Let them Lead

This past week was my Halloween week worth of lesson plans. Doing things for Halloween with children is a tricky balance. They want to do something for it not just ignore it, however if the wrong piece of music, even a classical piece can scare them. Something with minor chords or even too much bass.  So, I have the happiest Halloween music I could find out there, and still it can be a problem with some of the children at which point we go back to my normal music. I let the children direct me on this one.

I was teaching one of my youngest classes this past week and sure enough a little boy got scared so I quickly changed the music I want them to have a positive experience. He seemed fine after that so we moved forward. Then a little girl came late to class crying and not wanting to leave mommy.  As a rule I carry the crying child into the room and see if we can not find some distraction or another to get them to once again have a positive experience in dance class. I was trying to do just that when the little boy stopped dancing and started to cry again pointing to what I thought was the music box. This was very happy music so I was confused but I changed it. He went back to dancing and I went back to finding the thing that would distract this little girl from crying, she was starting to worry the other children and the last thing I wanted to do was hand her back to her mom. The little boy again started to cry I change this music that he had been dancing to in at other times with no problem and realized that there was something else going on because I really could not let him have the power to change the music on any whim.  Almost too slow I made the connection between his outbursts and this other little girl that was crying. My time was running out I pulled her  and him to their feet and tried to get them excited about moving it was not working.

It was then I had an idea for all intents and purposes this little girls crying was the problem and distraction method was not working so I decided to attack the situation head on, which normally does not work. I left the whimpering little boy, knelt by the girl looked her in the eyes and explain the situation the best I could in words that she would understand. “Do you see that [this little boy] is crying and not dancing? Its because you are crying. Could you be brave and a leader for me and show him that it is okay to go dancing.” I stood up took her hand once more and soon she was skipping with us happily and the little boy joined in too! the rest of the class went beautifully.

There have been a handful of other times asking the child to be a leader for other children and it works. It is easy to forget that these small children can be leaders and good things can come of it if we as adults are brave enough to let them try.