The child in me

"The child is in me still and sometimes not so still." — Fred Rogers (The World According to Mister Rogers)

Let's see... How many times in my years of teaching did I get to answer the question, "Are you married to Mister Rogers?" Or how many time did I give up correcting a child when he/she called me Mr. Rogers? There just seemed to be something terribly difficult about getting out the "rses" part of the sound of Mrs.

Doesn't matter. If there was any allusion to the Mister Rogers in any of that, I would have taken it as a compliment. There was something about his show that, yes, some adults found cloying, but of course, it was not directed at the adults except in the sense of example. It was about having meaningful conversations with young children about things that interested them, or about what they were thinking or feeling - helping them to put words with what they were learning. Takes a lot of patience.

I think it actually takes patience with adults also. You never know on what level a stranger is coming into a conversation. If only we could all be listeners a bit before feeling the need to be the talker. It takes telling the child in us to be still just for a bit, and considering that person before judging them. Who knows what we could learn? Maybe not much, but maybe plenty.

By the way, I consider myself to have the heart of a child. Sure, it has all of the adult burdens that can be so diffucult to bear, but if I could not have the gentle faith of a child, I'm not sure how I could survive.