Patience

If there is one thing that I'm being forced to learn here, it's patience. Yesterday was a public holiday here in Chile (still not really sure what for), and therefore none of the kids had daycare. This left me with 5 children right around the age of two, 1 child around the age of one and a half, and 1 more right about one year old. I'm sure you can do the math, but 7 total under the age of 2. I had them all for two straight hours, stuck in one tiny room. I'm to the point now where I'm really good at keeping up to 4 kids happy and entertained. But any more than that, and I just can't do it. There was always at least one child crying. And these kids have grown up fighting for every little bit of attention they can get so they are pretty brutal to one another - especially when they get bored. They hit, kick, bite, slap, shove, and pinch amongst a miriad of other things. At one point, one of the little girls came up to me and said "Tia look". She opened her hand and she was holding a huge chunk of hair she had pulled out of someones head. This is only but one example of the things I witnessed yesterday. Among the brutality to one another comes a level of constant noise that is enough to make anyone go crazy. At any given point in that room, there were at least 3 children yelling my name trying to get me to pay attention to them and what they were doing. I often want to yell right in their ears as they do mine to see how they like it, but know that would only escalate the problem as they would all think it was a fun game. As those of you know, who have had the opportunity to raise children, patience is the key. Because the second you begin to show your frustration or lose your calm, the children sense it right away and know they've gotten the better of you. Patience, patience, patience.