With-ed
My kids’ elementary school has a therapist who has sessions with kids during the school day and after. She is young, friendly and blind and conducts her sessions with a seeing eye dog.
Over in my daughter’s fourth/fifth grade room, the teacher shared with me that they develop hand signals with kids who are going through a stressful period in their lives - if the kid gives the signal, they understand that the kid will be taking a moment of privacy and calm away from the group.
Recently I joined a group of the kids, with their teachers, principal and a collection of parents, for a human rights rally affirming the lives of trans kids. We marched from the school to Tompkins Square Park chanting and singing together and then the kids made speeches.
As the school year rounds up I’m so inspired by these educators’ capacity to make every child feel emotionally connected - even though there are hundreds of kids at this school and the school is severely under funded.
One of my clients - Abigail Wald - is an amazing advisor to parents. This week I started work on a developmental edit on her book, and was struck by a bit and a term she coined: “with-ed.” She was describing a phenomenon where sometimes kids pelt their moms with requests, and the moms feel harried and annoyed, but what the kids want more than the OJ, and the Labubu, and the cheese puffs, is to be “with-ed” - they want an interior state of being together. “We are so busy doing things for them, under them, over them and at them. But rarely oh so rarely WITH them. What people really want is to be ‘with-ed.’”
Yes!!!!
And while it’s draining to be responding to non stop requests - it’s not draining to with-ed people. It’s co-regulating, actually, to be quietly with-ed other human beings. Not in a crisis state of urgent care taking - just serenely in proximity, no point to get across and nothing to produce.
Here’s hoping for a really, really with-ed summer.
Thanks to my student/friend Cathy Simmons for making sure I read this beautiful, rather brief, personal essay with photographs by Ocean Vuong; it is, in many ways, related to with-ed ness. I started crying without knowing what I was crying about. Give it a read.
All artworks by JD Raenbeau, whose work is on view at CLAMP until July 9. That’s not his real name but he’s a public school teacher in a conservative district so he makes art under an alias.
Thank you for reading and thanks especially to my paying subscribers.
I will leave you with this gem. Rest in peace, BW.
xo Lizzie
❤️