Balance

I was sitting at my desk last week, watching the class as they sat doing various little projects at the end of the day.  The day had been good. The assignments had been completed. There had been no great upheavals, and so the reward was to allow them to draw, play chess, build with  Legos, whatever they wanted to do at the end of the day before getting ready to go home.  I love watching children learn.  I think I love more, watching them create on their own.  The interactions between them, the comments they make to each other, their smiles, thoughtful faces, looking over at me every so often to hold up a picture, or a Lego creation.  It is such a peaceful, gentle time.

It can also be a very chaotic, rambunctious time, because it is at the end of the day that the medication that most of the students are on, begins to wear off.  First let me say that, I do agree that medication is the answer sometimes.  But not until all options are researched and tried.  I do believe that some people's brains have chemical malfunctions.  I don't believe that the amount of children that are medicated all have brain chemical problems. 

What happened in that Connecticut school is still on the minds of all of us.  Our school has taken some new precautions.  We are all still on a feeling of  'alert.'  The mental health of the murderer was mentioned for a short time after the tragedy, but then seemed to fade away in favor of gun control.  Mean while, the state of a person's mind IS the gun control. 

There are a many parts to good mental health.  I'm not going to address them all, but there is one that has always been a source of concern for me.  Feelings.  We have become a society who is afraid of feeling, and allowing feelings.  I had kind of an 'ah-ha moment' that happened last week.  A woman who works at the school had a brother who was killed two weeks ago.  Someone asked her how her mother was taking it and her response was, "Well, she's on some good drugs, so it's good so far."   What?  First, how flippant we've become when talking about drugs and their usage.  Second, why can't we allow someone to experience grief? 

I thought of the students.  I am teaching in an elementary school.  There are some children in my class who are on four different medications.  Pretty powerful ones, too.  What is the long term effect on their young brains?  In the morning, those students seem kind of robotic.  They listen, do their work, but there is no real 'light' in their eyes.  As the day progresses, their personalities start to 'clear up' and yes, behaviors can get challenging, but, I think that's only because they are experiencing  behaviors, that are kept muted, that they don't have experience controlling because they haven't been taught or because they haven't been allowed to experience them. 

In all other moments in history, people have been experiencing emotions.  Sadness, joy, grief, anger.  They ran through the feelings, and moved on. Emotions are good.  They help to gauge the moment. They are reinforcers. Emotions help us to remember, well, everything. They're good for the brain.

Technology and the speed that it can be transmitted (texting, social media) allow feelings to be shot out without a time to be processed and understood.  It is so mixed up.  We aren't encouraged to express emotions but, emotions are becoming the control rather than the alarm.  So, we keep them quiet. I don't think it is good individually or for a society to ignore the ability to feel and appropriately express and manage those emotions.  How ironic is it to ask,  'How does that make you feel?'  to someone who is on medication to prevent feeling?  They can't understand something they aren't familiar with.  I'll paraphrase a quote from the movie "Iron Lady" where Margaret Thatcher comments that, "everyone is so interested in how I feel, well what about what am I thinking?"  Feeling and thinking go hand in hand.  It's being in mental balance, something a lot of our younger generation are not equipped to appreciate.