I used to work at a day care center and it was a lot of work. I admired the other teachers (or whatever you call them – “attendants?”) who seemed to be so good with kids. I was not that way. I don’t have the skills, even now, that they did. They had special ways of talking to the little ones that I didn’t have.
Now with a 7 year old, I am around kids a lot with her friends and classmates. I do tend to like them, but they all pretty much seem to be good kids and she’s in a great school system. 7 year old kids are mature enough that you don’t have to talk to them like little toddlers – you can talk to them more like adults and they can reason and they’re also calmer.
I am friends with a couple who have two kids about my daughter’s age. They’re good kids but very active and loud. Fighting, running, screaming in the house. To me, that’s annoying as shit. I guess I’m used to my one, quiet kid. Even when she’s active, she’s relatively quiet.
In the work I used to do, for CPS, I came across all kinds of kids. Good kids, bad kids, kids with all kinds of issues, kids with all kinds of parents. Some of those kids were hard to tolerate but a lot of them learned from their parents and mimicked the parents’ behavior.