Lessons in Kindness From a Child

Last week was a rough one.  In fact, it was so rough that I did something I almost never do – I cancelled one of my students on just a half-hour’s notice.

It’s not that life doesn’t happen.  It does.  But I try hard to avoid letting it affect lessons – partly because I find that children (and I) function well with a schedule, and partly because it’s currently a key part of my income. 

On this occasion, though, I just wasn’t in a healthy place to connect with a child, and decided he was better to miss the lesson than to respond to emotional negativity I was feeling.  So I texted the parent to cancel, and they were very understanding.  I didn’t really provide any explanation, just that I’d had bad news, and wasn’t in a good place to teach that day.

I’ve taught this child for over six months now, so we’ve built a relationship.  This student knows a little bit about me – conversational English is a key part of these lessons – as I do about him.  What really caught my attention, though, was our next lesson.  This student is only five years old – and yet he clearly paid attention to the explanation of our cancelled lesson from his parent.  During the start of our lesson, when we chat about the weekend’s activities and other trivia, he was quite specific in stopping the conversation to ask me “and how are you doing?” 

His emphasis on concern for my well-being was touching and surprising.  I’m not well-acclimatized to the concept of someone remembering what bothered me.  In fact, I’d actually suspected that he might forget all about the missed lesson by the time I saw him three days later.  Clearly, he hadn’t, and didn’t throughout the lesson, again asking if I was ok as I rubbed a lash out of my eye.

This student’s parents are doing something important:  they’re teaching their child how to care about the people around him.  Not just lip service, but to really care.  And in a society where we often look at those whose appearance or background differs from our own as “other”, I personally place a large importance on sincere expressed emotion. 

What a lesson:  just care.  And if a child can so easily do this, why do we as adults struggle so to give this?  We may not understand someone else’s struggles.  We may not agree with them.  But it’s never a bad thing to express care and concern for the difficult emotional impacts felt by another person, no matter who they are.