Basheva, I don't mean to joke, but, okay, I'm sorry, here it is: I recently cut a cartoon out of the New Yorker showing a little boy crying in a crowded public area, and a man stoops down and asks, "Do you need an attorney, little boy?" <P>I know, it's sick, but funny. I must tell you, even though my family is inundated with legal folk, including a criminal judge, when it comes to making a decision like this, my instincts take over. If I'm in a store, and I see a mother struggling to keep package and children in tow, or if I see a child in distress, I go right on up and let "Miss Chrissy" take over and help -- let them jail me. When I was teaching very, very little ones, it was nothing for me to scoop up two at a time and cart them over to the record player to comfort them while changing music. After class, they were always climbing in my lap for stickers, and I noticed there was a definite difference between the older children I taught who were with me since the early years and the others who came later. The former still wanted hugs and touches. You know, there's a lot of talk about psychology and legality and this and that, but whenever I had any question as to behavior with my students, I simply went back to "what would my mom do?" (This woman had 10 of us and also took in other children from moms who worked outside the home or children who were friends of ours whose parents were incapable or uninterested). What a help that was through the years. You cannot Buh-lieve the circumstances that presented themselves over the years. I once taught a child of a former man of the cloth who had been charged with pedophile crimes. She came to the first class crawling and grunting on the floor in a very inappropriate manner. "Okay, mom, what do I do?" I looked at the child, and simply said, "In this class, we stand up and speak in complete sentences." To which, the child leapt up and said "okay." <P>"What would mom do? It just made and makes so much sense to me.<P>"MISS CHRISSY, I MISS MY MOMMY!!!!!"<P>"I know just how you feel. I miss my mommy too. She lives soooooo far away, I have to take two airplanes and a bus to get to her house. Sometimes I miss her so much, my stomach hurts. Why don't you hold my hand today, and we can miss our mommies together?"<P>Now, I did work with a woman who seemed to think I might have been too tactile, but I think it had more to do with her inability to connect with children than anything else. Plenty of parents had complaints about her, but I never received one myself. If you love children, it will come across as just that to all but the sickest of minds. Quite frankly, I wish I'd received as much hugging from teachers when I was little, as I have given as an adult. <P>
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