Lessons in listening

As a teacher I knew the importance of listening to my students, since being a nanny I have come to learn the importance of listening to a child, whether they are telling you a secret, a hurt, a story, or just using a lot of words that don’t really make sense. It’s not always easy mind you, really listening, especially when you just want to go to the toilet without being interrupted or questioned, or when you want to take a shower without having to shout over the water back and forth “what?...oh yeah?...what?” but as I have learnt it is vitally important. Especially when you are 2 and a half and everything you come across is a mighty discovery that needs to be shared. I recently read for the first time Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The little prince”, and I loved the thought behind something the little prince said "Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them". It’s true you know children have a way of seeing the world, of loving, discovering and learning that grown-ups know nothing about. At the moment Junior is going through this stage where everything is magic. Naturally of course his magic tricks mostly consist of his spinning on the spot, or knotting a piece of string, or cutting up paper, but in his eyes, he “can do magic”, and so I watch “in awe”. Children see magic in everything because they look for it, we grown-ups forgot to look for it, and therefore often get bogged down in the monotony of washing the clothes, cooking dinner, and other things that adults concern themselves with. 

For Junior, it doesn’t matter if he clothes are clean and ironed, if my hair is done, or the house is spotless, what matters to him is that I look at his pictures, I play along with his games, that I run away from the big huge tiger chasing me, that I read books with different voices, that I let him roll the cookie dough, and let him watch me put on makeup, but most importantly, that I listen to him. I never expected to love him as much as I do, and I anticipated loving him quite a lot, I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child. Watching this little miracle and bundle of joy, grow, change, learn, discover, and love, is such a wonderful blessing and has made me reflect on my mum and my second mum and the love they have for me and my brothers. My mum always listened to me; she still does, even when I know I am talking crap, telling the same story for the 10^th time, complaining about the same problems, crying over a boy, she listens. She waits, I talk, sometimes I cry, and she listens, then when the time is right, she pulls out a pearl of wisdom from her huge seemingly endless supply of pearls of wisdom and lays it down in front of me. Sometimes it’s not always what I want to hear, but usually it is exactly what I need to hear. Sue is the same, sometimes I would find myself in the middle of a crisis or desperate to show/tell someone that I can “do magic” and when my mumma was at work or otherwise indisposed, Suey would always be there to listen and oohh and ahhh in all the right places. I am so abundantly blessed that I not only have one awesome mother extraordinaire, I have two!

I could probably safely say that 85, hmm perhaps even 87 percent of what I know about, well pretty much everything I learnt from my mum, and then from the time I was 14, from Sue as well. I have been blessed enough to have someone believe in my dreams, my abilities and in me, even when I didn’t or couldn’t believe my self.  My mum always taught me to hope, and dream, to love and learn, to discover and take risks, I wouldn’t be here in Germany, listening to this special little boy if not for my mumma and Sue. I am sure there were times growing up where my mum wanted to lock herself in the cupboard to have 2 minutes to herself, and yet, never once did she turn me away, or tell me she was too busy, she always made time to listen to us, to play, and to tuck us in at night. Johnny Depp said caring for a child is “like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit.” As true as that is, more now than ever I believe that children are miracles and magic really does happen, and while we are trying to teach children all about life, children are teaching us what life is all about. All we have to do is listen.