The Boss

​"I built my first house 200 years ago" Soumil, age 4

 One fall, we started the school year with all boys, and quickly found ourselves deep in the zone of Worker Guys. There was even a Boss. Each day we'd put a recycled blueprint on our outside table and the Boss would inform the Workers what their task was. They'd head off with their hard hats on, the wagon full of shovels and construction cones, and "get to work". I'm not sure how he got to be the Boss, but it was never questioned by the Workers. 

I would never have assumed that the Worker Guys would have chosen to have a Boss, but then, I bumped into many of my own assumptions that fall. I used to visit them on the Construction Sites and had this strange, lower register, "worker guy" voice I would put on. One day they asked me why I was talking like that. I realized that I was talking "manly", as if my female-self wouldn't be accepted. But that was a remnant of my childhood in the sexist 70's, and not the world these boys were being raised in. I didn't ​have to pretend to be a man to work on their Construction Site, they were equal opportunity employers. ​I had let my personal experience skew my participation in their play, as is often the case.

Sometimes I walk into the middle of negotiations or conflicts I'm not needed in. I assume that the children need support in those tricky places, but unless I'm really listening I often miss the point. We learn to trust through navigating conflict, and my clumsy interruptions disrupt that precious process. They do not need my help to "get through it", they need my help to learn how to stay in it... to recognize and voice their emotions in a respectful and productive manner. This, of course, is a life-long practice, yet one that children may find easier to navigate. They are less judgmental, of themselves and others; quicker to forgive, less apt to hold a grudge.
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I learned a lot that fall in "boyville". And to this day I still find myself needing to check my assumptions at the gate.