Sunday, November 19, 2006

no kidding?

i have been busy helping a friend set up a playschool for kids between 2-4 and through teaching them i have learnt so much about human behaviour.

when i first started out i was quick to divide the group into the ones that were irritating and those that were cute. had a lot of experience with this albeit for a slightly older age group.

soon i realised that there was more to the irritating behaviour than what met the eye. so i decided to closely observe the parent that came to pick them up each day. and soon very soon i quit getting irritated with the kids. i just transferred the irritation to the parent, usually the mother in this case.

lesson no. 1: we are what we come from.

realized that parents are becoming more adept everyday at creating monsters. then when its too late they ask themselves why their kids are in disarray!!

like so many of the kids keep banging their heads...this is sometimes due to an under-stimulated environment or just to recreate the act of rocking that they enjoyed as kids.

similarly, if a kid is showing aggression or has just knocked someone over out of spite, the trick is to give your attention to the one that is injured making sure there is enough drama to indicate that something very wrong has taken place. the villain of the piece should ideally be given time out or taken to another room and made to understand that he will qualify for timeout each time he decides to play bully!

i am trying all this out on adults now and have found that it's working brilliantly.

each time someone irritates me now, i take much longer to react since i try to make myself understand that its not the person to be upset about but where he comes from... read spouse/ home/ work etc.

its back to school for me!