In the past, my attitude toward children has been… rough. I had generally found them to be nothing more than obnoxious collections of slime that should do everybody a favor and become jaded adults as soon as possible.
It is for these reasons that, when presented with the opportunity to work with children over the summer at a theater camp, I was apprehensive. I took it because I love theater and rent isn’t going to pay itself, but I had my doubts. Not only seeing children every day but being directly responsible for wrangling them and telling them what to do? I had my work cut out for me.
As time passed, I grew to enjoy the presence of some of those youngsters. Don’t get me wrong, there were times when I wanted to break out the yardstick and enforce discipline the old-fashioned way, but to my surprise, I found several of the children to be more than tolerable! I even liked some of them!
Looking at it from the perspective of a semi-jaded 20-year-old who has to worry about college, money and a bunch of other garbage, these kids provided a fascinating look into a relatively untroubled mind. Being from the ages of eight to 13, there was some middle-school drama, but as a whole, these were just wholesome good-hearted kids who really wanted to put on a show! And that was inspiring.
The main thing I learned is that most kids don’t have a whole heap of worries like most adults do. Sure, many of the things we worry about are important, such as relationships or finances, but a lot of it is just petty things that don’t really matter. That’s something I didn’t fully realize until I spent five weeks with a bunch of elementary schoolers.
Another thing that struck me was how darn nice a lot of the kids were. They were able and willing to make friends with anybody— and that included the crusty old counselors! Children came up to me and invited me to have lunch with them— that was a welcome surprise! I had been content with eating all alone and monitoring the campers, but some kids thought I looked lonely and wanted to fix that.
Children are really something. They are far from perfect, and maturity does smooth out a lot of their rougher edges, but there is also a lot that gets lost in the transition to adulthood. As for me, I think I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. They mean well.
