Last October I collected a series of little anecdotes from the wisdom of the youngest amongst us, our children.
Since that time, I’ve continued to be open to the opportunities available that I might learn from children. I have also continued to gather their stories.
Themes vary from awe and wonder to justice and ethics. Here are just three more from my now 7 year-old son.
Remember to Love Yourself Too
It is the weekend, and my son and I setting up the art supplies to make Valentine Cards for 18 first graders.
While I am daunted and somewhat dragging my feet on this task, my son is energetically assembling the glue, scissors and construction paper in their specified place. He is thrilled.
He begins the V-Day Project by making a list of his entire class to be sure no Valentine has been forgotten. He then assigns my task of putting red heart stickers onto each card and box of candy hearts. All in all the process is very organized and methodical- quite impressive actually.
As I am working diligently to keep up with the CEO of Valentine’s Day (aka: my son), I feel a need to authoritatively say to him, “Remember to make 18 cards for everyone in your class.”
He responds without a beat and not even looking up from his list, “Nope, it should be 21 cards.”
“21?” I stop working and look up at him to question his math.
“There are only 18 kids in your class though.”
“No, there are 19 of us, plus Ms. S and Ms. M.” (Okay, so he’s including his 1st grade teacher and his Kindergarten teacher, but who’s #19?)
At that moment I look over at my son’s hand-written list and notice his name on it too.
Of course, he’s making a card for himself! Why wouldn’t he?
But more importantly, why would it have never occurred to me to send myself some love each and every time I am sending out a whole lot of love to literally everyone else?
I’ll try to remember that next time…
What is True Equality?
It is evening time, and I my son and I are playing a game at the dining table.
It is a game he has made up himself that has a similar set of rules to the card game poker.
He has carefully hand-made the cards each of us will draw from, 6 cards each, and has collected a variety of small toys (many of them Legos) that will act as our money to ante up into the pot that you will win if your hand of cards beats your opponents.
We are now well into the game, and my son is winning by a lot. I am down to just one or two toys to put into the pot in a last ditch hope to get some loot back. Meanwhile his side of the dining table is spilling over with toys (or money) that he’s won in the last several hands of cards.
Unfortunately though, it looks like I am going to lose. I want to stay in the game and keep playing, but it is time to ante up and I have nothing left to put in the pot.
But before I can say to my son: “You Win!” he has taken toys from his pile and put them into the pot.
I stop him. I say, “No, it’s not your turn. It’s mine, and I have nothing to put in.”
“I know,” he says unbothered. “But you don’t have any, and I do.”
As those of you who spend time with small children know, rules in made-up games can be quite fluid- I try to keep up.
“So you won then.”
“No I didn’t,” my son casually responds. “You just don’t have anything to put in, so I put it in for you. It wouldn’t make sense if I didn’t. I have a lot. You don’t.”
Then he paused his movement in the game, and gave me a quizzical look—eye brows knitted—trying to figure out what my hang up was about.
Not immediately responding, I looked at him, and then down at the pot of “money.” To him, to a child, this was a no-brainer: Them that have, shall give. He clearly saw the game as a “we,” not an “I,” and as cooperation not competition.
I picked up my hand-made cards again and resumed playing. I realized that my son had just rearranged the furniture in my mind for what is true equality.
Future Seeker?
My son and I are driving in the car. I’m in the front driver’s seat, and he’s in the back in his booster.
We’ve been going along in silence for a while, and suddenly he speaks up.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“I know that zero times anything is zero because that is the rule in multiplication.”
“That’s right,” I say, impressed that he’s already getting into multiplication tables at school.
“But, why is that? I understand that that is the rule, but why is it that way?”
I pause and take a quick look back at my son in the rearview mirror.
Not being a mathematician I realize I have no idea what the answer is to his question, and I give a quick unsatisfactory response of “I’m not sure my love, we’ll have to look that one up on the internet.”
Quietly inside though, I admire what underlies his question.
In that moment it seemed a child was unsatisfied with the simple truth of a rule- he wanted a deeper understanding of how things work. He had curiosity to want to grasp an idea from both the outside in and the inside out.
It seemed to me that such a simple question had the early markings of a seeker, and I wished to follow his lead.
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