Afraid for Our Children
From a talk by Tim Jackins at a teachers’ and leaders’ workshop in Connecticut, USA, May 2000
We’re scared most of the time that our babies are about to die [are on the verge of dying]. You know, everything’s just wonderful and fine around us, and we’re scared all the time that something’s wrong. That, of course, is communicated to our children, and they wonder, “What is going on [happening] here? Everything’s fine from my perspective, but all the big people are running scared. What is it I don’t know?”
Fears get put in on young ones just on that basis. Until you get enough of a picture of the world, you depend on the cues from the adults around you. And getting enough of a picture takes a while. You can’t be lying flat on your back and have a great picture of a large part of the world.
It’s a funny [odd] struggle—trying to look at the reality of this wonderful new creature and keep all of our fears and worries out of the way, which they need to be. We need to go work on them, away from the child, and cry about how wonderful the child is and how we don’t ever want to be worried about or at her (or him). We want to be aware of her and think about her, but not get trapped into the worry around her.
(Present Time 190, January 2018)