Sorry I haven’t been much up to date on goings on around here. The thing is that I am super crazy busy at Bible Camp….
I am doing the music portions of our church’s camp for 2-7 year olds. There are 70 kids going crazy with art, music, story-telling, and games for 4 hours all this week….and it sort of feels like a life-time. I did this last year, except I was a coordinator. This year I am doing the same music-leading duties, but no organizational stuff, which truly I don’t do a great job of anyway. I make confident decisions, but I have a hard time caring much about the woman who is stressed about the kids not washing their hands well enough, or the person who wants the chairs “RIGHT, EXACTLY, BACK WHERE THEY WERE”. I pretend to care, but I don’t really. I pretend like I don’t think those people are crazy, that I respect their input, but in reality, I am standing there thinking, “How long do I have to sensitively listen to this person before I can go about doing exactly what I want to?”. I tell you, I am MEANT for leadership, eh?!
It is interesting leading music. I am actually not “performing” for more than about 25 minutes at a time, but it is super exhausting. I am up there with my guitar singing super loud, being hyper and trying to be animated and excited. It is like teaching but super compressed. I feel like I have just put on a Broadway show…. but in 25 minutes.
The other part of my duty is to pull out the kids who are falling apart (for whatever reason kids fall apart), and be nice to them and get them re-integrated to their group (except not screaming or pitching a fit). Again, camp is for 2-7 year olds, so they fall apart for all sorts of reasons. I tell you, I wonder about the sense of having 2 year olds. They cry. They whine. They do things that 2 year olds do. I find myself sort of disliking the whiner/criers and being so grateful that mine are not. Of course, a great guy in the kitchen today noted that he would have been a whiner/crier, that he was a sort of nervous kid, so I really have got to stop thinking mean thoughts about the whiney/cry-ey set. They grow up to be great people too. Man, where is my patience?
I wish I could put some pictures up here, but as I am working with other peoples’ children, I just can’t. Anyway, it is super fun (in a really strange way), and if I do not fall down dead of exhaustion by the end of the week, I will update stuff around here again.
4 Comments, Comment or Ping
I was like you with whiners, but had very little tolerance for the boy, high energy instead. Then I went and gave birth to one! I have been forced to find tolerance for my little guy and his high energy.
July 8th, 2009
Some of the whiny kids might be whiny because of their home life… like the guy in the kitchen, I was an anxious kid–waiting for the proverbial shit to hit the fan, since it did on a fairly regular basis–so I’m sure I was whiny. Keep that in mind and remember that that means that they need extra tolerance and love from the outside world!
And congrats on all your hard work. I know that those 25 minutes would make me want to curl up on my bed with a book for about 30 hours! But you can’t do that and you do the music program anyway! Go you!
July 9th, 2009
Thank you Cameron. In my better moments, I also love the whiners. It is really my problem and not so much theirs. That is, they will grow out of it; I’m done growing and need to just figure it out! Ha! Anyway, Brad said he was a whiner too, so that ought to help me take a breath and give the love.
July 9th, 2009
The kids I am thinking of who really drive me crazy are the ones who have been so catered to their entire (short) lives that they are completely incapable of being in a social group situation. They want what they want right then and have no intention of doing what the group is doing. They have never heard “no” and they can not accept that they can’t put their playdough on the older kids’ paintings, that they can’t throw blocks, or that they can’t go grab all the glue guns at the art station. They will fight you to the end unrelentingly. And I just don’t know what to do with them….
The nervous ones have lots of time to become more comfortable in the world and only deserve a little help in doing it.
July 10th, 2009
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