Learning the Hard Way

I often have trouble asserting myself in issues of discipline, garnering me a reputation as a softie, or in other words, a pushover. I generally do not see the harm that this could have and prefer to pride myself on being "laid-back". Unfortunately, I was reminded today that the discomfort I might avoid by being especially lenient is not worth the effects that I might not see on the kids I work with.

Every day I walk a group of kids to program from their school down the street. Usually they joke around and have a good time coming back, and I don't generally prevent them from doing this, as long as they're safe on the roads and respectful of others. Today two of the kids were hanging on and playing with another one, one of the most imaginitive and indefatigably cheerful kids I have ever met. They were pretending he was their pet, and he was grinning and laughing at first, so I didn't pay so much attention to what they were doing so much as the cars at the intersections where we had to cross. All of a sudden, however, he burst into tears, crying out, "Mr. Matt, you're not even saying anything to make them stop!"

Horrified, I scrambled to stop whatever was going on and tried to console him as he sobbed into my arm for the rest of the walk. When he had calmed down a little bit, I tried to apologize and explain what he obviously already knew: how wrong it was of me to ignore what was going on, and how irresponsible it was to assume that he was having fun. I know he must have been waiting for me to step in and gotten more and more frustrated at my apparent indifference, until it boiled over. Not only had I ignored his distress, but I had caused him the humiliation of losing his composure and crying in front of his friends.

A couple of hours later we were playing ping-pong and board games like nothing had happened, but I still felt terrible about what happened, and I gather that I will continue to for some time. But insofar as I cannot reverse what already happened, I suppose that it is best that the memory lingers, so that it might remind me of the responsibility I have to these kids to look beyond my own comfort and be an adult and in control even when it involves stepping in to discipline a child or stop a situation that I try to convince myself doesn't seem so bad.