A while back I wrote a blog “to the tiny human makers” it was a spin off of a conversation my work wife and I had about how much we really love our kiddos and how much we want the parents to know that.Lately though I’ve been thinking about why I work with kids. And I hate to say it, but it’s not because they are kids.

It’s because they are people, albeit tiny ones.

I have a desire in me to help people. To give them tools, hope, encouragement. 

I’ve always been a background person. I want to help the process along. I want to push others forward. I want to help them come into who they are.

I want to give them things right now that they will need for later.

This doesn’t always make what I do easy. 

There is limited instant gratification (except potty training-the instant that happens? Hallelujah) but I know that I’m putting something in the kids that I have interacted with that they will, somewhere along the way, just have grafted in themselves. 

I’ve been lucky to have moments where I see where a day camper grow into a beautiful adult. I’ve gotten to see one of my RFK grow into a beautiful teen staff. I have gotten to see the personality of my preschoolers evolve over their parents social media.

And that’s wonderful.

But I won’t always know what happens.

A lot of the kids I work with on a daily basis I won’t ever know. I won’t know the kind of teenagers they become, what colleges they choose to go to or what kind of adults they turn out to be.

I can only hope and pray that the bits and pieces of things we have established in them stay in them.

I work with people ,whether of the tiny human variety or not, is because I want to show them who I am so that they are able to be more fully themselves. I want to speak out and use my voice so others find theirs. 

I want to give them things I learned in my yesterday, today, for all of their tomorrows.

That’s my hope and desire not only each day with the kiddos but with any human with whom I cross paths. 

So, what’s my why after 400 words? What’s my bottom line of why I do what I do?

I do what I do, and I am who I am on a daily basis because I want you to know a little more of who you are than you did yesterday. I want you to realize how wonderful you are. How valued and needed and loved you are. 

I want you to know you have something to give from inside of you.

My why is to spur you on to find your own.