A Respectful Look at the Youth of Children

It may surprise you to know that spending time with children is a great way to stay young and fight aging! Though children are understandably immature and thus, can hassle their adult counterparts at times, they also have an uncanny way of keeping us young.

It would be rather silly to watch a whole group of adults playing a game of "tag" and "hide-and-seek" in the back yard, right? Sleepovers don't quite have the same meaning in our vocabulary either. In fact, most adults don't even use that term anymore. We call it something else, and it has a meaning that is completely different, especially among members of the opposite sex. True, we have found other ways to entertain ourselves, and we maintain friendships in similar ways that children do, but not all of the rules need to change. We still practice sharing and caring by sending casseroles and pot-roasts to friends in need or sometimes, just to anyone and just because we care. We carpool to help everyone offset high gas prices and to promote saving our home planet from over-usage of fossil fuels. We support each other emotionally through tough times, offering a shoulder to lean on even when we're not asked for one.

Children do many of these things, or things like the actions mentioned above, but just on a more age-appropriate scale. Their actions don't mean any less and are by no means "smaller" in any way. Sometimes, they'll even attempt to reach beyond our expectations of them because they recognize a need for it. A small child trying to provide emotional support to his distraught father after he just got fired from his job is an example of this. Though he may only be able to wrap his arms around his father's neck and tell him that everything will be alright, that's still a remarkable show of compassion. He's "holding" his father with his arms. He's reassuring his father of better days to come.

We try to protect our children from being exposed to types of pain that we feel they are not ready to handle. We don't want them to misjudge a situation or take too much responsibility for something that is not their fault. However, we don't see everything our children see. They still have stresses. They still have problems, and they often don't know the best way to deal with their issues. How is it then, that they can remain so lively, free-spirited, and positive? Yes, they worry, sometimes more than they should. Yes, they can suffer from depression, but many children have a relatively positive outlook on life, despite the world's problems. You may think that children don't think about the world outside of their own, but so many of them do. Children are compassionate beings who don't always act in selfish ways. To feel for someone other than yourself and to care for that person's well-being is to open the door to some forms of stress when that person is not doing well. Children become exposed to these stresses whenever they develop new relationships or enrich the ones they already have.

It's amazing that despite the problems in the world, we still have such beautiful, innocent children. Look to them, study them, play with them, speak with them, for ways to be more like them. We have as much to learn from our children as they do from us.

The youth of childhood seems to disappear once adult responsibilities sink in, but gaining maturity doesn't have to come at the cost of losing youth. Some of the most youthful people I've known have been senior citizens. They may not be able to play hop-scotch or leap-frog anymore, but they sure do remember those days, and when they do, you can see the youth in their eyes and smile. You can hear it in their laughter. Many of them don't revert back to some of their childhood dreams or memories until they are older, but why shouldn't we do that now? Sure we all remember playing different games, having outrageous dreams, watching the stars and reaching out to touch them, but do we do those things anymore? Even if it isn't "practical," it's still necessary. We need to maintain our youth through dreaming, playing, and laughing. We lose our sanity and imagination when we don't. Life in turn becomes mundane, repetitive, and meaningless. We start suffering from depression and anxiety. I'm no doctor, but I definitely believe that losing youth results in being over-stressed, which leads to several illnesses and emotional problems.

Let's all fight aging by playing a good, old-fashioned game of Red Rover! I know what I want to be when I grow up; a kid!