Other Peoples' Kids
Since 2002 my job has been to care for other peoples’ kids. I’ve worked as an after-school director, mentor, teacher, children’s & youth ministry director. For a while I didn’t think I wanted to become a mother- I mean- I was really good at caring for other peoples’ kids- but how would that look when the kids never leave? I also wondered if I would care about other peoples’ kids less if I had my own people who called me “mom.”
These are reasonable questions I had no way of answering before I became a mother- and I’ve slowly been figuring out the answers for the past (almost) 7 years.
I’ve learned it’s impossible to be interested in anything my children tell me after 7pm. To be fair, they wake up at 5am - so I’ve listened to 14 hours of stories (and Christmas/Birthday lists) by then.
I’ve learned I don’t care about screen time as much as I swore I would.
I’ve learned I judged some parents too harshly. Parenting is HARD. Some ideas I had as a teacher were 100% because when I left work, there were no children waiting for me.
I’ve also learned that the existence of 2 people who have no problem following me into the bathroom to ask me for a snack has not shrunk my capacity to care about other peoples’ kids (it has made me consider a second lock on the door, though). Each day I am reminded that my kids’ wellbeing is connected to the wellbeing of their classmates, the kids in another state, across the border, everywhere. I don’t know who said it first, but I believe “there’s no such thing as other people’s children.” There is no way to separate the kind of world MY kids grow up in from the kind of world my neighbor’s kids grow up in. Yes, they’ll each have their own experiences, but in the end, if the world is dangerous for one child, it’s dangerous for every child. I want better for my kids. I want better for yours. I want better for the kids in Ukraine, in Haiti, in Uvalde. There is no such thing as a problem that exists only in one place. We are all affected by the things that happen to other peoples’ kids and pretending that we aren’t will not protect us.
I’ve decided that caring about other peoples’ kids is one of the things I’m best at as a parent of my own children. Hopefully it’s teaching them how to show up in this world where we’re all connected.