If You Are Not Listening

I have dog ears; I hear things I wish I had never heard. When I say to a child “Please don’t tell me your business” they jump. Not realizing how much I hear, but do not want to know. I teach children this “if you are not listening, you are not learning.” I ask them to repeat it. Sixteen do, in a row, as I pass a stuffed frog. The seventeenth does not have any idea what we have all repeated. Because that child’s life is chaotic, he is sad, he cannot listen….yet. Listening is something few people do well. I have to concentrate on it. My job is to listen, but sometimes I am too distracted to do it. I have great pretense mechanisms in place. Nodding and mmmming. The children and the men keep talking, and of course the dogs. Women not so much, it is difficult to fake listening to a woman.