Friday, September 3, 2010

Lesson from a 3 year old

Yesterday I was upstairs and both the boys were downstairs playing, once again, with a ball. Yes, don't judge me, I allow my kids to throw, toss, and roll a ball in our house!  But they almost always just throw it.  And yesterday that's exactly what they were doing, when all of a sudden I heard something shatter!  As I hurried down the stairs I hollered to both boys, "Both of you stop where you are at, do not move!  I don't want anyone getting cut."  Of course Nicholas stops dead in his tracks, because that is just who he is; a listener, a follower of rules.  Noah, well he's just his own little person.  This lil' guy ignores my firm instructions, to not move, and runs right to the bottom of the stairs to meet me.  With the biggest grin on his face he declares, "It was MEEEE, I did it!  I broke it off the wall.  Because I hit the ball really hard with the bat and the plate just got broken."  I just stare at him with disapproval and lift him up and carry him to the carpet, worried that he might have cut the bottom of his feet.  I check his feet, nope, no cuts.

I don't say much while I'm sweeping up the broken plate pieces besides, "I don't know why I allow this kind of play in my house.  No more playing with that brown bouncy ball in this house."  Naturally I'm upset, but I just go about cleaning the mess when I hear Noah say to me, " Sorry mom but I just broke one plate not two."  I stop and look at him and he's adjusting his little fingers to show me two fingers up and then switch them back to one.  And I look at him and smile, what a clever little boy he is.  Because I suppose it could've been two plates he broke, rather than one.  What perspective from a 3 year old . . .

And I'm sure we all go about our days and know this lesson, but we so easily forget that when things aren't so good, remember it could be worse.

Remember, that even though one plate is broken it's not two plates, because two plates broken is a lot bigger mess to clean up. :0) 

1 comment:

  1. Love this story Misty! We let the kids play w/ balls in the house too...to a certain extent. We also let them climb on the furniture and jump around. It must be the new math! ;-) Love ya guys!!

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