I do not like clutter, so you can imagine how I felt when I came home from work at 10pm last night to find my hallway in this condition. While I was gone, someone clearly took my carefully folded pile of laundry and threw it all over the pl…ace. I was not about to pick up one article of clothing, but was instead planning to call all of my children to the hallway after school to get to the bottom of who did this and why. You can see I had come to my own conclusions and had my own agenda in regards to this mess.However, everything changed in a flash this morning at 6:30 when my 7 year old early-riser bounded happily in my room and asked me to come out into the hallway. I followed him and he proudly showed me how he took my pile of laundry last night and sorted it into piles for him and his brother and sister “just like you do, Mommy!” As I saw how proud he was of the way he helped me out, all of my frustration and anger melted away and I grabbed him and gave him the biggest hug, looked deep into his happy eyes and thanked him for being such a kind, helpful boy. He was so proud of himself and delighted to get recognized for his efforts. It was that moment when I realized, yet again, how important and beneficial it is for us to try to see through our child’s eyes. Thank goodness he got to me first. I can only imagine how surprised, sad and defeated he would have felt if I called them all together and struck the kind of tone I had been planning in my head. Our children can be our greatest teachers if we allow them to be and in fact, that’s one of the reasons we have the particular children we have been given – to teach us what it is we need to learn and to grow us up as parents.And boy, how wrong I was about that mess in the hallway….
