To teach children is something very much like to deal with life: it’s better to have a plan, and it’s folly to expect everything to go according to plan. For these little people have the ingenuity to thwart it, indeed for them it’s difficult to sit still for more than five minutes and it’s irresistible to climb on the table, or hide in the gap between the wall and closet, for the seventh time.

Yes, it is very much like living a life, it’s good to have a plan, to always keep it in mind and know what you are about, but when things do not go as you expected—as they often do—you will have to be patient and flexible and take whatever comes and make the best of it.

As at the end of the day it’s the best moments you want to recount and remember and comfort yourself with the illusion that you have lived to the fullest of this day of your life.

At the end of the lesson—as at the beginning of the lesson you would smile and laugh and show that you are happy to see them and be with them—at the end of the lesson, praise their good behaviors, for naughtiness is really the norm of children, it’s the good behaviors you want to point out, so praise their good behaviors, shake a tiny hand or give a hearty hug and thank these little people for learning with you.

It’s so long ago, it’s so far away, that we often forget we were once them, that we grew up from that. The three-year-old girl, now as we grow more and more familiar, claims a closer and closer acquaintance at each lesson.

“Now if you are vaccinated……” She all of a sudden bursted out.

It made me laugh to hear so little a girl use a word that normally children at that age would not have known.

My laugh evidently pleased her, for she tried out the phrase again as she watched closely my reaction, and when I smiled, maybe rather guiltily for I wanted her to focus on the lesson, she laughed out in such a hearty way as only a child can.

孩hái, children, is an onomatopoeia, that is, it’s created by resembling the sound of a baby, a child’s laughter, and if you pronounced it and were ready enough to believe, it does sound like the laughter of these little people.

Peter Pan, the child who refuses to grow up, says the beginning of fairies comes out of the laughter of a baby.

There is indeed something wonderful and healing(“The soul is healed by being with children”.) in the sounds of children’s laughter. And it must be to the credit of the Chinese that he made a character from so delightful a source.

The nouns in Chinese, when we name things, are normally formed by two or three characters or two or three syllables, as each character is one syllable. It makes linguistic sense to name a thing with more than one syllable. As there are, not considering the tones, only a little over 400 syllables in Chinese language, that means many characters share the same sound, and it would be too difficult, if not impossible, a communication if the nouns are formed by one syllable.

So there is a second character, a second syllable in Chinese for children: 子zǐ, unlike the first one 孩, 子 is a pictogram, that is, it resembles the image of a baby in her swaddle.

子 now often is used as a suffix to form the second syllable of a noun, such as 杯子，桌子，房子…… and it’s a common radical for characters, such as 学，孝，孕……

It is challenging. It is interesting. It requires patience and flexibility. It is at times disencouraging. But oh! It is such a pleasure, it is such an adventure! And it is with gusto, maybe partically as a shared responsibility of all adults, it is with gusto that one shows up and greets these little people!