On Children
Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Ashiya

In June of 2012 I first felt the power of Little People.  I don't remember the first time I saw Ashiya.  I do remember being confused whether she was a girl or a boy (short hair's very misleading).  As the winter set in, suddenly she was hanging out with us in my classroom.

Now of course she greets me with a bug fat hug around my knees and a huge smile plastered on her face.  Any change in her mood changes the mood of my entire class.  We've all fallen flat for her. 

Saturday morning she was almost in tears.  I picked her up and she held on with all her life.  After lots of questioning about why she was so low, finally she revealed that no one was playing with her :P  I almost burst out laughing.  Two minutes later she was happily running after Devika in the compound.

Her pop-ins in class elicit unparallelled excitement and it's something we all crave for the entire day.  I dread the day she's going to move to Prep and to the other side of school. 

Till then, I'm stealing her!