There were multiple new girls that showed up to try out at soccer practice yesterday.
Even if I hadn’t known they were the new ones, I could have recognized them by the way they stood on the sidelines with their big eyes, fiddling with their shirt sleeves.
They were quiet as they waited to display their skills.
I looked across the field at my 13 year old, Paige, who was standing in the middle of her existing team.
She had quickly become one of the popular ones, as she does in most every space she enters these days.
She is confident, funny, intelligent, and self-assured, and unlike the girl of her elementary school years, she no longer doubts herself regularly.
I could see the girls laughing, sharing inside jokes, and high-fiving over things, and I smiled, remembering all the times it had been her that was on the sidelines, questioning things, and having to be coaxed out gently.
I was both glad she wasn’t the outsider anymore, and also feeling responsible to act on the reality of what I was seeing.
So, before the practice and try-outs started, I called Paige over to my chair on the sidelines, and whispered in her ear a suggestion to maybe use this time to make the new girls feel welcome. Maybe she could introduce herself, and ask all of their names?
Paige knows there is nothing I love more than making other people feel invited.
Over the years, it is a thing that has sometimes made her and her sisters sigh and roll their eyes at me, as I tell them to go say hello to someone new, or go ask someone to play.
It pains me to see a child with insecurity in their eyes;
Their hands clasped together, their toes and hopes circling.
So often I feel like I have been put in place to facilitate someone else’s comfort: A “calling,” if you will, to let them know that mine will be a face they can smile back at, trust, and that they will come to recognize as a friend.
From the time they were toddlers I have tried to teach my children this same thing;
On playgrounds, at school, and in the church nursery.
Chin up,
eyes scanning.
Is there someone left out? Someone too shy to ask to be included in the game?
After all, this is the reason school Buddy Benches were made.
I know so many of us have taught our children these same things.
The concept has been introduced by Mr. Rodgers, Daniel Tiger, and even Peppa Pig.
Inclusion –
We all want it for ourselves.
It pains us when we see our own children long for it.
We push our young towards it in groups for a reason,
and because we all understand the desire for it so well,
we should understand that it is a NEED.
These days, even the very word “inclusion” is being weaponized.
It is even one of a list of words now banned if a person is seeking to write a grant to receive federal funding.
Perhaps it is time for a refresher course for us all on simple decency.
Perhaps we need to go back to the start – To our own playground days?
To our own times on the outside when all we wanted was to be asked to play?
I hope that my girls grow and realize that the lessons I taught them in these daily, tangible things were things I hoped they’d take in at a deeper level.
I hope that one day they see that preschool lessons formed in the core of them several very adult-like things.
I hope that me whispering to Paige to help the new girls feel welcomed is something that she carries with her into her job,
or a future mom’s group somewhere,
or as she moves through the world on a more global scale.
A bigger circle is always more powerful.
I hope that my girls can shake off any fear, and insecurity, and that they will always remember the times that they, too, were on the outside looking in at something, hoping that, without saying something, someone else would see;
And I hope that, when they do, they use that memory to be further-shaped into the
strong, loving, and inclusive people that I hope so much they will all grow to be.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
