As an after school tutor, I mostly focus on helping the kids that I work with do drills in reading comprehension and arithmetic. However, there is another element that I've had to start addressing that is not related to their school work: bodily functions.
To be clear, I don't work with anyone younger than third grade, yet this problem persists. On Monday, I had to explain to the fifth grader I was tutoring about the concept of holding your farts in. His response? "I don't really know how to hold them in." How has he not been told about this?! I realize that in our culture, we are so afraid of the sounds and smells that people make that our natural inclination is to not say anything, but no one really mentioned that he should hold it in? Not even his parents?
Anyway, after several more incidents, I finally explained how smelling works (that is, that tiny molecules of whatever we smell actually goes inside our noses) and that seemed to shock him. A little bit later, he declared that he held one in. I asked if it was hard, genuinely curious. He answered with, "No, not really."
I'm sure all of the parents reading are unimpressed, but I bet they all taught their kids to hold it in, too.
2 comments:
This kid had most likely been told that what he did was rude, but it didn't register with him. What you said made sense to him. Kudos to you for having just the right words to be heard.
Because of bad body odder I had to give instructions on how often one needed to bathe and shampoo hair. My students were high school girls.
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