Working with kids for a living is the hardest, easiest, best, worst, most fun, super boring job I've ever had. People tend to react to the poop/spit up/snot factor, but dealing with bodily discharge doesn't bother me (that time I got puked on was the exception.) The hardest parts of my job are working with difficult parents and the fact that it's just constant, constant, constant. Like Chinese water torture, children never do or say something just once. Or twice. Or three times. Get it through your head dude, we will NEVER watch Caillou. The best parts of my job are helping out families, doing kid centered activities and playing all day, and watching children use or do something that I taught them. And the hilarious things they say. I have a theory that every three year old in the world has what it takes to be an Absurdist playwright. Alluding here to the general wisdom of the five and under set, I'm consistently astounded by what they teach me, and how much my perspective has changed from working with little ones.
As you might expect, children have some Hot Takes on grown ups and their mysterious ways. Their ideas about adulthood have helped me more than most things to reach the place where I feel confident that I am, in fact, a grown up.
A five year old once asked me "Are you a grown up or a kid?" now I wouldn't hesitate to say "a grown up" but when I got this gem it was even more relevant, I was a 19 year old college sophomore. I didn't really know. What, exactly, is the difference between a grown up and a kid? I said what I always say when I don't know the answer to a kids question, "what do you think?" she said "well you're tall like a grown up, but you have a mom like a kid." So there you have it. We eventually decided I was "practicing to be a grown up," an amateur adult if you will.
I recently had this excellent and flattering exchange with a three year old...
"You don't smell like a grown up."
"What does a grown up smell like?"
"Bugs"
Self explanatory.
An excellent compliment I received from a two year old "You're not a grown up, you're my friend!" Kids are constantly thinking about the gaping difference between themselves and grown ups who have boring things like newspapers, and work, and "discussions." An adult is an entirely different thing than a kid. They know they'll be a grown up someday, but adulthood is literally ten lifetimes away.
When a favorite toy was lost, a five year old confidently reassured his sister "Julianna knows where it is, because grown ups are...grown ups." Yes, I knew exactly where it was. Not because of my mysterious powers of Adult Omnipotence but because I had watched them put it down twenty minutes before. They are astounded when I say "You need to go back to your bed now" when we can't even see each other, not realizing that I can hear them "sneaking" around or playing in a silent house. Related- "My daddy can do anything, because he's big"
This is the most crucial lesson I learned: To a kid, adults know everything and can do anything. They can drive cars and find places on maps. They know how to make cookies and write every single letter, what will happen when you mix different paint colors, how germs work, basically any question you have a grown up knows the answer. They can even predict the future. How did I know that your pants would get wet if you sat in that puddle? Because I'm a grown up. Those of us who had the good fortune to grow up with great parents and adults probably remember thinking about them as superheros. When I babysit, I'm the ultimate authority, the person who seems to know everything. When I talk to their parents (and mine!) as an adult, they don't have all the answers either.
I think a lot of us trip up as we move into adulthood because for so long we've imagined that the Real Adults are how we saw grown ups as kids. That adults have all the answers and can do pretty much anything. What I learned working with kids is that the adults we looked up to, though amazing, never actually had all the answers. They were winging it, and just had more experience and knowledge to build on. So let go of the idea that you won't be a grown up until you have it all together and don't need to learn more and ask questions. We just need to keep building our toolkits and getting better and better at adulthood. Someday, we might even start smelling like bugs.
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