I’m a Rutgers Business School graduate. I’ve spent the past five years interacting with strictly college kids or long-term business professionals, and somehow my post-grad job search landed me a part-time job as a teacher at a childcare center.

I spent roughly a month here working mostly with around fifteen kindergarteners everyday. I pretty much spent hours trying to entertain them while still teaching them a thing or two so their brains didn’t rot before real teachers could get a hold of them this September.

Having little to no experience working with kids, needless to say, I was anxious but hopeful. How bad could it be? But in those short weeks, I’ve come to realize two very important things:

First off, for some reason, kids feel the need to tell me about every little thing that happens to them and it’s borderline comedic to me. Sometimes I’m not sure if they’re expecting me to punish the other kids or they just like giving me updates.

Second, every small thing they “tattle-tale” about made me realize that life has not hit them. At all. And I’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel that way. And then I was even more sad to realize that life will hit them eventually… And it will hit hard.

And here are some examples.

Interaction 1:

Crying Boy: He won’t share his tablet with me! Why is he being so mean?!

Tablet Boy: I don’t want to share my tablet with him.

Me: Why?

Tablet Boy: Because it’s mine.

Lesson Learned:

To tell you the truth Crying Boy, when it comes down to it, nobody owes you any kindness.

Harsh, right? But it’s TRUE.

Ownership becomes SO real when you get older, and even though we tell kids at a young age that they should share, you really don’t HAVE to. Couples everyday fight about money and co-workers fight over clients and roommates fight over space and so on. Even on a deeper level, we eventually find ourselves saying things like “This is MY life” and “I DESERVE this”. The feeling of wanting something becomes so strong that the power of restraint really becomes a skill to be developed.

The fact is, we teach our kids that we have to share but we don’t really say why. We don’t explain that no one really owes you anything in life. No one absolutely needs to give you whatever it is you’re asking for, but despite that, we should be open-minded to giving. Even if we really don’t have to, the act of giving should be rewarding and natural.

Interaction 2:

Me: What’s wrong?

Lonely Boy: No one will play with me.

Me: I’ll play with you.

Lonely Boy: We were playing a game that you don’t know.

Lesson Learned:

To tell you the truth Lonely Boy, at some point in your life, you’re going to have to be alone. And then even more so down the line, you’re eventually going to have to start over and explain the game to someone else.

This one is so painfully relevant. And it might be the hardest to understand.

People are fickle creatures. You can’t force anyone to feel a certain way about you and it’s difficult to deal with. Because no matter how good your intentions are or how much love and care you have to offer, for whatever reason, they might not have it in them to return it.

And it’s because of people. We have to learn to accept that unfortunately, a lot of decisions are made by people. When applying for college or a job, someone has to choose to accept you. When on a sports team, you all have to work together to win the game. A relationship only works if both of the people actually want to stay. We have to accept that people’s decisions and actions affect our own as much as we don’t want it to.

People come and people go. That’s for certain. Whether it’s by circumstance, by chance, or even to a more extreme: by death, some people in your life are going to make an exit at some point, and you’re going to have to learn how to be by yourself.

It’s okay to do things alone. But know it’s never really permanent. Eventually someone new will come along, there will always be “more fish in the sea” as cliche as it is. (But hey, cliches become cliches for a reason). And yes, you’ll have to re-explain the game to these new people in your life, or even start a new one, but at least then you’ll find out being alone is more than likely a temporary state.

But, in the meantime, it’s good to learn a sense of independence. Lonely Boy, you might feel better playing by yourself. This way, you can play by your own rules.

Interaction 3:

Me: Come on, write the sentence.

Lazy Boy: I don’t know how. Can you help me?

Me: Yes, but you have to do it.

Lazy Boy: Aw man. Why can’t you do it?

Lesson Learned:

To tell you the truth Lazy Boy, you have to put in the work. You can’t go through life thinking that “help” and having someone do things for you are the same thing. Because most of the time, it’s not. And most of the time, that’s actually hurting you more.

Forget even just learning to read and write, which are essential to surviving in this day and age, but this is YOUR life (here we go again with that ownership) and problems tend to snowball. If you don’t know the alphabet, you can’t spell words. If you can’t spell words, you can’t form sentences. If you can’t write sentences, you’re only limiting your ability to communicate. You’re making your own life harder.

So what does this mean? An infallible work ethic is honestly a vital foundation to anything. If you’re not willing to work for one goal, it’s guaranteed to block you from achieving another. Life consists of multiple processes and you have to be willing to go through them, because no one can just do it for you. When you grow up, you’re going to have moments of laziness. You’re going to have days where you’ll need your rest or go on the spontaneous vacation or adventure and that’s fine. That’s healthy, honestly.

But sadly, everyday isn’t playtime. Invest in yourself so you can reap the benefits.

Interaction 4:

Me: Wow you’re 5 years old and you have a girlfriend?

Lover Boy: Yeah she’s my girlfriend and I asked her for a kiss.

Me: Did she kiss you?

Lover Boy: No. She only wants her mom and dad to kiss her.

Lesson Learned:

Now, this one’s a two for one lesson.

To tell you the truth Lover Boy, the way you feel about people will not always be the way they feel about you. And on top of that, in general you really should be okay with being told no.

I noticed that the majority of complaints that I got from kids was why I wasn’t letting them do things that they wanted to do. No running, no hitting, you can’t have a snack, don’t touch that. The list goes on and on of the amount of rejection I was giving out and every single reaction was “Why?!” or some form of it.

In life we’re not always given what we want. And all the crying and complaining, those things will definitely not get you want you want. But I think even as adults, we’re still so sensitive when we come up empty. Even when it makes sense or you’ve worked hard and you deserve it, you have to be prepared for the possibility that you won’t be getting what you want. Because that’s the double edged sword in life. The possibilities are endless, and that can either work in your favor or terribly against you.

I admire tenacious, relentless people. They are the individuals that push the world forward and we’d be lost without them. But learning that plans can change or what you thought might work could actually fail, it’s heart-breaking. Taking rejection is heart-breaking every single time, even when we believe our skin is getting thicker, the sting is still there.

Lover Boy, I understand she’s your girlfriend, but she doesn’t want the kiss. And that honestly really sucks because I’m sure you’re a nice kid, but hey. It is what it is.

Conclusion:

After working here, my heart felt so heavy. Every child in this world is on the verge of life’s rude awakenings and how do you even prepare them? And every time, my interaction with the child came to a hard stop because I really didn’t know what to say. For now, they’ll just have to learn by doing, as everyone else does.

So if anyone has advice on how to gently break hard truths to young minds, please let me know! Let me in on the secrets to breaking it down to such innocent faces that reality is just around the corner!

But I guess the most interesting thing I’ve discovered out of this whole mess is that at 23, these lessons still feel new to me, too. How scary is that?