8 year old moments

 This morning, after a week of trying to get the kids to follow the routines of the classroom on their own instead of me reminding them to do them, I thought about the relationship between impermanence, control, and supporting a kid to become themselves rather than trying to change them.

There’s a resident practitioner at the zen center who has a small child. This child occasionally comes to the dharma talk and I love watching the interaction between the two of them. He often runs at her, hugs her, crawls all over her, kisses her, etc and she responds to him with such affection and warmth, I marvel at the love he must feel each time that he approaches her. This morning was no different. He was sitting in a chair, she on the floor, and he kept jumping over to her, almost knocking her over, and she would just catch him and embrace him each time.

At one point, though, she had to ask him to stop. I’m not sure what it was that changed her response to him, perhaps because the lecture was starting, but she did have to actually keep him from continuing to approach her.  

As I watched this, her response to her child in each moment, I thought about the kids in my class and the impermanence of their misbehavior. See, lately I've been attempting to reduce the amount of "misbehavior" in my classroom by using techniques like punishment, consequences, and rewards. I've done this under the delusion that if the kid experiences a positive enough reward or negative enough consequence, that they will develop one behavior and stop another. But watching this mother and her child, and thinking about the reality of time for an 8 year old, I realize that I need to respond to my kids in each moment. 

Yes, you threw grapes in the lunch room. Yes, you snuck out on to the yard after I explicitly told you to wait for me. Yes, you walked slower than a hundred year old man up the stairs to our classroom, making me late to eat my lunch and to get the homework into the mailboxes. I want to make you miserable now so that you associate this misery with your actions, so that you are not rewarded for your behavior.

But you are sitting in your seat. You are doing the work that you didn’t do this morning. Yes, you are complaining to me about how unfair it is that you have to do the work. Yes, you are complaining that I never help you, then complaining that I treat you like a baby when I actually do help you. All I want to do is dissociate myself from you in the belief that this is all an attempt at avoidance of work and personal engagement. But really, you are in this moment, not the grape throwing moment, not the walking up the stairs moment, and not the rest of the afternoon moment. I need to respond to you right now, not with the intent to prevent you from doing future obnoxious and annoying things. I really can’t control you, can only respond to you.

However, I can begin to show yourself to you. I can acknowledge that you are doing your work now. I can also acknowledge the connection between the fact that you have to do your work now because you chose not to do it during class time. I can point out the fact that I actually do try to help you. I can point out the fact that when you did follow my directions, you got a good phone call home. And then I have to let you continue to be you, in each moment- not judge your present by your past or think that I can control your future. You’re going to be you and I need to see you as you are in each moment, not use punishment and rewards to attempt to control your future behaviors. I can show you who you are, respond to you and encourage you to make choices that benefit you, and over time you may begin to make more choices that benefit you but this punishment after the fact, this clinging to an attempt to control, keeps both of us from seeing this very moment that we’re in together.