While working at the Children's Center on campus, I am constantly learning. This past semester, a portion of my learning consisted of the steps of changing a diaper (even though I've been changing diapers for 5+ years) and learning how to interact with children (even though I've been babysitting/nannying for a large amount of time prior to taking this job). The Children's Center follows proper procedures for all activities, providing a safe, clean, and precise environment for the employees, children, and their families.
A few things that I have learned at the Children's Center have greatly impacted my daily life, affecting the way I speak regarding judgment, specific labels that the human race may give to individuals, etc. I feel as if I have found a passion of mine, which is to spread awareness about equality and anti-labeling.
As you know, equality is extremely important in our world today as ALL human beings deserve equal rights. As a human race, we have achieved a great amount of success regarding equal rights, but we still have a lot of work to do.
Anti-labeling has become much more prevalent within the past decade as equal rights throughout the United States have expanded. While at the Children's Center, labeling a child isn't necessary whatsoever. Race, religion, etc. are obviously 100% unnecessary to discuss, but gender is also becoming irrelevant.
The infant room is working diligently on the removal of pronouns (he, him, she, her, etc.) as the children are unable to identify themselves. Their thought is, if the children aren't able to identify themselves (regarding gender), then why should we? This brought a great amount of awareness to me as I feel like I am constantly subconsciously labeling people. I've been learning about the proper difference between the terms, gender and sex; with this knowledge I already feel more aware of anti-labeling and the good that comes from it.
My mother has always been a fan of looking for good quality items, at cheaper values. This becomes very evident when I write a specific item on the shopping list, only to find that I have received the Great Value option instead when my mother returns from grocery shopping. This is huge of my mother, showing little to no judgment towards a specific product based on its brand/label. This example is extremely relevant to this article as labels do not determine one's character, values, etc. and removing them would most likely not make a difference in our society.I have always tried to avoid labels as they do not/should not impact the character of the human that one may be referring to. Labels are a form of judgment, whether it's negative or positive, it is still a form of judgment that could easily be eliminated from our world if everyone tried to avoid as many labels as possible.