Making the connection - A preschool story

I love my job! I love working with children! I work in the early morning drop off program (Rooster club), the after school lunch program (Lunch Bunch) and I sub frequently for the teachers. I am not ashamed to admit that I am a big kid at heart which is why this is such a perfect fit for me.

This year there has been one little girl who I frequently "butted heads" with. She has a lot of sass, which is fine by me because I have a lot of sass too, but I got this feeling that she did not like me very much. I cannot tell you how much this has bothered me! I get along with every child that goes to the preschool so I just didn't understand what was going on. I finally resigned myself to the fact that maybe we were never going to have a connection.

On Monday this week I worked the Lunch Bunch shift. We had a very small group and that little girl was there. We have a train table but I have been itching to spread out the track on the floor and see how big we can make it. I proposed the idea and the kids were all for it. So we dumped all the tracks and pieces on the floor and built a nifty train track. The kids had fun with it, especially the little girl. She loved it! It was cute to hear the "conversations" her train was having with the other trains.

It was time for the parents to pick them up but she did not want to leave. She wanted to keep playing with the trains. I promised her that we would built it again when she and I met up again at Lunch Bunch. Even with reassurance she was reluctant to leave. As she and her dad walked out she ran up to the window to see the track again.

The next day:

I did not think much more about the track and trains until I saw her on the playground. I was subbing for the Pre-K class and the class she was in was outside at the same time. She saw me and ran over and gave me a HUGE hug! I could not believe it! I was in shock at first but I saw her beautiful smile beaming at me and I realized that we had finally made that connection.

I cannot tell you how happy that made me and how it taught me that for some it takes time and some wooden train tracks to make that connection.