The Tick Tock of a Kid Clock.

What makes a kid a chase after an answer... or better yet, after a dream?

Fool a kid into thinking anythings a game or a competition, there you have the memorization of 10 new vocab words. Dangle a prize in front of their face, there you spark a drive. Add a little words of encouragement to reassure them their doing a billion times more than they're actually doing, and VOILA:

You have them sitting on top of the world...on TOP of a thrown!

You see them misbehave, but what exactly is misbehavior?

Could it be the girl who always gets up out of her seat, never asking for permission, or is it a girl who finds ways to distract herself so that she falls far from the target of mockery? As the new kid in school, she struggles to be accepted.

Could it be the boy who never stops talking and cracks jokes every chance he gets, or is it a boy who struggles in reading, coyly masquerading his ashamed "ignorance" with class clownliness?

Could it be that the misbehavior of a student is a chance for a teacher to listen closely and find out what really is the problem, surpassing AND suppressing any personal judgment? Never have I ever had a green thumb, but digging to the root of a tree seemed to always work best.

Kids like it when they can show YOU something. To make you laugh, to have you think their silly, to beat you in thumb war, to answer a question without you helping them, to teach YOU something... Giving them the chance to shine is better than buying them ice cream!

With kids, it's monkey-see, monkey-do...plus approval from their friends. If one doesn't like it, ALL doesn't like it. When you're starting out in the first to fifth grade, room for expressing individuality is considered claustrophobic! A no-go.

Seeking approval...when can you really let go of this notion? At the end of the day, at the end of a focused, meaningful day, pass the worries, turn pass the fears, the only approval anyone really needs is:

SELF.

A kids creativity can wander down any hay maze, any dark, crooked alley in attempts to lose themselves in pure imagination. When you ask them to draw a picture that represents themselves, any realistic feature will become distorted, but for FUN's sake. Indulging themselves in the unknown, clean of any label, any judgment, any name is a place both of comfort and confidence. Take them on a rocket ship and blast them far, far away into an unknown galaxy of stars!

A Star Forming Region in the LMC