Understanding Child Development

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Children often express emotional pain through behavior before they can explain it.

Emotional safety in classrooms can transform behavior and self perception.

A caring teacher may become a child's first experience of emotional validation.

There are moments in life that quietly reshape the way we see human beings. Years later, they remain alive in memory because something inside us changed forever. Sebastian was one of those moments in my life.

Many years ago, when I had just started my teaching career in Bogotá, Colombia, I worked as an English teacher in an underprivileged elementary school. I taught English from preschool through fifth grade and served as the class director for a fourth-grade group that many teachers considered difficult because of their behavior. At that stage of my life, I understood teaching through discipline, grammar, and classroom management. I had not yet developed the psychological understanding I later gained through years of studying emotional development, attachment, and human behavior.

Among all my students, there was one boy who immediately stood out. His name was Sebastian.

His shirt collar always looked dirty. His shoes remained untied almost every day. He constantly appeared sweaty, even during the cold mornings of Bogotá. During recess, he ran across the entire school without stopping. He interrupted others, teased classmates, and struggled to remain still inside the classroom. Some children called him “el loco,” the mad boy.

What I remember most clearly, however, was the way he ran toward me every morning.

The moment he saw me entering the school, he would run across the courtyard shouting, “My teacher, my teacher!” Then he would hug me before I even had time to react. At the beginning, I used to push him away gently and say, “Sebastian, you are sweating.” Looking back now, I realize I was seeing the behavior before........

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