Our little teachers

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Children interrupt.  They interrupt an adult life.  They interrupt the briefest of conversation.  They interject a presence that will not be denied, and you adjust and adapt....willingly, unwillingly....it really doesn't matter.  The force of their needs and cognitive awakenings forever impact how you will function and, if you are fortunate, who you will become.

Do not mistake this "interruption" as a perceived disturbance.  (While it may be when I'm trying to talk on the phone....)   I was once an adult plowing forward in life, and I was interrupted.  I became a parent.  I cannot escape it, nor can I take shortcuts.  It is an ongoing journey of honest, sometimes painful, self-awareness.  Children hold a mirror, one of those horrific magnifying mirrors, in fact, where every flaw and blemish a parent could have is fully exposed.  I am grateful that they force me to face myself.

Life has a way of imprisoning us to mundane routines that, ultimately, become the basis for any accomplishment or achievement.  We must better ourselves with  the very tools that oppress us.  Diet, school, work, even volunteerism requires commitment, and the more we dedicate ourselves to the positive outcome of these commitments, the more we learn about our ability.

Of course, blinding obsession to any task becomes a course of selfishness.  Raising children, however, is altogether different.  Children become the purest commitment to pull any essence of goodness we have within.  Children will also expose the holes in our character apologetically. 

“Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child.”
― Mary MacCracken

How does a parent truly teach honesty, generosity and  industriousness?  Lectures and persuasion do little good.  I believe age 6 is the age when hypocrisy is comprehended, and I have always chuckled the first time my kindergartener says without blinking an eye, "You're a hypocrite."  I wish I could say those words are strictly reserved for the siblings in the house, but dad and I have been busted on a couple of occassions.

Kids will call you to the mat for truth.  They want to know "why."  Why anything and everything exists as it does, and why it is contained in a particular "box" of application or understanding.  "Why can't we build a robot that does the dishes?"  "Why do I have to go to school every day?"  "Why can't we just ask the bank for more money?"  "Why can't we build our own car?"  "Why do people hate other people?" And, they are flat-out serious.  We shake our heads and explain from our parental-Wikipedia-understanding just how things must be, or worse, how some things cannot be controlled.  How frustrated they must get with contingencies and parameters and rules and laws of the universe slowing them down all the time!  And, sometimes, they force us to pause and ask "why" too.

I love that any "box" in a child's comprehension oftentimes falls over and spills out and loses it shape.  Children see morality in black and white and everything else in hi-def color, and nothing is bound by the laws of physics or common sense.  It's when they challenge "common sense" that a parent will find themselves dancing in the rain or wearing a necklace made of macaroni
or painting a horse or eating ice cream for breakfast or maybe even skipping a day of school.  (Who would ever do that?!)



I'm a huge proponent of discipline and order, but sometimes when we give our children a voice and an opportunity to choose their own course for a day, an afternoon, or even an hour, we find our own childhood again.  A child is all too ready to put the world on pause and just find joy.  A child will introduce you to your long-lost imagination, and find an artist in you.  A child will get you dirty or very wet.  A child does not have rules and does not judge, and there is refreshment in that.  A child wants to eat a lot of sugar, but also wants to burn a lot of calories.  A child finds snuggle time an essential part of every day.   And, a child will also teach us that the exhilaration in a game of hide-and-seek is the seek, the pursuit of one another and the grabbing on and finding that moment of wanting to be found and held.