Children?

When I was growing up my mom ran a daycare. She watched maybe 8 or so kids. I was pretty good with them and had fun playing, but I was around the same age as some and only a few years older than others there. The summer before I was in 8th(?) grade a neighbor asked me to help her with her daycare. I worked from 9:30 to noon every weekday for the summer with basically the same two or three of the children. I think they were three-ish years old. Old enough to play out side, but not old enough to do so safely by themselves. I was pretty good at this job too, and didn't mind being around the kids. After this job, my exposure to kids grew less and less frequent, and my ability to feel comfortable around them decreased. My aunt and uncle had a son when I was going in to tenth (or eleventh) grade and a daughter when I was a freshman in college. I was always really uncomfortable being around them and holding them. Young kids seem so much more fragile than I remembered from my youth. And older ones seemed harder to be around. I got a little more comfortable being around my cousins (I'm holding my cousin Lilah in the picture above), and can sometimes be goofy with older kids and have a good time, but it often seems weird to me to be around them.

I went on a camping trip with two little girls the summer before my senior year in college and was somewhat able to reconnect with how I once was with kids. (I'm holding Lydia in this picture) But it seems like it doesn't take long for me to regress back to being scared and uncomfortable.

My dad has a little girl, Alleyna, who lives one house down from him. She likes to come over and play in his driveway. She was really shy and would never talk to me. I would sometimes try to play with her, but never really had anything come of it. Then one day she came over when I had my guitar out. She watched me play and danced and clapped along with the songs. From that day on, she became my best friend. She talks to me all the time now and draws me pictures. She was sad when I left for college for my senior year, and she let me take a picture with her when I was saying goodbye. She even made some funny faces with me.

It's weird to think about how much things changed for me regarding kids, and to think about whether or not I will ever have any of my own. I have plenty of time to figure things out. In the meantime I guess I'll just have to work on letting myself be goofy (like I normally am) when I'm around kids.