Valentine’s Day in the 2010’s is a holiday that is saturated in overly sweet Instagram posts and Snapchat stories of happy couples, giant chocolate boxes, proposals, and even newly empowered singles boasting their individual beauty.
For me, the holiday has always been about one thing: love. I’ve been in a committed relationship for almost three years, and one thing that I am reflecting on this year is how adult-centric Valentine’s Day has become. When I was a kid, it always felt super special–both at home and at school, to celebrate with home-made, glittery cards, flowers my dad bought for us, and the cute notes taped to heart-shaped Little Debbie brownies I got from my friends. After working in childcare since my early teens, I know this is a privileged experience: not everybody gets to celebrate like this due to hard relationships and life-circumstances.
Now in my 20s, I wish that we could find ways to make Valentine’s day especially sweet for the children in our lives who may not get that extra love from anywhere else.
Obviously, it is incredibly important for children to be shown love and affection when they are young. Unfortunately, this does not happen for all children. Even though it breaks my heart to think about, I had to look up some statistics on the matter. I didn’t even have to finish typing my Google search to see a response: a child is abused or neglected [approximately] every 47 seconds in the United States. This was accompanied by a ton of other startling statistics, all of which are due to various circumstances–some sadly unavoidable.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working with children ages infant/Pre-K to 5th grade, however, is that they are the most resilient, hopeful, and defaultly happy people to walk the earth. They often come from broken households and scary starts in life, yet they walk in the door of their care provider or school with smiles on their faces and a heart full of shiny new life. Similarly, they often do not see any level of respect from older authorities in their lives, thus making it seem to them that they do not deserve said respect. This is so wrong. Our children deserve all the extra love and kindness we can muster.
I live with three kids, my cousins, and they inspire me every day to think through the mind of a child. My two younger sisters and seven other younger cousins also constantly remind me to be more childlike in my everyday life. Being “more child-like” means a couple things: 1) how to view the world in an optimistic, positive, innocent way as much as possible, and 2) how to make things entirely more fun. Since Valentine’s day has become something through social media and the modernization of media and society that is so grotesquely and perhaps unnecessarily sexual, the need to go back to innocent roots has never been stronger.
If you have children in your life, have them re-teach you how to cut out a pink paper heart out of construction paper. Bake some sugary treats and deliver them, or bring them some flowers and a shiny red balloon. Actually, you don’t even have to go that far. All you have to do is simply increase the amount of times you say this to them: “I love you, and you are important.” They may not let it resonate with them immediately, but just know that you are helping to support their liveliness, their ever-sparkling spirits.
This Valentine’s Day, why not take a break from the rom-coms and the fancy dinners and try out something charitable? There are so many resources that you can click on–I will include a few of them here, here, and here. Depending on your area, you could drop off hand-made or store-bought Valentine’s cards to your local elementary or middle school, homeless shelter, or children’s hospital. If you have neighbors, deliver some cards and chocolate or shout an enthusiastic “Happy Valentine’s Day, [Insert Kid’s Name]!” over the fence. It doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it’s not hard to show a little love and respect to children.
We just have to remember how sometimes respect, kindness, and a little bit of our precious time and attention can go a long way. So if you’re feeling up to it, go make a kid feel loved on the 14th, and then every day after that. They deserve it.