Tears for fears

" Nurse Big Sis and my forever crying knee", 1959

Crying

Crying is sometimes explained away by the bio-chemists as a way to getting the hormones in the body back in balance again, ridding the body of “stress” hormones, whatever they may be. Others, more psychologically, may describe crying as a means of communicating the need for help, the presence of pain, or of sadness. It has even been proposed that, because crying blurs the vision, it plays a role in lowering aggression or actions of defence, which I suppose might be useful on the battle field, though I cannot see how!

Whatever crying is we all know that we feel better after a good dose of it.

Crying cropped up this week in two conductive blog postings. It was mentioned in mine because of its absence, and in Andrew Sutton’s because of a lot of it.

In Andrew’s posting crying was mentioned in a quote from a parent’s blog.

Children cry

Children very often cry when they are in new situations, all children, not just children with disabilities. Some children don’t cry at all and some children stop crying as they get used to a situation, but others don’t.

Over twenty years ago my niece and nephew attended nursery group for a year, at the same school they attended later. My nephew cried every day for the whole year, starting each day as his mum left him at the door. His twin sister didn’t cry at all, she took her brother by the hand and played with him until he had stopped and could join in the fun. He always stopped, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but he always stopped. All children stop eventually.

I cried every morning for six months as a four-year-old when my sister went off to school and left me alone at home. I stopped crying when I joined her at school, having been sent a term early particularly in an attempt to stop the crying. It worked, I didn’t cry about going to school, I loved it for fourteen years because Big Sis was there. When she left a year before I did, I didn’t cry, but I didn’t love school any more.

Children cry for different reasons it is a natural phenomena there is no need for parents to worry about their children crying in a group.

Crying in Conductive Education

What is it with Conductive Education and crying, why does it get so much airtime?

Parents discuss crying a lot. Crying makes it hard for them to leave the children, and there needs to be a good understanding between the parent and the person they give their child to.

Perhaps it is because children attending conductive groups have never yet been left anywhere before, perhaps because of their disabilities or perhaps because of their parents’ fears. Maybe these parents have never experienced the phenomenon that, whereas some children cry when left somewhere, others don’t.

It was nice to have no tears in the first day of my new group, but it isn’t the end of the world if we do have them. They are so quickly forgotten.

For conductors crying is normal, an everyday hazard that we see as part and parcel of the job we do, especially if one has worked in the International Group at the Petö Institute, as I did! There, with new children almost every Monday morning we rarely had a quiet start to the day. Quiet starts only develop when a group grows together and children get used to the environment and each other.

Even with tears we still have lots of fun, we still learn a lot and, most important of all, we still decide that it would be nice to come back another day.

Notes

Jackie Wilson Lonely tear drops -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nEfuE8Pw4U

Susie Mallett -

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2009/10/multi-kulti-and-no-tears.html

Andrew Sutton -

http://www.conductive-world.info/2009/10/for-crying-out-loud.html