Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like

(Hey, I generally don't either)

Yesterday I was out in my garden, pruning tomato plants, when a young neighbor spotted me.

“Hey! I see some red ones!”

Her eye was sharper than mine, and her small stature had also probably helped her to see what I couldn’t — that under the thick foliage of the yet-unpruned plants was a small bunch of lusciously ripe fruit.

I asked if she would like to help, and she enthusiastically obliged. We spent the next quarter hour looking for yellowed leaves and low branches without flowers or fruit, carefully removing them, I explained, to help the plants grow upward toward the sunlight. I told her about my grandmother, who grew the most exquisite yellow pear tomatoes. We enjoyed a few of the fruits of our labor, and then she proudly took home several less-than-ripe tomatoes to set out in the windowsill to ripen. As she left, I heard her excitedly sharing what she’d learned with her mother.

I was reminded that the children of my neighborhood are as much contributing members of our community as the adults.

This truth is a welcome antidote to the ideology of our capitalistic consumer culture, in which human value is measured by one’s labor in the marketplace. Most of the time, we send our children to daycare or school so that we can work, while they are filled up with knowledge that will equip them, in a few short years, to work too. Recognizing this as somewhat of an oversimplification of why we work and go to school, I contend that in this country we spend an inordinate amount of time working and going to school, to the detriment of building up the sort of communities we’d actually like to live in and pass down to our children. We miss invaluable opportunities to learn from one another — a veritable education.

Notably, neither my young neighbor nor I were at work or school yesterday, which made space for this intergenerational encounter. We were relishing a day off, with time to be outside with family, talking to neighbors, and remembering the gift it is to be a human being, rather than a human doing. We had the time for a mutually teachable moment, in which delight and gratitude were abundantly shared.

The children of my community are joyful, curious, and hungry to be in relationship. I suspect the children of your community are too! I’m reminded of a TED talk I recently watched from educator Rita Pierson, who confidently asserted with the full backing of 40 years of teaching experience,

“Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.”

Our capacity to cultivate vitally interconnected, flourishing communities is contingent upon how we respond to the children around us. Are we welcoming their eagerness to learn with gracious receptivity, patience, and a willingness to defer our monetized work in favor of the relational labor of teaching children to build up our community together?

Are we showing our children that we like them?

That we enjoy spending time with them?

That we are interested in learning what they have to teach us?

As we take the time to show interest in our children, opening our hearts — as well as our schedules — to their desire to be in supportive, mutual relationship with us, we all benefit.

These relationships help us slow down to appreciate life as the gift that it is, together paying sacred attention to life where it is growing. They help us discern our place in the ecosystem of social change, as we hear and take seriously our children’s concerns in the face of a violent and chaotic world.

There’s a powerful element of community safety built into this practice of caring for — and learning to like — the children around us. When we walk with the children of our community, we are less likely to be vexed by them when they are loudly expressive, or suspicious of them when they are walking our streets. Where there is trust, we can talk with the young people in our communities about their fears and needs, finding ways to respond together, rather than calling the police (or some other outside authority figure) to put us at ease.

This is about making moves from an individualistic understanding of “my children” — those who may live under our respective roofs — to “our children,” in which we see ourselves as collectively responsible for the well-being of all the children of our community.

Perhaps most importantly, when we see our children as worthy of our attention, they are more likely to see themselves as wanted. The most vulnerable young people among us are particularly desperate to know themselves as such. Being liked matters. According to research by the Trevor project, “LGBTQ youth who report having at least one accepting adult were 40% less likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year.” When children believe they belong, they are more likely to stay here — here in our communities, but also here, on this planet…

Earth: Where things — and people — grow.

I would love to hear from you! What captured your imagination in today’s essay? How can you express to a young person in your neighborhood that they belong? How can you show a child that you are glad to be in community with them? How are the children of your community helping you grow?