I pick fights

written: July 15, 2010

So my father used to always tell me that I was bullheaded.
And I picked fights with the bigger girls.

There is another team here this week and I am working with them as a translator. They are a nice group and I am enjoying the people that I am working with. We do a VBS in the morning at the school Siloe (where I have been working…did I mention that I am working at a school?) and then in the afternoons we do another VBS with the kids in the community. My job is to translate crafts and then just in general help out where needed. It is really just a lot of telling kids to sit down, be quiet and pay attention. However, I would like to share this story:

One thing a lot of the kids struggle with is self confidence, they come from homes where no one takes an interest in their day or praises them for their good works. Instead, they are told they are dumb, we are poor and you are going to end up just like us. This breaks my heart. I see so many wonderful kids here, and you can read the sadness in some of their faces all the time.
All that being said, I think it is important that the kids have some sort of expectations, some challenges to prove to themselves that they can succeed.

The other day I was working in crafts and one of the adults that I was working with was doing the project for a little girl who was about 8 years old. It was a simple craft and she could have done it by herself, she just needed a little help getting started. So I went over and said, “I think that all she needs is a little help, maybe you could hold it and she could tie the string.” He then looked back at me and said, “ no she is too young to do it, she can’t do it.” In very quick snappy Spanish replied to him, “did you let her try?” This is when I became furious because he said that she was too young and would not be able to do it and this was just quicker. My father’s bullheadedness showed up in that moment as I took the project from him and said, “I will show you, she can do it!” A few of the girls around said that she couldn’t do it either, and I looked at them and told them that she could do it. By this point I was determined to prove all of them wrong, and show that the little girl with the huge brown eyes and a quiet sadness could do it. I coached her through every step of the project, and 10 minutes later we had finished it. If I didn’t want that man to lose all respect for me, since I had already taken it away from him and told him that I would prove him wrong, I would have stuck out my tongue as a nice little “I told you so.”

I think from this quick experience, I learned that, A) I need to be more respectful of adults. But B) that even if given the chance, I believe that children can succeed if they are provided with the tools to do so. It is very important to allow kids to do some things for themselves. It doesn’t matter if they do it wrong, or it is not perfect. The point is to allow them to try.

The little girl left with a smile on her face, and I asked her what she was going to do with her project, and she said that she was going to go and show it to her mom when she got home.