Recreation Department for the past five years. I started volunteering at 14. Working with kids, ages 5-12, every summer refuels my faith in humanity. It also momentarily cures my baby fever, which I define as an incessant need to acquire children (not necessarily have them).
My drive to work with children stems from how amazing they are. There aren’t many people who will tell it as it is, without fear of consequence. Equally so, children are some of the most creative creatures on earth. I’ve witnessed children creating entire universes on pieces of scrap paper and children creating songs out of thin air when bored. While messy and sometimes needy, children are amazing!
Knowing how amazing and intelligent they are, I shouldn’t have been so surprised when the Police Department (SWAT, K-9 and Animal Control) came to visit our camp and several of the children became physically upset.
As I separated the campers into groups, based off of age, I noticed we had three different breakdowns. One of my campers, age six, started crying. As I asked her why, she said, “My brother was killed by the police. Mommy says we can’t trust them.” Her brother was 20.
Another camper, age 12, decided to put up her hands and shout, “HANDS UP, DON’T SHOOT.” While some children laughed, others joined her.
The officers present, decided to take the moment to talk to the campers as a whole. They explained how bad cops exist in the world, but in our county, “You have nothing to worry about. We are trained in catering to everyone and all we want to do is help.” My group, the six and seven-year-olds, were convinced at once. Why wouldn’t they trust this nice police officer with the cute German Shepard? (Remember what I said about my faith in humanity being refueled by children. They’re so forgiving and innocent.) The older kids were skeptical of the police officers throughout the day but enjoyed the presentations and games the officers had to offer.
You’ll notice, I said we had three incidents on this day. The last incident did not directly involve the presence of the police but was quite fitting as we talked to our other campers about safety and relations with the police. On her first day of camp, which happened to be this day, a little white girl, age six, told me, “I don’t play with children who have darker skin than I do.” Camper "A," we’ll call her, had to repeat this 3 times, as I was unsure if I had heard her correctly. Sadly, I did.
I stood in disgust of a little child who was simply repeating rhetoric which the media and (presumably) her parents perpetuated and allowed. As a counselor, I could not do anything but call her mother and tell her that “our camp has predominately black and Latinx campers…” and “if she repeats this, and upsets another camper, she cannot return to camp.” Little ‘A’s comments led to the question, do kids know Black lives matter? How much do they really understand? And why did the Black and Latinx children feel uncomfortable by the presence of the police, while camper ‘A’ and the few other white children feel completely at ease?
As a camp counselor, my job of mentoring and providing a safe environment for my campers ends at 1:15 pm. However, As a prospective parent or caretaker, the burden of educating children of injustice in the world falls on my shoulders.
While my campers went home with mini police badges and toy dogs, I went home with a the simple question: Do kids know #BlackLivesMatter? Not as a movement or as a slogan, but how much do children know about the social injustices taking place every day? And whose responsibility is it to teach them?
