Kayla practicing compassion and patience when working with children

For my activist project I volunteer at Heaven’s Nest Child Care with Maria, Isabel, Emily, Paige, and Sydney. Starting off, we had mainly been doing fun activities for the children like conduct an Easter egg hunt or helping the caretaker with the day-to-day duties. We have all gotten really close to the children and it’s been amazing. This has been my first real time working with children, ever. I am the youngest in my family and neither of my brother have children yet. So, this has been a learning experience to say the least. I’ve learned simple things like how to properly hold a baby and also more practical things like talking to a child in an adult voice will get them to listen to you more.

Working with the children has been really interesting because I have been able to clearly see how their difficult upbringings have led to serious problems within them. Some children have trouble sharing toys or become very possessive of us when we are playing with them. Other children are completely opposite and cry after being held for too long. A caretaker explained to us that this is because the child associates this behavior with a mother, whom she misses desperately and rarely gets to see. Another child smiles extremely rarely and is very disinterested in playing with other children. When we are playing outside, she usually sits on the grass by herself without toys. I’m not qualified to diagnose children however, Maria who works with children often pointed these things out as issues and so did the caretakers.

Being at Heaven’s Nest has taught me to practice compassion and patience. At moments it can be easy to be frustrated with a child acting out but when one considers the negligent homes they have recently come from, it’s clear it is not their faults. In fact, this just shows more reason to treat the children with kindness and love. Even while they may have their problems, the children exude so much love to one another as well. When a child cries, often times I see another child offer the other one a piece of their snack to make them feel better. It’s really beautiful to see the simple acts of selflessness children demonstrate without thought or question.

Recently, we have begun really getting involved in improving the Heaven’s Nest facility. We have started painting a mural outside the facility with extremely bright, beautiful colors. After doing that, we have to really sit down and think about the items we will be investing our fundraising into. We have raised $900, which absolutely amazes me! When we first made our fundraising page I would have never imagined that. Since we have been so successful with our fundraising, we all realize that we need to take care when choosing what to invest the money into. I’m really excited to see what the final project of what we are able to do turns out to be!