Listen to Your Child

I’m sure that we’ve all heard how important it is to listen to our children. Usually it’s in light of the fact that they will eventually become teenagers and the teen years can be challenging. So, if you haven’t been listening when they were small then they won’t talk to you when they’re big. It’s a good message, but not quite the angle I’m taking today.

I’ve already done a couple of posts on the value of listening to your child and I’m sure I’ll be writing more in the future. This time I’m going to share from my own mistakes with Amanda, specifically on two different occasions. Both times I thought she was just exaggerating. The job of a mom can be tedious and so it’s easy to want to brush off complaints made by one’s child as being no big deal. Both times I was slow to respond to Amanda’s complaints and both times it was a big deal. My bad.

The first time happened in 2010. I was dressing Amanda and as I was pulling on her pants, she began to protest loudly. I was thinking, what could possibly be the problem? So, I told her to settle down, because I had to dress her. This was me being slow to respond. When she didn’t calm down, I took her pants off in frustration. Something fell to the floor, but it took some investigating to actually find out what it was. It turned out to be a bumble bee. The strange thing is that it had never made a sound. I called my husband for help and we got it out the window. I was shocked to find six stings on her leg and I immediately applied sting ointment. I later googled it and discovered that bumble bees, unlike honey bees, can sting more than once.

At this point, you might be wondering how it got there. I also wondered the same thing. We hang all our washing outside to dry unless it’s raining. We live in South Africa and electricity is very expensive here, so washing lines are standard at most homes. It had to have gotten trapped inside her pant leg when we brought the washing in off the line the night before and since it never made a sound, I never knew it was there.

The second time I was slow to respond to Amanda happened just a few days ago. We went for a short, fifteen minute walk with the dog and were about six minutes away from our house when she complained that her shoes were hurting her. To protect her feet from thorns and such, we make sure she has something on her feet. It was a warm day, so she wasn’t wearing socks. I figured we were almost home, so she could endure a little bit more. She didn’t say anything after that, so I thought I had made the right decision. I forgot that little people have very fragile skin. Once we were home, I was shocked to find that her skin had chafed open at her one heel and the other one was quite red. Again, my bad.

I hope that you can learn from my mistakes and be quicker to respond to your child when he or she complains about something. Yah, I know, kids do a lot of complaining. It’s part of growing up. But, the thing is, they might be complaining for the right reasons. Life is full of interruptions. Allow yourself to be interrupted. Your kid is more important than the flow of the day.

P.S. She liked picking out her Disney Princess Band-Aids. Ariel was the winner.

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Never Underestimate Your Kids

Amanda and her big brother, Jeremiah, have a special bond. When we first shared our news with the kids that I was pregnant with our fourth child, Jeremiah was so thrilled that he ran to tell his friends who lived nearby. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how the kids would react to the news and so I was a little surprised that he was so excited.

Yesterday, Amanda told me about a conversation that her brother had with her. She told me that he had said how adorable and precious she was. She then told him how special he was to her. As she was telling me this, I could see that it touched her deeply. Amanda finished off by saying, “It was so sad.”

I asked her, “Don’t you mean ‘so sweet?’”

“No, Mom. It was sad. You can be happy and sad at the same time.”

Her choice of words was unusual, but I realized that she was speaking about something touching her so deeply that it almost hurt. I had explained to her before in movies why some people cry when they’re very happy. Later I told Jeremiah the odd thing she had said and he replied, “She’s a philosopher.”

Never underestimate your kids’ abilities to understand and reason no matter how young they are. I think adults in general are too quick to brush kids aside thinking they are too young to say anything of value and therefore don’t need to be heard. I have known my kids to say profound things at just the right moments.

I recommend you read (if you haven’t already), “Out of the Mouths of Babes.”

I took the above photo of Jeremiah with his baby sister, Amanda, in 2008.

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Out of the Mouths of Babes

Giving thanks for fish and chips

I mentioned previously that Amanda had been sick. When your child is sick, it’s often difficult to know what’s wrong and if you need to take him/her to the doctor. If you do take your child to the doctor, the doctor will decide what the problem is, but there is room for error even with all the learning and years of experience that your doctor will have had. At the end of the day, you know your child and you must go with your gut feeling to insure his/her good health.

Two days ago, I was still worrying about Amanda. It wasn’t clear to me if she was on the road to complete recovery. Deep down I knew that she was, but there was a specific moment that I doubted myself. It was at that precise moment, as the worry thoughts passed through my mind, that Amanda voiced what I had not said. “Mom, don’t worry, I’m fine.”

How did my child know what I was thinking? How did she know what to say at the right time? It was so specifically appropriate that I decided to heed her advice. Out of the mouths of babes, God speaks (Luke 10:21).

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