With so many horrible things happening in our world today, sometimes it’s nice to be reminded of the innocence that does still exist in this world. And sometimes this innocence comes in tiny, bright, shiny, spunky packages we know as children.
I am lucky enough to work with children at a daycare this summer. Some people don’t like kids, and when I tell them I work at a daycare, they say “Ooh, sorry, that must be awful,” but I definitely don’t see it that way. Those kids are a blessing to me every day, even when they are full of sass, sprinting around the classroom and screaming at the top of their lungs, leaping off of the highest play toy, or (and yes, this did happen) attempting to bite you. Kids, in all their mischief and mayhem, demonstrate the simplest form of unprejudiced love. Their only prejudice comes from whoever just stole their last toy. I have witnessed and heard so many things that inspire love, but here are a few of my favorite moments from my long days spent with the tiny future of our world.
I once spent part of an afternoon talking to a six-year-old raised by a single mom. I had made the mistake of asking about his plans for Father’s Day, simply assuming that he had a father in his life. But this kid could not have cared less that he grew up without a dad. He simply said, “I only need my mommy,” and I thought that was a beautiful, perfect statement that only a child could deliver. He was so content with what he had that he didn’t need to wonder at what he didn’t.
Another day, I was making conversation with a kid that I knew could speak fluent Portuguese, for some reason or another. It turns out that his parents are immigrants from Brazil, and they moved here just before his oldest brother was born. He is being raised in a household where they speak mostly Portuguese, and is also expected to work extremely hard and be successful in school, because his parents came here to get the best for their children. This kid is only seven, but he understands with a child’s kind of clarity how lucky he is to be where he is, and he has embraced his differences from his peers wholeheartedly. His heritage is a source of pride for him, in so many ways, and that inspires me.
One of the moments that has stuck with me the most clearly didn’t even require words. And it couldn’t have, as the kids involved were only about two and cannot speak real English yet. It was something straight out of a commercial about embracing diversity. I was in a classroom during music time, and some of the kids were adorably bouncing up and down and doing their form of dancing. But then something beautiful happened. One of the little Hispanic girls grabbed her Asian friend, then he grabbed his white friend, who then grabbed his black friend, and they just danced. Holding hands and bouncing and smiling and laughing and just dancing in the cutest circle of kids I have ever seen.
Each of these moments is proof that kids can be wonderful little teachers. They can teach us cynical, prejudiced adults how to love sweetly and purely, and they can teach us how to accept others without the veils of society telling us how we should see them. They can teach us to love in the face of hate. We just have to learn how to see it.
