Dear Nursery Families,
Leaning into Love
“In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave.
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.”
~ Maya Angelou
Last week I wrote about Loris Malaguzzi’s idea that our relationships with children ought to be filled with a sense of “nostalgia for the future”---an imagination of what the path ahead could hold that is rooted in a commitment to hope and possibility. One of our teachers shared this week that when she visited Reggio Emilia, Italy, an educator there defined this idea of “nostalgia for the future” simply: Nostalgia for the future is love.
What more powerful definition of love could there be, especially right now? When hope feels more difficult and complex, the word “nostalgia” seems particularly right. It is a textured word that implies longing for something we can’t quite touch yet. It takes more effort to hold onto hope and love when we have to stretch a bit to reach them.
It is tempting to shield our children from the things in the world that are scary or sad, and that temptation is particularly powerful now when the more frightening parts of life feel so much bigger and more omnipresent than usual and when we are literally being instructed to stay inside and away from other people. As parents, it is only natural that we would try to make our homes into sealed bubbles that not only protect children from germs but from heartbreak. But love and hope are complicated feelings that can’t be fully accessed if we are only willing to acknowledge them in their brightest, most joyful shapes. For these feelings to become part of a child’s core identity, they have to be able to endure in sunshine and in shadows.
Surely, we need to do our best to scaffold the ways in which children are being exposed to news and information so that they are not flooded by what they see and hear or left to process it alone. And of course the simple fact that they are not in school and not able to see their friends punctures the bubble that we may wish we could preserve in a significant way. They need our reassurance that we will do everything in our power to keep them safe and that hard things don’t last forever, even when we can’t see the end of the tunnel clearly yet. But this doesn’t mean that they need us to block their view of the world completely, even if it were possible to do so. Children need us to help them continue to look out, beyond their own experience, and to think in manageable ways about the needs of others and about how they can be helpers, even when that involves asking them to open themselves up to a little bit of sadness. They need our prompting and our help with this even more when they are removed from their communities. Though it may feel scary as parents to let the truth into our relationships with children when the truth is so daunting, doing so in gentle and supportive ways will actually help them. It will help them to understand why their lives feel so different right now, and it will ultimately allow them to access a sense of agency rather than helplessness.
A love that resides in hope for the future necessitates that we look honestly at the present, because we can only feel the surge of possibility for tomorrow when we first take a clear eyed look at today. Only when we see the way things are can we begin to think about the way they could be, and what we might be able to do to help bend the arc and bring that change about. And in doing this---in taking an honest look at today, imagining a better tomorrow, and taking steps toward that vision---we not only make the world better, we feel better. Even in scary times, when we may need to think carefully about how we are “dosing” information about the world for our children, we can help them to experience this process of acknowledging reality and then taking steps toward actualizing a better future. The hardest part for us, as adults, is the first step, because we have to allow our children to experience a little bit of the ache that comes with seeing what is broken, in order to open the door to the feelings of hope and empowerment that come from envisioning something better and participating in creating change.
We do this work with children in the classroom constantly. Whenever we encourage a child to notice that someone else is feeling sad or scared or angry and then work with them to think about how we might help that person feel better, we are nudging them to feel the discomfort of someone else’s pain for a moment and then to be participants in making their classroom safer and more joyful for everyone. The moment of discomfort is necessary to participate in the work of making things better. At school we also ask children to begin to make space in their hearts for suffering that occurs outside of their immediate experience and to think about how they can repair the world beyond their reach; whether encouraging children to decide together what they want to do with a tzedakah collection, or helping them to talk about an event in the world, such as the fires in Australia earlier this year, and then think about how they might help, we are purposefully pulling the curtains back on painful parts of the human experience in order to support them in the empowering process of envisioning something better and acting toward it.
There are many ways to continue this work with children, even as we are far from one another and even as the proximity of suffering may feel more frightening. When it is so easy to become overwhelmed by all that feels wrong in the world, it is more important, not less, for us to look at the world with eyes open and help our children to do the same, so that we can contribute to the healing and rebuilding together. Simply helping our children to think about who else might be feeling sad or lonely or scared, and then encouraging them to consider what they could do to help, allows them to move into a position of positive agency. While our instinct may be to pull the curtains closed when the world seems to darken, ultimately this only makes us feel more alone. The same is true for our children. But looking out the window together and talking about what we see helps us to know that we are part of a shared experience and that we have some control over how the light can start to seep back in.
This might be as simple as acknowledging that everyone is feeling a little lonely right now and making drawings for others to see through your windows, as we did together with the children several weeks ago. Or it could mean “adopting” a healthcare worker and creating encouraging pictures or notes for them, as some of our classes have been doing. Or it might simply mean making an extra call to a grandparent or a friend who lives alone to help brighten their day. All of these small acts ask us to take a moment to let our children feel someone else’s experience in their own hearts. Ultimately doing so will help them to feel less alone, and it will help them to feel engaged with the world rather than buffeted by it.
Here are some simple entry points for talking to children about the needs of others right now and helping them to take action:
Become penpals with a senior citizen, who might not have a grandchild to facetime with.
Adopt-a-Frontliner and provide encouragement to healthcare workers.
Create a Little Free Library for safely sharing books.
Create a Little Free Pantry for safely sharing food.
Spread hope by painting your windows, chalking your walk, or even creating a silly walk zone for your neighbors.
Shabbat shalom,
Alicia