When Hands Hurt

One of the first things that I noticed about the children here is how darn cute they are. As I walked around the playground on that first afternoon, their quirky child-like behaviors, life-giving laughter, and inexhaustible exuberance won me over in a heartbeat.   

But it didn’t take me long to make a second, more sobering observation:

The children here are violent. 

Especially the younger ones. If a conflict occurs and so-called “negative” emotions arise, most of the younger kids are quick to resort to physical fighting. For some, it is in fact their first resort. This is not “a boy thing,” by the way: girls hit girls, girls hit boys, boys hit girls. They are always separated and scolded, of course. But it always happens again. 

Now, perhaps what I’m seeing here isn’t all that different from what I would see at schools back in the States. Having been home-schooled, I’ve never watched young children play at recess and don’t have much with which to compare what I’m seeing here. Even so, I think that my observation is legitimate: these children are uncommonly violent. 

If so, then what’s going on? I have a hunch. 

Many of the students at Holy Land Institute have little or no knowledge of Jordanian Sign Language when they first arrive at the school. They learn language here. Hopefully, families have previously devised some of their own signs, but these elementary linguistic innovations are unlikely to keep pace with the child’s natural development and meet her or his communicative needs. 

So, when many of these children begin at the school, they are not able to effectively communicate everything that they want to, everything that they must. Some can only communicate a very small percentage of these things.

When hearing children fight, what do we do? We stop them, we reprimand them for fighting, and then we suggest (require) an alternative: talking. We teach kids to describe how they’re feeling, to come up with possible solutions to the conflict, to agree on a solution, and to apologize. 

So, what happens if children haven’t learned (more specifically, haven’t been given the means to learn) how to describe, devise, agree, apologize... how to communicate with language?

They keep fighting. What other options do they have?

One possible definition of violence is the physical expression of negative emotions. 

The goal, then, is to provide and encourage other avenues of expression. 

...Writing a blog, perhaps?