Toddlers and Teenagers

A few weeks ago I signed up to be what is called a "Children's Ministry Champion" at my home church. The title is rather grand, but it means simply a single person who has time to serve in children's ministry every week. Champions serve during the first service and attend the second service, thus spending the entire Sunday morning from 8:30 AM to 1 PM at church.

The schedule is a little daunting, but I have found it an immensely rich experience. I am taking my course in infant psychology. It is remarkable, to me, how much real personality is already visible in a two year old. I had a little boy today who screamed in my arms until I went to the chalkboard (like most Sunday schools, ours is held in classrooms) and began to scribble swirls and nonsense. He was instantly quieted. Amazing!

I have also noticed that little children have a homing instinct. My little boy today, and others over the course of the last few weeks, like to be within touching distance even after they have reached a state of calm and are ready to play. Any child with whom I establish a bond (and I have noticed this tendency with other champion workers also) seems to develop a sense that I am "base" or "safety" or some such. Suppose I put my little boy down and encourage him to play with a toy. He is quite willing to do so, but he wants to lean against my legs while at it. Let me step away, even a foot, and he rounds on me with a look of distressed accusation that really makes me feel almost guilty of a crime.

My toddlers, I find, are remarkably clever and ingenious. I had one last week that was absolutely determined to discover how things work. He wanted to take the bubble-blower away from me and suck it himself (which would have poisoned him); he wanted to operate the water faucet; he wanted to buckle and unbuckle the little seatbelt on the plastic scooter (which ought never to have had a seatbelt, since it did more harm than good to children who became tangled up in the thing). Watching him was an enormously entertaining process, though also of course an anxious one.

I am learning a great deal from my children, and not only the littlest ones. These last three weeks or so I have been teaching a high school class in literature, and am rediscovering (from a different perspective) the adolescent world. They tell me that I am, as a teacher, my mother all over again. I take this to be a supreme compliment; though I cannot pronounce upon its truthfulness, I will say that she is my first, best, favorite model as a classroom instructor.

My teenagers fill me with delight, amusement, and not a little humility. I had completely forgotten the "age of reason"--the need, amounting almost to an obsession, for precise definitions and answers. I had forgotten the passion, the excesses, the black-and-whiteness, the unawareness of gray areas: in short, the process of developing a worldview. I had also forgotten all the "big questions" that loom so large at that age, since it has been now several years since I settled them (more or less) for myself. Yet they are so unlike myself, for they have far more wisdom, more humility and grace, more sense of proportion, than I ever did in those years. They are what I should have liked to be, and in some ways have already what I still long to attain. They are models for me...at least, in some respects.

My interactions with precious growing souls have driven home to me the truth of Scripture, specifically the words of James: "Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness." I count it a thing before which I ought to tremble, that I should be in some small measure asked to care for and instruct these children.