Stay Home: Kids

This directive is painful especially for children. For kids who are in the vital and perhaps, life crucial stage of socializing, the stay home order, no longer a suggestion, is the worst. Most children who have yet to harness their emotions entirely will explode or something akin to it, when made to stay home. Teens are peer conscious to a maximum amount and this pandemic will never quite mend their histories. Feeling sorry for the young is not the answer and parents are feeling the pinch. The attention spans from ages about twoish are limited to far less than ten minutes and the time frame for what can keep a little adult interested will take years to expand to the luxury of hours in an adult. Telling them to sit down and shut up doesn't fix it. Thirty years of a career in the education field is from whence I speak, but parenting is not as simple as being in front of a class in an institution. Homes are places where it's okay to be yourself, or should be. Each home is a "country" of its own and hopefully it is a peaceful, encouraging one that doesn't have killer guidelines that don't allow a back and forth negotiation sphere within its walls. Even the worst prisons allow for, or should, access to parley. In other words, know that even kids have the right to speak and if you have a house that doesn't, you might regret it when the kids grow up. What goes on under your roof is not forgettable. Not only talk to your kids, but let them speak openly about their feelings. Okay, their ways might not make sense to your adult head but still, they have a right to express them. Everyone wants mostly just to be heard and without judgement. An example of this in adult terms is when you are at work and not at the top of the heap, and you have a beef that has been bothering you for a long time, that keeps you awake at night, all you want to do is tell someone about it. You want to think that somebody at work, gets it. In my work, we had a perfect example of how important this is. The principal of the school was an untouchable but the vice-principal was a great person. The reason it was like this, is pretty common. Top execs usually go about with their own complaints, but they have no one to complain to. They are the bitter-end so to speak. No matter what their pay, it's they who will be lopped off, not the many under their command. Second in command wants to be first in command and is in the learning position, but is far safer where he/she is. My favorite vice-principal carried in his pocket, a little black book. You knew he would listen and then write your issue into his shirt pocket book. Whether or not anything was ever done about it wasn't the point. Someone listened to you and actually thought what you said mattered enough to record. It  defused you. Same with your kids. You could even have a family book where the child-spoken situation was written down for future reference and the child knew that what he or she spoke of, had importance and that the matter written in it, could be rested for the time being. Too bad we can't do that in marriages, friendships and relationships of every kind. One beautiful thing about children is their capacity for love: giving and especially receiving it. They need lots of listening and loving  these days.