What does YOUR heart sound like?

Earlier this week, I sat on the floor with the two oldest preschoolers casually snuggled up on either side of me. We were reading a story together (am I the only one who always thought it was weird that Nicky Bunny had to strip down to his underwear at the doctor's office as if that were just normal routine?). At one point, the story describes Nicky Bunny's heartbeat: thump-thump, thunp-thump. And then (spoiler?) Nicky gets to hear the doctor's heart go thump-thump, thump-thump. 

The two children enjoyed all the thump-thumping, and we repeated it together a few times. One said "That's the sound your heart makes!"

"Well," I replied, "my heart actually makes a different sound, because I was born with a heart that is a little bit different from most people's hearts."

I saw two heads turn sharply towards me from other parts of the classroom. One belonged to a big brother whose baby sibling had heart surgery at birth. The other head belonged to the child who underwent a procedure to repair a hole between heart chambers this past autumn. The two children sitting with me looked at me with a little bit of awe. 

"What sound does your heart make?" asked the one.

"My heart sounds more like thumpa-dump, thumpa-dump," I told her.

"Oh," she said, "My heart goes thump-thump, thump-thump."

"Yes," I agreed, "Most people's hearts go thump-thump, thump-thump."

"Not mine!" proclaimed my other story-reading companion.

"Oh. What sound does your heart make?"

He thought for a moment, then made a wiggly gesture with his fingers. "My heart goes squiggy-squiggy!" 

We had a giggle together over how silly it would be if hearts actually went squiggy-squiggy, and returned to our story.

________________

This subject is very dear to my heart (har har); I was, indeed, born with a congenital heart defect called a bicuspid aortic valve. Thankfully, there were no complications, as it was not detected until I was an adult. Our little childcare community happens to be quite strongly affected by congenital heart defects -- there are two staff families and two enrolled families which include people born with heart defects, and we find ourselves talking about hearts quite a bit around here.

Congenital heart defects affect about 1% of the population. They may cause no trouble, or they may be immediately life-threatening. Congenital heart defects cause more children to die each year than all forms of childhood cancer combined, but cancer research receives more than five times the funding that congenital heart defect funding receives. If you would like to help improve early detection rates, treatment options, and quality of life for the 180,000+ Canadian children and adults living with congenital heart defects, please consider supporting the Canadian Congenital Heart Alliance (CCHA). Your support could save lives (and maybe find out why young Mister Preschooler's heart goes squiggy-squiggy!).

The sweet little surprises

Usually, I'm one of the last people to leave at the end of the day. Today was one of the rare days when I left before most of the children did. I suppose that's what is like for people who work the opening shift! I said goodbye to my students, then answered the flurry of questions (where are you going? What's a conference? What things are you going to learn at your conference?), and started for the door. One of the oldest children chirped "okay, bye-bye!" Then he added "have a really nice day!" I thanked him, and wished him the same. He takes part in these particular social scripts every day, as we all do. It was sweet and touching that he decided to take the lead and initiate it this time. But what he said next surprised me, and I was struck by the genuine caring behind his well-wishing: "Drive and walk safe!" Thanks, buddy. I will.

You mean... For us?!

Monday afternoon, the first day back for many of us after the holidays, I sat down in the Preschool Room to help someone put on her shoes after nap time (this is the way many children ask me to spend a few moments with them, even children who know how to put their own shoes on). As often happens, A, now the Biggest Preschooler, climbed into my lap. 

"So," she asked me, her inflection and tone sounding very adult, "how was your holidays?"

"Oh they were very nice, thank you for asking," I replied, "I got to meet my new baby niece, and I did all kinds of fun things with the rest of my family, too. How were your holidays? Did you go to Manitoba?"

From there, we shared the things about our holidays that were exciting and that were similar. She asked a lot of questions, and wanted to know "what else did you do?" and was excited to discover we had both gone to a McDonald's with a PlayPlace. It was clear that she had been practising the art of conversation for about 4.5 years and decided to try it out on me that day.

Today, I sat in the rocking chair in the Preschool Room, and A once again climbed into my lap.

"So," she asked again, "How has your day been going?"

"Oh, my day has been great, thank you for asking," I replied, "I got to visit the Preschoolers, and I got to visit the Toddlers, and I got to visit the Preschoolers again -"

"What did you do in the office, with J?" she interrupted (J is our program director. I have been spending a lot of time doing administrative stuff for the past six months, including manual writing and policy audits, among other things).

"Well," I responded, "I sent some emails to your dad and to someone's mom, and -"

"But," she interrupted, "what did you do with J?"

"With J? Well we spent some time talking about stuff and making plans to make sure everything is good for all the kids."

"You mean... for us?" Suddenly, her face was full of awe.

"Yes, of course," I assured her, "everything we do here is for you and the other children. If it weren't for all of you, we wouldn't even be here."

"Really?"

"Really. This school exists to give children a place to learn and grow and to be healthy and safe. If there weren't any kids at this school, all the teachers would be somewhere else, and there wouldn't even be a school."

"No crafts?"

"Nope. Why would we make crafts if there were no kids here to make them with us and enjoy them? I'm serious; everything we do here is because we think it will help you and your friends learn and grow and be healthy and safe."

"Woah. I did not even realise that this whole entire place is here all because of us."

That's right, kid. You're that important. I hope you never forget it!

The right to choose

Me, age eight, having caught my first fish. Some might say fishing is not a feminine pursuit, but that sure didn't stop me or make me any less excited!

About a week ago, I greeted one of the youngest preschoolers in the morning, and she responded with "I Thuperman!" (a declaration she assertively makes on a regular basis).

"Oh. Hi, Superman," I responded, and was prepared to carry on with my day, when the oldest of the preschoolers took great exception: "NO! You can't be Superman because you're a GIRL!"
"I THUPERMAN!" the girl insisted, her temper rising. I looked into the scowling face framed by platinum blond ringlets. Superman had never looked so beautiful to me.

The boy kept arguing that Superman is a boy, and you can only be Superman if you're a boy, not a girl.

"Wait a minute," I interrupted, as the argument grew more heated. It was clear that both were absolutely convinced of the truths they were speaking, and neither was going to be convinced. "I remember when you wanted to be a princess. Did anyone tell you 'NO!' because you're not a girl?" He looked embarrassed, but stopped to think for a moment. 'Princess Tommy' had made an appearance during Music Class only two days earlier, turning his sweatpants pockets inside-out and dancing with exaggerated hip-swinging motion, but has also visited in the past, decked out in a yellow princess gown, purple-and-pink tiara, and sparkly blue-sequined purse. My response to every assertion of "I'm a princess!" was "Oh. Hello, Princess Tommy."

"Nonsense! That's despicable!" protested the boy, but he let the matter rest.

Later, during a meeting, I sang a song that involves rhyming verses with the children's names. I sang "I know a girl whose name is..." and produced a clever rhyme including "Superman's" given name, and she leveled her gaze on me, and calmly said "I a boy."

"Oh," I responded, as I always do when children make statements about their own identities. "You're a boy today?"

"Yeah. I a boy."

"Oh, okay." And I let it go, although several times, she approached me throughout the day to verify that I would accept her assertion, sometimes repeating herself at increasing dynamics while I was occupied with another conversation, until I acknowledged her: "Yes, you're a boy. I hear you."
That afternoon, the children were lining up to go outside (we always leave the room lined up with partners, as the hallways are public space, and travelling in this way helps us stay together and stay safe) while I talked the last straggler through the last steps of a washroom routine, when I heard angry voices coming from the lineup. I offered my services as a mediator: "You sound angry. What's going on?'

"I a boy," came the sober explanation, followed by several shouted objections from classmates.

"You're a boy, I remember; you told me that earlier."

The other children stared at me in shock for a few moments.

The oldest girl met my eyes and spoke up, her tone plaintive. "She can't be a boy; she doesn't has a penis."

"That's okay," I said, "If she says she's a boy then she's a boy. I'm not about to argue with her about that. I'm not going to argue with her about that any more than I am going to argue with someone who tells me she's a unicorn, a princess, a fireman, or a dragon. Everybody has the right to decide that stuff for themselves." (Poor grammar, I know, but my point was made).

All of the children were silent and wide-eyed. "Superman" beamed proudly at all of her friends. And no one denied her claim "I a boy." There will be time enough to sort all of that out later. In preschool, it's the time for trying on different roles. And only the child can decide how well those roles fit.

Missa, why you're crying?

This week, we read A Poppy is to Remember by Heather Patterson (Author) and Ron Lightburn (Illustrator). I cannot read this book without crying at some point. Susan read it first, early in the week. But I picked it up and read it to the children myself later on. 

I made it through the descriptions of The Great War, and I made it through In Flanders Fields, and through statements about remembering people who died, who cared for the wounded, and who were left behind as their loved ones went far away to fight in wars. I had to pause and take a few deep breaths here and there, but I made it. And then came the part about remembering the soldiers who lived and returned home. One tear escaped from my eye, followed by another and another. 

"Missa, why you're crying?" asked one of the children.
"Because I feel sad." Crying is the natural thing to do when one feels sad, after all.
"Why?"
"I feel sad because my little brother was a soldier. He went away to a war." He served in Bosnia in 2003.
"And he died?"
"No. He didn't die. His body did not get hurt. But he saw people hurting each other. He saw people treating each other badly. He got very, very angry and very, very scared, and when he came home, he was never the same again. His body didn't get hurt; his heart got hurt."

Susan pointed out that one of our other teachers, who grew up in a refugee camp, was affected by a war, and that she had to go away from her parents when she was just a couple of years older than our students, and never saw them again. 

"War is a terrible thing. Lots of people get hurt in a war. Lots of people die."
"I don't want a war. War is not good."
"I agree. But we don't have to worry about a war here where we live, because our soldiers went far away to fight and keep us safe. They served our country so we can be free. We are allowed to go to school and to sing songs and say what we think, and play outside and be kids because of those soldiers. We don't have to be afraid. If you see a soldier in the next few days, maybe you can tell him or her 'thank you' for protecting your freedom."

Today, I sat on my best friend's couch watching the Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa (CBC makes a time-delayed broadcast so it airs at the proper time of day in each timezone) with her children playing in the background, marvelling at the sacrifices made by so many men and women over the years so that I might spend my days someplace safe and warm, with plenty of food to eat, and the right to speak my mind.

If I could, I would thank each and every one of them.

Wait, you mean I'm doing something unusual?

"Hey, Melissa, you wanna hear this?"
"Hey, Missa! Dess what!"
"Melissa, listen to my story!"
"Wanna know something, Melissa?"
"Dat's Missa dere!"

My days at work are filled with children who enjoy my company and want to talk to me. The ones who have a reputation for being "quiet" or the ones who only speak selectively often tell me long, complicated stories, and take the time to make sure I understand what they are trying to tell me. Almost every child seeks out a quiet moment to connect with me at some point during the day. This makes sense to me: my job involves building relationships with these kids, and I have a knack for understanding near-unintelligible speech.

The thing that surprises me is when children I rarely interact with (specifically, the ones in the toddler room) fall in love with me. They all are excited to see me in the hallway and clamour to tell me where they are going or where they just came from (usually "outside" or "the gym"), and many of them seek my attention when I stick my head into their classroom for a moment to talk to their teachers. But I don't see them all every day. And yet... I found out today that the oldest girl in the toddler room talks about coming to Daycare to see the director and... Missa. Not her classroom teachers. My mind has been boggling over this all day, and then suddenly, I realised. All those times I saw her in the boot room in the morning and greeted her by name (even though I never got any sign of a response), and all those times I said "Hello, how are you today?" when our paths crossed in the park or the playground, all those times I said "goodbye" to her at the end of the day and got a hidden, below-the-hip wave in return, all those times when she held up something for me to see, and I noticed and commented on it, I was building something with her.

For years, I've been the kind of person that small children really love. I am not boasting, and I am not perfect, but young children just really seem to like me a lot. It's been a mystery to me for a long time, but I think I'm starting to figure out some of the reasons why. I think the biggest one is this:

I communicate with them.

There's no big secret to communicating with young children, even pre-verbal ones. Which is why I didn't realise that the way I communicate with them is unusual in any way. Apparently, many other adults in the world seem to believe that small children are either incapable of comprehending or reciprocating communication, or that they're not worth communicating with (which is not to say that said adults are aware they hold these beliefs, or that they are acting upon them).

So. Maybe big people need some pointers on how to talk to small people. How to communicate with babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, Missa style:

1. Speak to them like they are people, because they are. All people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, even the very young ones.
2. Listen attentively to what they have to say, and respond appropriately. 

 That's it. That's it? Really? Yes, yes it is.

But what does it mean?

When speaking to someone, most of us follow a number of rules that we learned and internalised when we were very tiny. We sometimes forget to follow those same rules when speaking to babies or toddlers, but they are still important. When speaking to someone, one ought to:

• Maintain appropriate eye contact. This may mean squatting, kneeling, bending down, or holding a child in one's lap.
• Pause after asking a question and wait for the other person to respond. Even when you're pretty sure you won't get an answer (like when I greet a young toddler in the morning with "Hi Jenny, how are you today?"), it's important to allow the opportunity for one to be given. Parents look at me like I'm slightly off my rocker sometimes when I do this.
• Watch the other person's reactions to know how he feels about the conversation. We naturally watch for nonverbal cues from other adults to regulate when it is time to change the subject, when the other person wants a turn to talk, whether the other person is confused or bored or even listening at all, and so on. Young children are perfectly capable of showing you those same nonverbal cues.
• Use an appropriate volume and tone of voice. Like shouting loudly at old people, using a falsely enthusiastic, loud, high-pitched voice to speak to children is condescending, and they know it. They're people, not puppies. Now I don't mean to say that the kind of soft, high voice people naturally use when speaking to tiny babies in inappropriate, but it's not necessary to speak two octaves above your normal voice every time you talk to someone smaller than yourself. Also: Talking like Dora the Explorer doesn't help you communicate effectively with a child. It's okay to be calm and quiet. Kids don't need to be shouting excitedly all day long, and neither do you.

Effective listening skills are sometimes difficult to engage. Particularly with young children, we tend to respond a lot with "YEAH? REally? Uh-huh? Cool! Oh... Okay." without having any clue what on earth the child is saying. Instead, one could try to:

• Maintain appropriate eye contact (again? still?) and indicate non-verbally that you are listening and interested in what the child has to say. This may mean displaying appropriate facial expressions, nodding at key moments, and using those verbal nods more appropriately (in a quiet, normal tone of voice).
• Confirm that the message you are receiving is the one the child is sending. This can be accomplished by asking clarifying questions ("I see you're signing 'more' but you still have lots of cheerios in front of you. Are you asking for something different?"), paraphrasing what you've heard, or (especially in the case of children with poor speech intelligibility), repeating what you think you've heard. ("I go simming!" "You went swimming?" "Yeah! I go simming Mommy Daddy! Sayd!" "You went swimming and there was a slide?" "No. Asayd." "Oh! You went swimming outside! With your mom and dad? That sounds like fun.") I know this sounds kind of tedious, but it really is worth it. First of all, you're sending the message that you really care about what the child has to say. And the more you work to understand what the child is saying, the less you'll have to rely on repeating it all to make sure you've heard correctly. I sometimes still quietly repeat things that some children say when there are less-familiar people in the room, because I know that I have learned to understand them, but others haven't necessarily had the chance to learn that a "weederwodder" is a "police-car helicopter" or that "Uhdah? oihprnefkflfmoisdc Dide?" means "Melissa? Can we go play outside?"
• Take seriously whatever it is the child is telling you. It can be hard not to giggle sometimes when a young child shares some erroneous information or tries out some big, new words. Yes, they are adorable, and sometimes hilarious, but unless the child is clearly telling a joke, it is inappropriate to laugh. If you laugh or tell a child how cute or smart he is every time he tries to talk to you, he is eventually not going to want to talk to you at all. Instead:
• Respond with compassion and respect to the child's message. "It sounds like getting a needle at the doctor's office was a little bit scary for you." is a much more appropriate response than telling the child it didn't hurt, for instance. We are so anxious to make sure our children never cry or feel scared or uncomfortable that we fail to realise that they are entitled to their emotions, and the only way they will learn to deal with them in a healthy way is if we allow them to experience and express said emotions fully and appropriately. Sometimes, I respond to a shouted "YOU'RE NOT MY FRIEND AND YOU'RE NEVER COMING TO MY BIRTHDAY PARTY EVER AGAIN!" (basically the most dire threat a preschooler can think of) with "You seem to be really angry with your friend. Did you mean to tell him 'I feel angry and what you did really hurt my feelings'? You don't have to threaten him." This often leads to either a tearful tattle from the shouter or a desperate self-defense plea from the other child. But it transforms a shouting match into a dialogue without discounting anyone's legitimate emotions.
• Avoid interrrupting, and if you do interrupt, promptly appologise. This is especially important when talking to kids with impulse control difficulties (because you are, in fact modeling desired behaviour when you avoid interrupting) or with speech difficulties like stuttering (because it is important to allow the child to deliver his message, and he will feel more anxious, stuttering more, if he sees you growing impatient or interrupting). Basically, show some respect, as you would with an older speaker.

Phew! That's a long one! I firmly believe that speaking to young children is something that needs to be approached with thoughtfulness and respect, just like speaking to adults. It really is worth it, in the end. You never know what a child will be willing to tell you if she can trust you to actually listen to her message.

Lunch Table Conversation

Many people forget that one of the things we do when we sit down to have a meal together is converse. Adults will sit at the table for hours sometimes, visiting over a meal.

We believe it is important for children to experience the social aspect of sharing a meal together, so we make a point of sitting down together, waiting for everyone at our table to arrive before we begin eating, and waiting until everyone at our table has finished before leaving. Preschool table conversation can be a lot of things, but boring is rarely one of them. Sometimes, it's ridiculous (such as the time some kids pretended every single edible item in their lunch boxes were telephones) or serious (like the conversations sparked by things kids have heard about on the news) and sometimes it is educational.

Today, the PA system interrupted our lunch conversation to inform us that "There will be a disruption of the fire alarm service in the West building. In case of fire, call 66#."

"That's not for us," stated J, authoratatively.
"What did it say?"
"What was that?" -- these are both frequently asked questions after an announcement. The children know that sometimes, the announcement tells us someone is sick or hurt and needs help from a doctor right away (code blue or nursing response) and that the person no longer needs help (code blue/nursing response is all clear). The important ones (and the reason the children loudly shush each other when the annoying dinging noise preceeds the announcement) are the "Code Red" announcements: Those ones might be "fire drills". We are really good at fire drills.

I explained that the announcement was so we know that if we see a fire, and we pull the fire alarm, it won't work, so we should just call the switchboard and tell them about it instead.
"Six-six-pound! That's what you call!" one child reminded me.
"Why is the fire alarm not working?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe they need to fix it or test it or do some work to it. Maybe it is just not working right now."
"Maybe it's not working because there's some wires, and the wires that go in it are rusty and they have to get it out," offered J.
"I think so maybe a ghost got in there and it putted its hand in and got rust in the wires and broke it," was A's thought.
"Ghost-iz are not real," Z objected, sparking a brief debate over whether ghosts are real or make-believe.
"HEY WAIT A MINUTE!" yelled J, "I know what happened to the fire alarm!"
"Oh? What do you think, J?" I asked.
"They have to take it down and take out the battery and put a new one and hang it back up."
"Oh, it needs a new battery? Could be."
"I think J was right all along!" exclaimed G, "It hadded to get a new battery and get the rusty wires out."

The conversation wandered away to something completely different, but I thought it was significant that one of the "medium" kids brought some of his prior knowledge (probably he is linking the fire alarm service with the smoke detector at his house) to share with his peers, who used it to construct new knowledge. Hours later, when the announcement came that the fire alarm "is back in service", someone who had not been sitting at our table (but had obviously been listening) piped up "I guess they finally changed the battery..."