Shuffling through a clump of doilies, conversations hearts, and miniature cards with such zest that I haphazardly ripped the construction paper pocket I had toiled over just days before, I finally found it… my first love letter. 

Scrawled at the bottom of a picture of a matchbox car were those beautiful words – “Your hair isn’t so bad.”  In five words, Tyler Ford had irrevocably kept my spirit from despising the male species for years and years to come.

A week earlier, my mother, older sister and I made our trek to the local beauty college for our bi-monthly coiffing.  For years I had worn the famous Dorothy Hamill, a perfect choice for my thick, uncombable hair, despite my pleas to grow glorious locks like my classmates.  Perhaps it was this penchant for whining about my hair that gave my mother the idea to try something new – a perm.  For over an hour I sat on a phone book in a chair while a nervous new cosmetologist wrapped my hairs in hundreds of tiny rollers, wrapped my head in cotton, and then poured the rankest solution of chemicals my eyes could possibly endure.  Despite the agony, I was optimistic… until the girl began blowing out those curls and I was left with a mass on top of my head that equaled the size of the paper maché globe I was finishing at school.  Two days later I was forced to endure the immediate silence of a bustling group of children as I entered my third grade classroom.  Not one person, not even my teacher, could find any words to describe the nest on top of my head…until Tyler Ford.

Five words of kindness helped me endure the first great humiliation of my childhood.  In those five words, Tyler didn’t ignore the crisis I was in, but admitted that he was in there with me.  He gave me hope – that despite what happened to my outside appearance, I was still the same girl on the inside.  Thirty years later those words are still meaningful to me.  For all that is said about the misbehaviors of childhood, we seem to forget the simple, deep acts of kindness our children model.

One of my favorite things to see at school is when I bring a new family in to tour our toddler classes.  Immediately upon seeing a new mommy, our children rush up to share a hug and look up with a sparkle-eyed smile.  Often our children will bring toys over to the new child and want to touch them.  The shyness of adult propriety has not yet developed and the children are so open and accepting.

Older children can also be very adept at breaking through the egocentrism of early childhood when they empathize with a child who has been hurt.  They’ll stay with their friend, hold the ice packet on the wound and gently rub the child’s back.  Our preschoolers can recognize the feelings of loneliness when a classmate has difficulty saying goodbye to a parent in the morning.  They’ll invite them to the circle rug and ask the child to sit with them for awhile.

Children are certainly impulsive.  They speak and act without a great degree of self-consciousness.  They color on tables, get angry in the supermarket, and dig their heels in a refusal to move. Handling their emotions and behaviors can be challenging for adults who live in a seemingly different world of internalized rules and boundaries.  But we can be encouraged to look deeper – for lying in the midst of impulsive sin lies impulsive goodness as well.  We are all, after all, created in the image of God.

Bringing Little Ones to Christ,



Cori Berg

CDC Director