Time for Reflection by Judy Lyden

The Easter Season is a wonderful time to reflect on one's life and how one lives that life. It's a time to enjoy the early spring and realize just how we are part of everything around us. It's important to help children ask that question as well. Even if it's just a brief muse, it's well worth the time.

Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with someone about my own life. Precisely, it was about spending my life on children - very young children. It's my favorite age, although I do love high schoolers. Very young children represent the future to me. They participate in the present, but they are a glimpse into the future. Not all children are well behaved, brilliant or aimed in the right direction. It's always a pleasure to work with the good, the smart and the kids who are focused on achieving, but they aren't the only kids.

My real talent lies in working with those who are less fortunate either by accident or by design. Over the years I've devoted my work and my prayer to the children who ordinarily would be left behind and kicked from one day care to another. These are kids who come from homes where discipline and care are less than they should be. The children go home to chaos, a poor meal and a constant drone of TV. Mothers who think the domestic achievement is in avoidance of rather than creating a home, so the children are constantly in an emotional need, and they lash out with poor behavior, constant testing or they just never catch up.

These are the children of Easter. These are Christ. These are the children with the enormous question on their face, "Will YOU care for me? Will you love me anyway? Will you think of me when I am gone?"

A friend, thinking she was being funny about some of my antique treasures, said of me, "If Judy Lyden can't love it, nobody can." I've treasured that remark ever since.

As our bishop once stupidly said, "There are no throw away priests" but intimated that there are throw away children. I correct him boldly and say, "There are no throw away people." People make mistakes and sometimes they are terrible and hateful and egregious. If we don't stop those mistakes in the making early, we have lost an opportunity to be truly good ourselves that moment we can never share again.

The problem with working with very young children is that they are not rational, and any child will try on behaviors that seem at the time acceptable simply because someone else is doing it. The reason is often lacking, and the model is often too tempting to pass by. It is not unreasonable to believe that most children will fall off the good pedestal for the swamp of iniquity if the piper is corrupt simply because other people are doing it. So when a child goes home to a swamp every night and sees poor example, he will come to school with that example every day. Every single day the example has to be replaced with good example. Sometimes the child begins to understand, and sometimes he does not, and therein lies the story of early childhood.

In my career, I've accepted the very worst behaved children into my life. Several have landed in the hospital for the severely emotionally disturbed. I struggled year after year with this until a few years ago when I decided that for the sake of the good children, I would limit it drastically. The children at the GS now are, as a cohesive group, very well behaved with a couple of exceptions.

Teaching the very young child should be a pleasure, with a few exceptions. With a keen eye, it should be a discover zone. Children evolve much like their parents or any other human being - a little at a time. You begin to see that when you work in small groups and see a child learn all his letters and sounds and start to count, and begin to express himself out loud, write his name and think before he does. When a child scribbles one day and draws a face the next, it's grow time. It's spring.

This Easter season, and it's not over with Lent! Let's be aware of all the good we see. Let's offer every child all that we have for the time he is with us. Let us enjoy being parents and grandparents and teachers and try with the best of our poor power to love as Christ did and not fall off the pedestal into the swamp.