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Lessons Learned

June 29th, 2008

I’ve learned many things from my kids over the years. Here is a lesson I learned from my youngest son. When Kenji was about 3 years old, I read to him every night. Cat In The Hat, Go Dog Go, The Very Hungry Caterpillar….. He would pick the book and point to the page he wanted me to read. Very often, this became quite frustrating for me. At times, Kenji would stop me half way through a book and choose another book. He would skip pages and sometimes he would point to the right-hand page before the left-hand page, so I was reading the story backward.

As adults, we grow to be very goal-oriented, and to reach our goal we follow logical steps. I found that not being able to finish Cat In The Hat after starting was a bit unsettling. Reading stories backward and skipping pages made me anxious. I tried to plow ahead with the story, but he would block my moves.

Finally, I understood what was happening. Kenji was just having fun. He didn’t feel bound to read A,B, C…..Z. If he wanted to read A,B,S,K… he would do that. He was enjoying the moment, and did not even care if we finished the story. Sometimes, we adults would do well to just enjoy the journey, and not worry too much about the end.

kk

Entry Filed under: Daily Routines for Kids