Friday, November 04, 2005

Pride and the Price of Unbelief

Last night, while fulfilling my taxi driver role, I was lecturing my captive audience regarding how and why a child should trust his or her mom. Will had some problems with some 6th grade bullies in keyboarding class who had figured out just the right way to tic him off and make him cry. He will not try my suggestion to just ignore them. It's because he believes that if he fusses at them to stop their obnoxious behavior, they'll quit. I tried to tell him that the fussing only fuels their fire and makes things worse. We've had this discussion before. I used an illustration about a time when Jack trusted me to do something that, to him, sounded ludicrous but that resulted just the way I said it would, but only because he trusted me and tried what I suggested.

Story goes that when Jack was about 4 years old, he did something he wasn't supposed to and was going to get in trouble for it. I wasn't 100% certain that he'd done it and the offense was against his Dad. I suggested that if he owned up to the wrong and appologized that Dad would be lighter in his punishment. Jack looked at me in disbelief but he tried the truth and Rod responded with just the mercy I had predicted. Jack was amazed and has held to the principal of truth telling ever since.

Now, in a related event, Molly disclosed last night at 7:00 PM (on the way to an evening event) that she had to make a kaliedoscope for school tomorrow...."you know, with just stuff lying around the house. You don't have to go out and buy anything, Mom." (I KNOW YOU have stuff to make a kaleidoscope just lying around YOUR house!) Not only do we have to have a kaleidoscope but a project journal as well that discloses exactly what worked and what didn't work while attempting to create said kaliedoscope! (Insert very, very unhappy Mamma.) Well, needless to say, the kaliedoscope with project journal, (supposedly made with things just lying around my house) did NOT get made. I suggested to her this morning that she write in her proposed project journal that one thing that didn't work was telling mom the night before that the kaliedoscope was due! She didn't think that was such a good idea (to put it mildly).

And Jack said, "Molly, don't you remember the conversation we had in the car last night about trusting Mom?"

Hmmmmmm.......

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I feel your pain mom! And don't believe anyone that says, "It gets easier". And by the way.........
Perhaps you should consider free lance and submit your writing to Journey Magazine or something similar. You have a way with the words.