Sunday, December 12, 2010

My teachers

It's so true that you learn as much from kids as they learn from you.  Morgan is always teaching me things. 

As you may recall from a previous post, Morgan told me he wanted to walk by himself from now on after I tripped and he ended up with stitches.  Two days later he was asking me to help him up the stairs (the exact scenario in which my clumsiness landed him in urgent care).  He obviously hadn't forgotten about what happened (in fact every time someone asked what happened to his chin he very honestly told them that mom tripped and he hit his chin BANG and got stitches).  But he forgave me.  He didn't hold any grudges or negative feelings toward me.  Obviously it was an accident and I didn't do it on purpose but how often do we as adults get offended when someone didn't mean to offend us?  How often do we hold a grudge or ill feelings toward that person?  Kids forgive almost instantly.  If I lose my temper and yell at Morgan, he forgives me.  If I get mad at him and send him to his room, he forgives me.  Teagan is the same.  If he gets into trouble and goes to his crib, he sobs like it's the end of the world.  When I get him out he snuggles right into me and hangs onto me for dear life.  He isn't mad at me for putting him in there in the first place.  He just loves me.  Why do we lose this easy ability to forgive as we get older?

 We'll be driving down the road and Morgan will start yelling at the car in front of us to get out of our way or he'll call them a stupid jerk or an idiot.  And when he's yelling he doesn't sound very nice.  Hearing this come out of my two-year-olds' mouth is not pretty.  In fact, it's downright disturbing.  So obviously I'm thinking ok, I really need to watch what comes out of my mouth in front of Morgan.  But what makes me think it sounds any better coming out of my mouth even when Morgan isn't around?  As I see myself yelling like that I can see how ugly it really is.  It's not wrong because my toddler is mimicking me, it's wrong because it isn't Christ-like behavior. 

Other times when I yell at someone for cutting me off Morgan says "Mom, we don't call names." 

It's no wonder the scriptures say over and over again that we need to become "as a little child."  My boys are so amazing and I'm so grateful to have them as my teachers.

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