All is Truth

Being a parent is learning to let go. 
We begin to see that we must let go of our image of the child we thought we wanted in order to have a healthy relationship with the ACTUAL child we have.

Not only that, we also have work to do in letting go of the image we had of ourselves of parents, so as not to live in a constant state of shame.

I remember saying to my friend, Carol...who has a daughter my same age...
I told her how worried I was about my daughter (who was 5 at the time)...she just wasn't making friends as I hoped she would.
 Carol said to me, "Why do you think it matters so much to you that she have friends?  She seems just fine with it and doesn't complain.  It seems like it's more of an issue for you than for her."

  The beautiful thing about our children is that they are unpredictable. 
Even someone like me who has been teaching for 16 years now...I continue to be surprised by these little ones each day.
Just when I think I might know who my daughter is...she surprises me again.

I guess that's one of the things I love most about being a teacher. I am in a constant state of reassessing everything I thought I knew to what the truth actually is.

Truth. There's a buzz word in our current culture.

What is truth?

I overheard one of my little students say, "AJ hit me." AJ is his big brother and AJ was not there in class with him.
His mother explained that months ago, she thinks AJ must have hit him but this little guy keeps saying that it's happening again and again, even though she knows it's not true.

I saw a video on Facebook of a little guy riding his little tricycle and he very very very slowly fell off of it but it looked like he really carefully lowered himself to the ground, almost acting out a fall in slow mo.
His caregiver laughed and the closed captioning said (Fake cries).

I will often hear parents and/or caregivers say or indicate to a child that he/she is "faking it" or crocodile tears or "that's not what happened"...

We had an incident with a 9 year old who really seemed to believe her own narrative that she was "helping" her friend down the tree even though it was witnessed that she yanked the friend off of the tree.

What is the truth for these children?

So often, the perspective is that they are telling an untruth or a lie.

I have come to understand that I don't rightly understand truths/lies.

Most often, I do not believe that children lie with purpose.

The child is so blessed to have a flexible reality. This is what makes the child so darned resilient. 

However, I do believe that children have a strong sense of Right vs. Wrong. 
This does seem to be in paradox with the former sentence. 

Children are the ultimate Makers of meaning. They are on the constant search for truths.
Sometimes, I think that comes with experimenting with untruths.
Typically, the natural reaction to untruths is Chaos and Confusion. 

I am gathering that by the time our children are grown and we have grandchildren and beyond...
our own search for truth and meaning will still be happening but perhaps the only difference is we have a more experienced perspective. 

Meditating among liars, and retreating sternly into myself, I see that there are really no liars or lies after all,
And that nothing fails its perfect return--And that what are called lies are perfect returns,
And that each thing exactly represents itself, and what has preceded it,
And that the truth includes all, and is compact, just as much as space is compact,
And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth--but that all is truth without exception;
And henceforth I will go celebrate anything I see or am,
And sing and laugh, and deny nothing.


All Is Truth


Walt Whitman