Looking at Children with a New Set of Eyes

Our children are giving us clear signs that we need some changes. After 300 years of industrial revolution our modern society has been shaped and molded by the industrial complex. Everything about our contemporary world is a product of the industrial age. We now live in homes, work in buildings, store our food, bake in ovens, and talk on cell-phones that are all formed out of square and rectangular shapes.  One might say we have fashioned our existence around and into boxes. For many who thrive in nature and for those who are uncomfortable in a box, modern existence has become quite a challenge.

Fortunately, we are catching on as schools, agencies, parents and the private sectors are restructuring the standard model that was carved by the industrial plows. Those who care for our children are finding creative ways to accommodate the ones who struggle at home and in social settings and in the classrooms. We’re all doing our best to restructure those systems that have outlived their social and commercial value. In the meantime Yolanda Esquivel at the Inspired Development Center (IDC), and many others are doing what they can to assist in helpful and meaningful ways.

Yolanda is the director of our local Head Start program and she represented our early childhood sector at the 2016 Beyond Paper Tigers conference. She has transformed the adult skill building capacity of her staff where they collectively serve between 160 and 190 families per year using the training of the Head Start Trauma Smart program. After training her adult staff Yolanda understands the value of teaching social and emotional skills at an early age. Yolanda is in agreement with many experts in the field of child care when she says “teaching social and emotional skills at an early age is the best prevention to the high cost of dealing with the social and emotional problems that come later in life for those who don’t have those skills.”  She also said “A key component to being successful is to have parent involvement and that’s what our program is known for.”  

Maybe in the end we’ll find that a great majority of our most gifted children just don’t thrive well in boxes.