To a 4 year old you can compare walking in a line down the hall to bungy jumping.  It is one of the hardest tasks they learn in the first month of school and some are just not mature enough to get it before the end of pre-k. 

It was a long difficult day, the children were tired, and the teachers were exhausted but we made it through the day. Now for the walk down the hall to go meet our parents.  Children everywhere being dismissed,

“follow the silver line, stay behind the person in front of you”.  That was what you would hear while walking down the hall, all the teachers saying basically the same thing.

All easy enough for us to understand but for a child that doesn’t know what the heck we mean when we say silver line or what does “behind” mean. The only time some have heard the word was

“I am going to spank your behind” so this was a toughy. 

 My little friend needed a little coaching, so I offered my hand to the little one who was having problems with that “behind” word.  He didn’t take kindly to me wanting to hold his hand either.

“Please hold my hand,” I said to him, ” I don’t want to get lost”.  He held it but he wasn’t happy at all.

 You know how you say something sometimes and it goes out to the universe and comes back at you?  The next day, I was walking along side of the line and a child reached out and took my hand. I was puzzled at first, wondering why, and almost pulled away because I didn’t want that to become a habit, and she says to me

” I don’t want you to get lost”. 

What did I learn from this, I learned that these children are like little sponges for one thing, and I learned that offering my hand to someone makes someone want to offer their hand to me.