Truth in Children’s Eyes

She was invisible. A small waif of seven or eight, she blended into her surroundings. She surfaced for attendance but that was about it. In the midst of a noisy classroom, she was undetectable.

She was quiet. Most invisible people are. But it was her eyes that bothered me. They were blank, lifeless, forgotten — like her name is to me now. I could not look at them.

Her invisible state could not hide the jagged cuts on her hands. I asked her about these cuts one day when she surfaced. She told me she played in the garbage dumpster behind her apartment building. She cut her hands on broken glass.

It was summer. I was an intern in an inner-city public school’s summer school program. The school locked up all its materials save a few books and other meager supplies. I was expected to survive on my wits or ability to disengage from reality. It was a long summer.

Toward the end of summer school, we took a field trip. We crossed town on a school bus. I sat next to the invisible girl. I had grown protective of her during our time together. Suddenly she was alive, shedding her invisible skin. She pointed at a hospital. “I been there.” she said.

“Why,” I asked.

“My Dad got shot in the head,” was her answer.

Thirteen years have passed since my summer with the invisible girl. I am a mother now. Watching my children’s eyes, I am amazed. Their eyes dance, move and change with their emotions. Their eyes twinkle with mischief, stare in wonder, flash with anger and shine with joy. How different my own children’s eyes are from the invisible girl’s eyes.

I believe in the truth revealed in the eyes of children. Children, especially young children, have not learned to shield the viewer from their verity. Children’s eyes are raw, unfiltered, unpackaged truth available for anyone willing to read eye language. The invisible girl’s eyes told me of her tragic truth long before her words did.

Children’s truth is not just their own. Their eyes are reflections of all who stand before them: parents, teachers, neighbors, communities, governments, media. Children are not immune to the people of their world. They mirror, ingest, believe and live what they see.

And I, in my complete humanness, am a part of what children see. I am a part of their truth whether children are my own, my relatives, my neighbors, my former students or mere strangers. My belief in the truth revealed in children’s eyes calls me to this responsibility: I am accountable for the truth of those of this world who are most unable to build their own truth. And when the eyes of children silently ask and sometimes beg for healing, hope, love, possibility and above all no harm, I must answer. To do otherwise, is to diminish the truth in their eyes.