Get Into Your Kid World: Get Their Heart
The children moved constantly, chewing and chatting. Arne’s son told me facts about the Titanic, his middle daughter talked about her best friend who lived down the street, and the youngest girl said she could jump all the way across the room on one foot. Arne tried to get them to behave, to eat slowly, to remove their elbows from the table.
And I sat shell-shocked. I smiled and answered questions. I ate the food my date prepared for me, but there was a part of my mind that had gone numb from the overwhelming shift in my world. I didn’t know quite how to be, how to act. My gaze fell on the refrigerator, which was plastered top to bottom in photos of the kids and pictures they’d drawn.
I thought of my own fridge at home. It was covered in magnetic poetry that formed sentences you wouldn’t find in any children’s book. I felt as if I had landed on another planet— one I knew absolutely nothing about. Then I thought about those kids, and the new world they were living in, one they didn’t have any control over at all.
At least I had choices. No matter how a kid approaches you at the beginning— open and willing to get to know you or hostile and wary— you’ve got to remember that kid’s world has just been completely upended. Everything that child has ever known has changed, and he or she may be operating out of fear, confusion, and deep sadness. The divorce of their parents will affect them for the rest of their lives, and you can have a big impact on helping those kids succeed.
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