Development

A major theme in our training is early child development. Each piece of movement that we re-learn is designed to take us back through our own development. We started with our mouths on day one, then moved on to our eyes, our head, our hands, rolling, rolling to sitting, etc. That makes teaching preschool while being in training really fun. It means I get to watch bored kids on their mats still awake during nap time doing EXACTLY the same things we do in class. For example, a very common bored-on-your-mat trick is to get on your hands and knees, put the top of your head on the floor, and straighten your knees, which looks suspiciously like our lessons on headstands. The difference is that instead of being taught it, they're just experimenting and playing with it.

Yesterday I got a really interesting lesson in development. (It's not physical development, so not directly related to Feldenkrais, but interesting anyway.) I was at work on a Saturday evening, providing child care for parents who wanted to attend the school's annual no-kids-allowed fundraiser auction. We had a much larger age range of kids than usual. Normal age range is 2.5-5, but we had a few 6 year olds and a 9 year old to add to the mix. We were all playing outside, and a kid got pushed, fell down, and started crying.

Normal preschool situation that would follow: A teacher comes over to find out what happened and make sure everyone's okay. If a teacher doesn't notice right away, a child who saw it happen will come and tell a teacher that so-and-so is crying or got hurt. If the child who's crying was hurt by someone else, a teacher will ask that child to "check in" and make sure their friend is okay.

Yesterday's bigger age range situation: I went over to see what happened and find out why he was crying. A kindergartener saw me, came over, and asked the boy who was crying if he was okay. As I was talking to the boy, two more kindergarteners came over and asked if he was okay, saw that he was, helped him up off the ground, and got him involved in their game.

I was totally delighted to see that happen, because we never see it in our age group. The lesson I learned - empathy develops between ages 5 and 6, at least according to what I saw.

Musings on Preschool and Preschoolers

Teaching preschool is insane. I completely recognize that. It takes more patience and energy than anyone in the world could ever muster, and I am probably not so slowly losing some part of my hearing from the volume and pitch levels kids can reach, and yet I continue. Sometimes, after a particularly hard day of whining and arguments and misplaced blame and yelling, I wonder why I'm still there, and then as soon as I'm out of that environment and can think about something else again, I remember how much I adore those kids. I can think about times when I notice changes happening in them, specific times when they've grown before my eyes, or times when they show me that they care about me too. A great example of that came from 4-year-old Owen today while picking walking partners for a trip to the park - "I want you to be my partner because I love you!"

The moments where I can bring Feldenkrais into my work there always sneak up on me and surprise me. They're always little things, such as asking myself, as I'm running around setting up morning snack, how easily can I pick up that surprisingly heavy stack of tiny chairs? While rubbing someone's back at nap time, wondering where my attention is and if my intention is actually to help that person fall asleep, to keep an eye on the other kids, somehow do both at once, or if it's somewhere else altogether (I've noticed that it's just as likely to be any one of those as another). I find myself catching moments where I'm physically uncomfortable and changing what I'm doing where I might not have before. Each of those moments makes the insanity a bit easier to handle, because in paying attention to what I'm actually doing, I'm better prepared to take on whatever comes at me. That could be grabbing a toy out of someone's hand as it's about to hit someone else. It could be a 3.5-year-old boy charging toward me in the yard, arms outstretched, wanting to be lifted into the air a split second before he rams into me. You just never know what to expect in a preschool. Rules barely apply. (Except for gravity. Lesson to be learned by 3-year-olds: if you lean way to the side in your chair, you WILL fall out and probably hurt yourself. Even 3-year-olds can't defy gravity.) Have to be ready for anything.

PS. Watching a kid get on their hands and knees, put the top of their head on the floor, and straighten their knees during a boring nap time looks suspiciously like some headstand ATMs we did...

Inspiration

Have you ever had someone tell you that you inspire them? I hadn't until recently. A friend of mine from class, Ryan, does acrobatics for fun, but a few months ago he got a bad shoulder injury that's prevented him from doing what he loves. I think at first it was physical block, and once he got past that, it turned into mental block - ie. I can't do acrobatics because I'm injured. Apparently, I was part of what got him out of that.

Ryan's told me more than once in the past few months that I inspire him. I didn't understand why at first, because what could I have done to inspire somebody? I'm just living my life. He told me that it's because I don't let my physical constraints get in my way - I do Feldenkrais, I dance, I live my life how I want to, and I've figured out how to do all of that in a way that works for me and my body. In watching me do that, he's figured out how to get back into acrobatics and enjoy it again, despite his slowly healing shoulder.

It's surreal to think of that as inspiring. Like I said, all I'm doing is living my life. I just choose to live it so that I can enjoy it, not so that I'm stuck in my limitations. I fought with those limitations all through high school and I don't want to be in that fighting place anymore. I'm just trying to move on from that. It's great if that happens to inspire somebody, but it's also strange. It makes my life feel bigger than I consider it to be, because it's proof that simply the way I live my life in relation to myself, not to someone else, affects somebody directly.