Babies and Children: Joy

When I was visiting my daughter and her family in Nova Scotia several years ago, we walked to a nearby park on a Sunday evening, for a "Music in the Park" series. It hadn't been well promoted, so very few people were there. The whole grassy park, which overlooks the low-tide mud flats, was home to maybe 20 people sitting in scattered groups. The music consisted of a local four-piece cover band.

 

Olivia, then four and a half, had brought with her a silk organza ribbon that I'd used to wrap her father's birthday gift the day before. It was pink, which suited her down to the ground. Her favorite color is "pinkandpurple." The ribbon was obviously meant for her.

 

When the music played, Olivia began running. She was barefoot. She held the ribbon in her right hand, her arm raised above her head. She ran so that she could make the ribbon stream behind her. She ran barefoot. She ran like the wind. She didn't stop. As she ran, she lifted and turned her head to watch the ribbon stream. She never stopped running.

 

Soon everyone in the park was watching her, but Olivia was just running, totally un-self-conscious. She was no longer Olivia, she was Child Running. She was a fairy sprite, blond curls bouncing behind her like the ribbon. She had become the verb "to run."

 

Olivia's feet didn't touch the ground. She looked like Snoopy doing that Dance of Joy that he performed when his supper dish was delivered. Olivia darted, always about three inches above the grass. She ran. Her ribbon flew behind her. She was Flying Child with Ribbon.

 

And when she finished, she somersaulted from where we were sitting to the farthest lamppost, which took 152 somersaults.

 

And then she came back to her ribbon and she flew again all over the park.

 

The band was forgettable. Olivia running with a ribbon is not.

 

 

Copyright 2008 Ann Tudor   

www.anntudor.ca
http://scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

Babies and Children: Spare the Rod, Pt. 3

When my daughter Mary Bin was in kindergarten, we lived in Lawrence, Kansas. Her kindergarten teacher, let's call her  Mrs. Porter, was burned out. She should probably never have been teaching children at all, ever, but certainly, by the time she entered our lives, she was tired of teaching and tired of children.

 

The story came out through other parents, mostly the parents of boys, and mostly parents who had open channels of communication with their children. And when I asked Mary Bin much later why she never mentioned any of this, she said, "Mrs. Porter told us not to tell our parents or we'd get in trouble."

 

"In trouble" was a serious thing in Mrs. Porter's class. It meant that you would be put into a dark closet with the door locked. And you would stay there until Mrs. Porter was ready to let you out. After you've seen a couple of your classmates treated that way, you'd do pretty much whatever it took to avoid being "in trouble" with Mrs. Porter.

 

Mrs. Porter loved to have the children draw. Kindergartens are big on drawing, which teaches small-motor skills and helps little fingers to learn to hold crayons and pencils. Mrs. Porter would tape to the blackboard a banal printed picture that she herself had colored in advance. She then gave each child a copy of the picture and told them to color it just as she had: red sweater for the boy, blue sky, green grass, black and white cow. Whatever. But when she said she wanted it to be exactly like hers, she really meant it.

 

As the children colored, Mrs. Porter prowled the room, watching them. And if a child deviated from her color scheme, she swooped down on that child, whipped the crayon out of his hand (for it was usually a boy that she attacked), and bent his fingers back, one at a time. Just enough to be painful and scary. Not enough to break a finger, of course.

 

Mrs. Porter was firmly entrenched in the local "education" system, despite being unsuited to the task. She had the full support of her principal. But this was the late '60s, and many of her pupils' parents that year were politically active graduate students. They were too smart and too aware of the rights of their children to stand for this. So the parents of Mrs. Porter's kindergarten class revolted, demanded a meeting of the school board (after the principal had been no help at all), and succeeded in getting Mrs. Porter transferred. At first she was transferred to a desk job with the Board. But after several months we heard that she had been sent to teach kindergarten at another school.

 

And for the rest of that year Mary Bin's kindergarten class was subjected to an endless string of substitute teachers who had no interest in the children. When I mentioned this lack of continuity to the principal one day, he said that it wasn't his fault. It was the fault of those shortsighted parents who had insisted on removing Mrs. Porter, a fine teacher, from the classroom.

 

Copyright 2008 Ann Tudor   

www.anntudor.ca
http://scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

Babies and Clhildren: Spare the Rod, Pt. 2

When I was 20 and living in the south of France with a stately, dignified widow, I would occasionally run into her son and his family when they came to visit. Her two grandchildren were Bernard and Christine, called Kiki, who was about six during my year there. Kiki viewed me as a slightly addle-brained playmate. I was struggling to understand not just French but French with a Midi accent and then Midi-accented French as spoken by a child. She taught me a funny children's song about a 90-year-old woman who broke a tooth while eating cream. "Well," said the 90-year-old's mother, "what do you expect when you eat cream!" I can still sing it in French, if you'd like to hear it. Kiki must be in her late fifties now.

 

One day when the family was visiting, Kiki said something that angered her father. Before I knew what was happening, he had clouted her on the side of the head so hard that she staggered. He just swept his arm back and let fly at this 6-year-old. I was shocked beyond speech. A bolder person than I might have remonstrated. But for all I knew this was common French behavior. Maybe all children were subject to sudden attacks upside the head. Madame, my landlady, said nothing. The children's mother said nothing. The father said nothing. And then, after a moment of silence, ordinary conversation resumed.

 

Is this any way to treat a child?

 

 

Copyright 2008 Ann Tudor   

www.anntudor.ca
http://scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com