blocking growth & adventure
One of my very young music students, a few years ago, when I was still teaching and running a business full time, was quite a handful.
To preface, kids are young and innocent and beloved; they are precious and curious and growing, highly impressionable, and not at fault for what has happened to them so far in their new lives or for how they’re being raised and guided (or not being).
All kids deserve love and support and safe spaces to be themselves. They deserve security and exploration. They deserve to be seen and nurtured.
Most of the time, this was a pleasure and an honor for me to get to be a small part of in my students’ lives. Every once in a while, due to a clash in personalities, a very difficult child or strange family, my own limitations, or whatever the case may be, there would be a student I just had a much harder time connecting with and feeling like we were on the same page. Sometimes it was very hard to tolerate specific behaviors and to feel as if our time together made any difference for them. Some kids are tough to get through to. Some kids — again, almost always to no fault of their own! — are really challenging to deal with and have patience for. Some kids, thanks to their life experience, their wounds, their parenting, their fears, or their lack of discipline or security, for example, are more aggravating and rough. These kids need extra love and belonging and support, in whatever way will help them the most.
This particular student was probably only about seven years old at the time, and I found him exceedingly whiny, neurotic, and impossible to please. He was very anxious and jittery at all times, he was loud in class, he was demanding and in desperate need of a sense of control. He stuttered his way through every pent up sentence, and there was just so much nervous energy coursing through him and through every interaction. This was challenging for me to navigate, along with the other kids, and to try to keep everything and everyone flowing smoothly together.
This child seemed to have an automatically, damned determined, pre-set assumption that everything was going to be too hard for him, no matter how much support or pressure-free invitation or help I showed and gave, which I found unbelieving irritating and counterproductive to his music lessons. Every new song I presented to him made him shut down and panic just a tiny bit, as he looked at the page and loudly proclaimed to me he didn’t want to do it — before he’d so much as tried, before we’d gone over it together, before he’d given it a chance to be fun and interesting, before I’d even helped him with anything…
It was exhausting to coax him along and try to relax him and assuage his fears and denunciations every week, especially while also trying to teach the other two cheerful, willing, excited, much more laid back kids in his small class. He needed so very much confidence and reassurance provided to him every second, as he repeated over and over that it was going to be too hard, he wouldn’t get through it, he wouldn’t like it, he couldn’t do it, and he wanted to do something else… even if it was a song he had asked for the previous week!
I do not know what built so much anxiety and neuroses into him at such a young age. It was sad, and when I think back on it, I can see a small, tender, vulnerable little bird, in need of shelter and appropriate amounts of challenge and someone to teach him he can be empowered and brave and curious. It was also gratingly, persistently, impossibly stubborn and felt like a lost cause. There were weeks I felt myself internally screaming or clawing my fingernails down a chalkboard in my mind because nothing I did worked.
Many kids are fun and delightful. The job of a teacher, or anyone who decides to pursue a path of investing in kids, is not to only help and give generous, empathetic attention to the fun, “easy” ones. People in positions of coaching, supporting, molding, guiding, and showing up for kids in whatever capacity are tasked with doing these things for all children in their sphere, with equal care and intent, no matter what. You never know what is going to sink in, when the difference will be made, and what kind of impact you’re having, so it’s important to do all of it with heart and kindness.
All kids have terrific, inherent, inalienable value, worth, needs, and gifts. All kids are deserving of love and belonging and tools.
Some kids are just flailing far more and don’t have the ability to find and accept these things so easily (often, due to circumstances completely separate from the kid themselves, and sometimes due to whatever chemical, biological, magical makeup is going on inside their unique, specific developing minds and bodies).
For many reasons, I had a really hard time with this child, but as I was thinking about him this morning, when he somehow popped into my mind from my memories, I wondered:
How often do we cling, tight-fisted and stutteringly terrified, to our need for control and reassurance, very much at the detriment of our own possibilities, growth, adventure, curiosity, and joy?
When have I gotten in my own way because I was unwilling to let go and see what might happen?
When have I showed up, too afraid to approach an experience or opportunity with openness, and then missed out on a lot because of it?
How is anxiety and a grasping, demanding, mind-made-up, desperate fear of risk holding me back?
Do I ever push away the love, resources, support, help, community, guidance, or fun being offered to me because I’m being too closed-minded to see it and accept it?
Are there times something could be SO. MUCH. EASIER. than I let it be?
I realized I can learn from this kid. Perhaps the things I didn’t like in him were things I subconsciously dislike inside myself.
I read somewhere on Instagram yesterday (I can’t remember who posted it) that the opposite of uncertainty is not certainty, but self-trust. I love the empowerment this places in knowing we can figure things out. No matter what comes, we can have our own backs. No matter what, we can be self-compassionate. No matter what, we’ll find a way, just like we have before, and we won’t be alone, and everything will be okay.
We can never know what’s going to happen next. We will never be certain of outcomes, of reassurance, or of our own control in life. That young boy couldn’t know if a new piece of music is going to suck and be too difficult to master right now.
But we can lean in, with open eyes and hearts and minds, a willingness to embrace and try, a courage to fail, knowing that risk isn’t bad, knowing that fear is just part of the deal, knowing we are brave and resilient. We can accept the love and support offered to us. We can share it and give it right back. We can choose optimism and joy and delight. We can have an adventure, instead of a meltdown.
In the stunning docu-story, Flyabout, Monika Petrillo says, "The difference between an ordeal and an adventure is your attitude."
Roberto Assagioli said, “There is no certainty; there is only adventure.”
Here’s to more adventures. To uncurling our fists, relaxing our anxious minds, dropping the demanding proclamations, and opening up. To accepting help and having hope and self-trust.
Inside every one of us is the potential for that wounded, scared, vulnerable, desperate baby bird but also the innate, undeniable beauty, curiosity, empowerment, beloved worth, and desire to love and be loved. Which one will you help grow?
Give it a shot. See what might happen.
