Children and PTSD
116/300. My experience
One thing I am sure I can do but I dislike so much is teaching. I dislike teaching kids most especially, woo, I dislike teaching anybody.
I think you can call it PTSD. If you’re or you’ve been friends with a pastor’s kids you’d probably relate to watching or seeing us grow up to be so many things in church. You’re either a children teacher, in the choir, plays an instrument if not all, church cleaner, choir leader or sloist etc and if your father happens to own the church or was transferred to a small church where he’s likely either building or trying to revive an already dying church then you’ve likely handled more than one of the mentioned.
Say PTSD. Yup, I feel you.😫
Okay back to me. As you might have guessed, one thing I did and did very well and for a very long time was teach kids in church. At first, I taught 0–6 (they most frustrating until I found a way around them) and then I’d teach the others sporadically.
You see, I’ve taught kids so much that most often when classes are shared and I don’t get to reach a particular class especially if I’d been teaching them for longer, they wait for me as I drag my chair to the class I’m assigned and they all pout and ask, “Aunty Favour, why are you not teaching us?” Some go as far as refusing to sit in their class because I’m not teaching them.
And of course I’m proud of myself. I’m equally happy to see that I do do know what I do.
But the true gist is that teaching those kids can be very traumatizing.
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I, for one has sworn in my conscience to make sure everything I teach those kids are morally and biblically right. To not mislead them, to not drive them away from the source and you should see the struggle involved.
Then you have the kids questioning you.
How am I supposed to explain how Nebuchadnezzar chop grass or if he had talons or fangs for fingers(of course, they didn’t ask it with those terms so imagine how many hours it took me to figure out thats actually what they meant.😫) I have never lived with Nebuchadnezzar before so my darling, how would I know what he looked like as a beast or how he ate. If he ate with hands or if he ate with cutlery.🤦
Kids will stain your white and your blue and your red. Including brown.
I said God created everything, why are you asking me if he created your spit or your 'wicked’ teacher?
Kids, I love to interact with but the PTED is enough to make me cringe each time I have to be in their presence especially as a teacher but I certainly do enjoy even a little of it.
I may or may not have increased my PTSD when I took up teaching after WAEC while waiting for admission. I was comfortably working in a cyber cafe but then I felt overwhelmed and when the opportunity came I escaped only to end up teaching and I remember how many times I asked myself if I shouldn’t go back to the cyber cafe and beg my oga.😭😂
For me, I think teaching is honorable. My biggest concern about teaching is treating those kids right. Been not just a teacher but a human to them. They have emotions too, they don’t cry for fun and that stage is a foundational stage. If I’m going to handle a child, I want to be sure I’d be a safe space for them too.
I’d rather never take up teaching a kid/kids than be that one person that makes them scared, uncomfortable or dumps wrong teachings or doctrines on them.
Those precious little monsters!
