After years of covering the Early Childhood Development beat…

After years of covering the Early Childhood Development beat, it dawned on me one day that I barely had the voices of little children in my stories. It was a revelatory moment. I began seeking out little children’s perspectives for my stories. It changed me as a reporter. And yesterday, as I was reporting about a family of US Citizens forced to live in a foreign country because their Salvadoran father/husband was deported, I bonded with the youngest child, two year-old Elijah. As all parents do, when Elijah was mesmerized by my recorder and wanted to push buttons, they pulled him away. He screamed. They got tense. I offered the child my headphones and let him push some buttons. We ended up playing a game of stop-record-stop-record-stop-record. He was thrilled. And cute. Everyone breathed a little easier, the parents opened up a little more, and so did his siblings – American kids who now live in a gang-riddled, remote town in El Salvador. Story coming soon.