Why Do We Underestimate The Ability Of Children?
When we underestimate the incredible ability of children, we contribute to their failure.
When I write, I write from two places. My heart and life. Yes, I write from life. My life, and yours.
Someone said: A nine-year-old is rather too young to understand life itself, nor will she even understand the answer if given.
How old were you when you gained an understanding of life and living?
My world is cruel and unforgiving, and to survive, you have got to be both. Most children in my world must learn common sense before they can read and write.
When we underestimate the incredible ability of children, we contribute to their failure. — Annelise Lords
At seven I found out the cause of my constant hunger and why I was short of everything.
Poverty!
Being a curious child, the pain of hunger and other basic needs forced me to question life.
I wondered why I was always hungry. Why I drank warm salt water for breakfast before going to school some morning. Why do I often brush my teeth with salt instead of toothpaste? Why am I always late for school when I live a few houses away? Why am I always short of school supplies? Why do the teachers shun me and other children?
How could they treat us like that?
Why do I have to learn on an empty stomach? Why do some days I have no breakfast and go home for lunch, nothing was there?
I learned how to control myself when hunger attacks from a very young age.
Why can’t I attend our annual Christmas class party? Or anything our school had?
I had nothing to wear, and my mother couldn’t afford to send us.
Why did I and other children go to school untidy? Our uniforms weren’t properly ironed as some parents had to use coal iron. They must buy coal or feed their children.
You can send your child to school clean, neat, tidy, and hungry. Or the opposite.
What kind of choice is that? What would you do?
I learned to wash and iron my uniform early.
I notice how the properly groomed children were treated with care, kindness, and love.
The opposite for me and other children. Poverty is hell!
We sometimes wore cheap cloth shoes that were called, ‘ballet.’ Sometimes we walk around the school after dismissal picking up discarded gum to prevent the bottom of our shoes from falling off.
There are times when we don’t let the teacher mark our books because we had to erase yesterday’s lessons to do today’s.
There was no eraser for red ink then.
Why did we have to beg and borrow from other children in our class?
Some were kind and shared with us. Others shamed and criticized us reminding us that we were poor.
That pain rips a child’s heart into pieces.
No matter the age, pain hurts.
Parents who aren’t involved in their children’s life and education showed in the child’s appearance, behavior, and performance.
Many of us were brilliant children, but because of poverty, our physical appearance, and the lack of parental involvement, we were left to the mercy of life, fate, and destiny.
We had dreams that poverty and the cruelty of humanity refused us.
P.S. Volunteering as a teacher’s aide for five years, I learned that not much has changed in the treatment and cruelty to children.
Because of my blonde hair and blue-eyed grandfather, I end up with a lot of curly hair. As a child, my mother would wash half of my hair. Comb it and wash the other half. Sometimes, not on the same day.
She had six children to care for.
I would go to school with my hair looking as if I lived under the cellar and was in a fight with roosters.
In the 6th grade, at eleven years old, my teacher Mrs. Henry offered to comb my hair for me, after embarrassing me in front of the entire class.
I could comb my hair, just not very well.
I didn’t like her, because she treated the darker-skinned children without humanity. The lighter-skinned ones, with kindness and love. My shade wasn’t light enough.
I was aware of that because it hurt. Many children can feel and understand pain from a young age.
I got someone in my yard to comb my hair for me. When she wasn’t available, I got someone else to help me.
I learned to comb my hair early.
Where was my mother?
I was raising myself while learning from life.
Many children endure a lot of pain throughout their lives, and many won’t forget the pain or the ones who caused it.
My father had a good job. None of us knew what our mother did with the money he gave her. Years later we found out that she gambled a lot.
If I am hungry, what do I do?
I could do many things. Knowing my world, at a young age the curiosity in me made me aware of the consequences of my actions.
In my world, humans are living out the consequences of their actions, choices, and decisions for everyone to see. We are a close-knit community where everyone knows everyone. So, we get news of any disaster that happened, where it happen, and who did it, many times before the police.
Evidence of stupid decisions and silly mistakes is alive and well, walking and living among us. Regrets shine with the sun in the daytime and light up with the moon at night.
Many aren’t allowed to forget their mistakes.
That is a lesson for me.
I had lots of questions. No one could answer them, because most humans were just living. Unaware of what they are adding to their world.
So, I ask life.
Life uses the lives and living of other humans to answer my questions. I can go back to any age, to gain an understanding of the behavior, thinking, and reasons why many humans do the things they do.
Many of us underestimate children. Many in my world live with parents and must raise themselves. I know ten and eleven years old who must make adult decisions. I had to, and some are still carrying me almost fifty years later.
If I wasn’t thinking about life and living from I was a child, I wouldn’t be alive today with the life I have and am enjoying now.
Successful people have been thinking about their lives when they were very young and that has carried them to success.
Don’t underestimate children and how they think. I gained an understanding of life, living, pain, humans, and more from a young age.
Because life didn’t give some of us a choice to be weak — Annelise Lords
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