The secrets belong to adults

Did you know that children talk and tell their “problems” normally, as if they weren't secrets? They even tell the secrets and problems of their parents and family as if they were normal conversations and data to be shared! And for them it's okay, they don't suffer from that kind of information sharing.

In the building where I have lived for almost 10 years, the children who live there, or who usually visit their grandparents weekly, grew up practically together. They had the stage of playing on the playground, in the baby pool and now they talk about almost serious matters, kind of like teenage talk. And these days my daughter told me that she tells her friends about things that happen in our house (such as fights, problems with food, school, money, etc.). I was mistaken in thinking she wouldn't talk, after all, every long afternoon in the company of my friends, I end up finding out about the life of a couple in the building, separation, acquisition, among many other cases.

The naturalness that children face with problems is worthy of admiration, after all, they see things without much drama and with that perspective that things will soon be resolved, they will settle in the best way. And if we stop to think, many of the problems are like that, they just cause us anxiety and anguish and then they are resolved. And we suffer horrors and then end up thinking exactly how much we wear out situations that don't even need so much attention and energy.

Thinking like that would be so nice, but it's so hard! Let the word worry (worry), which carries in the meaning the idea to be concerned with something beforehand. Without choosing your priority (yes, a priority, since there aren't two priorities, it's a word that doesn't have a "plural"). We live at a frenetic pace of to-do lists and tasks that are pure jokes, after all, what humans could manage so much and still sleep and eat? And the women, who have a list of work, home, children, and beauty. Here is a gift of women: to soften. Everything! The daughter's school problems, the daughter's problems, the husband's problems and the husband's work, the house, and many others. A multitude of warm clothes, as they say, that you need to put on everything to live!

But since this is not a feminist text, let's focus on the lightness of children, who also love to dramatize some aspects of their charming little lives. Running out of cheese bread, not watching a cartoon on television, losing a toy. For us adults it's so little, because we know that we can make or buy more cheese bread the next day, we know that by changing the channel we can watch several other cartoons, so imagine the notion of the future we have, and that many toys will still pass away for us. And that's why so many of the kids suffer from wanting to be adults, thinking we're amazing with our ability to smooth over and fix everything!

It's always a bargaining chip. We look at them and we learn. Just as they watch us and repeat everything, and therein lies the need for mirroring, also called rapport (repeating a pattern we admire). Maybe we need to learn to minimize some problems, not suffer in advance. And equally valuing when we lose a “toy”, valuing the love and time we dedicate to it and knowing how much it will be missed. It may seem so little, so simple, to us so full of reason and knowledge. But valuing each thing in its moment is so much bigger and smarter, right?