Oh, how I'd love to be back in 4th grade!
The past two weeks I’ve been a substitute teacher/assistant teacher (yeah, I’ve been both) at an elementary school, and I’ve made a few interesting obeservations. It’s a bit different from the kids I usually work with in kindergarten, because when they turn 6 years old and start school, they start to face the “real-child-life”, and it’s not so much about just running around with nothing on your agenda but to have fun anymore.
As soon as they are in school, everything is a little different. Well, I won’t say immediately, because from what I’ve seen, the first year, and perhaps even the second, it’s actually a lot like kindergarten. But at least when they turn 9 and 10, they really start to face all the schoolyard problems, which I think all of us are familiar with, to a certain degree at least. In case you don’t remember anything from these years, let me give you a tour down memory lane:
“They won’t play with me.“
“I’m not friends with him/her anymore, because he/she talked to him/her and I don’t like that.“
“We’re all friends again now.“
What’s really catches my attention is that, in retrospective, these issues seem so incredibly trivial and easy to sort out, but when you think back on your own thoughts and feelings from those days, and when you see how the children react and deal with these things, you know that it’s just as serious to them, as any problem we deal with are to us.
I guess that’s what growing up is all about, learning to face and deal with things, and when you’ve done it enough times, you won’t even recognize it as a problem anymore. I really can’t wait for the day when I’ve dealt with money “problems” (I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation where it would really qualify as a problem, but they sure seem like it anyways) enough to be able to look back and laugh at the days when I considered money something worth spending the minutes before I went to sleep on!
I wonder what my problems will be by then. Any filthy rich people care to enlighten me?